The United States Keeps Failing to Finish the Job, from Versailles to Iran
The article argues that U.S. allies in the Middle East are losing confidence in Washington and seeking stability and calm because of American indecision. The author uses a football metaphor, saying the United States has no "finishing foot" in foreign policy, so even promising moves end in failure rather than victory.
To support that claim, the piece reviews a long list of American setbacks: Woodrow Wilson’s 1918 vision for a postwar order and the League of Nations collapsed when the U.S. Senate rejected membership; the United States backed the Munich Agreement in 1938 but failed to prevent Hitler’s next moves; after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on August 23, 1939, World War II began and Poland was split between Germany and the Soviet Union; and at Yalta in 1945, Stalin outmaneuvered Roosevelt and Churchill, helping seal the Iron Curtain and the Cold War.
The author then points to Korea, where fighting ended in July 1953 without a peace treaty, and Vietnam, where the U.S. suffered a major humiliation after about 20 years of war and 50,000 American deaths. The withdrawal from Saigon on April 29 and 30, 1975, under Operation Frequent Wind, is cited as proof that even the Paris peace accords of January 27, 1973, and Henry Kissinger’s Nobel Prize did not produce a real victory.
A similar pattern, the article says, repeated in Afghanistan, where the U.S. withdrew on August 30, 2021, after spending billions, yet the Taliban still rules. It also mentions Soviet intervention in Hungary in 1956, when the U.S. limited itself to protests, and says President Dwight Eisenhower threatened Israel, Britain, and France during Operation Kadesh. The current standoff with Iran is presented as another American retreat, with the writer saying Donald Trump failed to finish the confrontation, left Israel exposed, and allowed Iran, Hezbollah’s backer, to gain leverage. The piece concludes that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Dubai and others now seek calm because they no longer trust the U.S., and that Trump will leave the Iran fight in defeat.
