US report: Trump ended the “Iraq syndrome”

US report: Trump ended the “Iraq syndrome”

2026-01-11

Shafaq News – Special Translation
The American website “The Daily Signal” concluded that the American administration, headed by Donald Trump, has finally managed to declare the death of the “Iraq syndrome” that paralyzed the United States based on the idea that any intervention by military force abroad would turn into a quagmire .

The American website explained, in a report translated by Shafaq News Agency, that “Trump’s actions and movements in Venezuela and elsewhere reflect decisive shifts, and represent the objective death of what can be called the ‘Iraq syndrome,’ which the report described as reflecting a paralyzed mentality that has distorted American foreign policy for more than two decades .”

The report went on to say that the “Iraq syndrome” emerged after the failure of the Iraq War and the long and costly occupation that followed, noting that this syndrome has become, in the American mind, an abbreviation for the broader fear of any use of force abroad because it will inevitably turn into a “quagmire ”.

While the report noted that the Iraq experience was not the first time this syndrome had taken root, it explained that in order to understand it, one must go back to the Vietnam War when the American foreign policy establishment fell into chaos .

The report argued that the idea that has taken root among American elites since then is that the United States did not lose the war because of a bad strategy or because of domestic unrest, but because it should not have fought this war in the first place .

Based on this conclusion, a larger idea took shape that the United States needed to fundamentally rethink its role in the world, based on its worldview that had become known as the “Vietnam Syndrome,” and that the United States had to abandon assertive foreign policy in favor of restraint or outright withdrawal, lest it stumble into further disasters .

According to the report, behind this anti-American stance was the belief that the United States was not a force for good, that its presence on the world stage was evil, that America was guilty, and therefore the appropriate response to this was to retreat .

But the report noted that this decline came at a cost, as the world without strong American leadership was far worse than its critics had predicted, explaining that the American paralysis imposed by Washington on itself contributed to facilitating the genocide in Cambodia, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the rise of Islamic Iran .

The report noted that former President Ronald Reagan decided by the mid-1980s that it was time to move beyond the “Vietnam syndrome,” recalling that the United States intervened in Grenada in 1983 and overthrew a Marxist government in a swift operation that cost few American lives and restored democracy to the island. Shortly thereafter, then Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger set out six criteria for military intervention: vital interest, commitment to victory, clear political and military objectives, continuous strategic reassessment, sustained public support, and exhaustion of non-military options .

The administrations of Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush applied these principles in the Panama Process and during Operation Desert Storm against Iraq. Thus, by 1989, the Vietnam Syndrome had effectively died, until the crises of Afghanistan and Iraq came along, where the two regimes were quickly overthrown. However, the subsequent large-scale “nation-building” plans, at enormous costs in blood and money, ultimately contributed to reviving the old paralysis, which has now been renamed the “Iraq Syndrome .”

He pointed out that it was no longer a matter of logically questioning intelligence failures or nation-building plans, but rather a complete revival of the “Vietnam syndrome” idea and the assumption once again that every American intervention will inevitably become another Iraq or Afghanistan, a belief that has become entrenched and echoed endlessly on both the left and the right .

The report went on to say that, as expected, the “Iraq syndrome” led to the same results as its predecessor, explaining that under former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, American retreat became the policy of the administration, but the withdrawal from Iraq contributed to the rise of ISIS, and the phenomenon of Iranian proxies expanded throughout the Middle East, reaching its peak in October 2023, while Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan led to the killing of 13 American troops and demonstrated American weakness, which encouraged Russia to invade Ukraine and encouraged China’s global ambitions .

The report considered that with the end of the presidency characterized by the “Iraq syndrome”, things had changed, and just as Reagan had done in the past, Trump put an end to the prevailing paralysis, explaining that Trump achieved this through what could be called the “Trump Doctrine”, which includes clear principles: America’s interests first; that these interests must be matched with proportional investment; that all tools, from diplomacy to military force, are still on the table; and that threats should be explicit and not implicit, so that deterrence achieves its goals better when it is public and unambiguous .

According to the report, Trump applied this doctrine twice over the past year, first with the June 22, 2015 attack against Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility, which re-established American deterrence in the Middle East and reshaped regional geopolitics, and then a second time with the overthrow of President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela .

In both cases, the report said, critics were warning of the possibility of World War III, a statement that reflects the “Iraq Syndrome” mentality once again. However, once again, that logic reflected a mistake, as these actions restored American deterrence without dragging the United States into quagmires or endless nation-building projects, and America’s enemies now understand the simple message that actions have consequences .

The report concluded that the “Iraq Syndrome” mentality should be dead by now, and if it is indeed dead, it is thanks to Trump, and the United States has regained its prestige on the world stage, an extraordinary turnaround considering where the country stood just a year ago when supporters of “Make America Great Again ” voted in the world.

shafaq.com