Hadley Arkes
It doesn’t take much imagination to see that if even a portion of the air support used in the military operation in Venezuela had been provided at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, the Cuban missile crisis—which nearly brought the world to the edge of nuclear war—might have been averted. And averted at the same time would have been the oppressive regime in Cuba, which destroyed a once vibrant economy and spread its malign influence through the hemisphere—and beyond. Could it really have fallen to Donald Trump, of all people, to complete the work that John F. Kennedy left undone, or bungled?
Henry Taylor, in his classic work The Statesman, observed that “it sometimes happens that he who would not hurt a fly will hurt a nation.” Kennedy, with all his study of international politics, was perhaps overly cautious in that first test of his power. Trump, serenely detached from reading serious books of any kind, has not had the slightest qualm or hesitation in flexing his power. His vice is that he wants it clear to all who can see that good things spring from his touch and his will alone. He produces wreckage wherever he goes, and yet his swashbuckling use of power may indeed rid us of the regimes in Iran and Venezuela—maybe even Cuba, as the last shoe to fall. Through his swagger and confidence, he may find himself ironically resolving unfinished business left by four or more of his predecessors.
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