Small Fires Everywhere: The Wages of Boomer Foreign Policy
Small Fires Everywhere: The Wages of Boomer Foreign Policy
The Iran war incurs deferred costs for a splash of excitement now.
Baby Boomers should be remembered in domestic terms for enervating the U.S. economy with Total Boomer Luxury Communism. That generation vacuumed up current and future revenues to fund their luxe retirements, while young people struggle to find good jobs and homes while staring down a desolate future of debt and constraints.
President Donald Trump’s foreign policy is very much a Boomer foreign policy, and in a similar sense. The second Trump administration has lit small fires across the world and let them burn, while accruing the costs of putting them out well into the future.
It could be seen early with Venezuela. In September 2025, Trump began bombing Venezuelan small boats, first on the basis that they were to blame for the fentanyl crisis; this policy morphed into a larger campaign having to do with cocaine and the Maduro regime itself. Perhaps remembering his own rhetoric about regime-change wars, Trump had Gen. Dan Caine draw up a tactically excellent plan to snatch Nicolas Maduro and his wife and bring them back to the United States on drug charges.
This approach satisfied no one, but even so, the costs were low. The Miami crowd was upset Trump stopped short of installing Maria Corina Machado, going so far as to claim she “doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country” to govern, despite her stand-in candidate having won in a landslide in 2024 after she was banned from running. For their part, the America Firsters were upset because the mission seemed like a Boomerish lark—an ’80s movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger taking on some moustachioed Latin dictator—that had little to do with how we live at home.
But Trump wriggled out of this by punting. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced there would be three phases to follow: stabilization, recovery, and transition. This of course raised the question why Maduro’s former vice president and successor Delcy Rodriguez would help the United States move from phase two to phase three. She seems far more likely to pocket the gains from stabilization and recovery and put roadblocks in the way of transition.
But the costs of this policy resurfaced faster than Trump hoped. In a twist that should have surprised no one, Machado announced days ago that she would be returning to Venezuela in the coming weeks. The likely response of Rodriguez and former Maduro henchmen Diosdado Cabello and Vladimir Padrino should also surprise no one—they are going to seek to imprison her or worse. Then Rubio and Trump will be left with a decision: Do they let the regime in Caracas do with her what they will, or do they try to fight her into power? The costs of their January policy seemed so far away, but somehow they resurfaced within months.
Similarly with Iran. The president’s most profound foreign policy instinct is casualty-aversion. This is a noble and sensible sentiment. It also recommends a restrained foreign policy. Given that big foreign policy goals often incur a large butcher’s bill, those unwilling to incur big costs should avoid big foreign policies.
Not so with Trump. In Iran, the president has married grandiose ends to limited means. Perhaps knowing that the nuclear and ballistic missile arguments were duds, Trump threw a bit more spaghetti at the wall. Though he was at pains not to use the dreaded term “regime change,” Trump announced that “all I want is freedom for the [Iranian] people.” But freedom for the Iranian people is not going to arrive on the back of a Tomahawk.
To steal a phrase from George W. Bush, Trump is the “decider” and there is very little rhyme or reason to who influences the decider. This all should have been foreseen in the Signalgate chats from one year ago. The Signal chats were the functional equivalent of a Cabinet meeting, with the vice president, secretary of state, secretary of defense, and others all debating the policy of launching another military campaign against the Houthis in Yemen. Just when the debate was heating up, the president’s vice chief of staff came onto the thread, shutting down the discussion with news that the president had already decided.
What’s the point of being a Cabinet member if this is how decisions are made? What is the point of having a Cabinet at all?
Trump’s foreign policy is straight from the Boomer playbook: Party today, and push the costs out as far as possible into the future. On the welfare state, it’s taken generations for the fiscal math to break through. On foreign policy, the costs might come much sooner. Possibly soon enough to consume the second Trump presidency. Hopefully Trump has someone around who will tell him this. Hopefully he will listen.
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