George Will Bows to the Inevitable: Trump Was Right

George F. Will, or as I like to call him George Fwill, absolutely LOATHES Donald Trump. 

That should surprise nobody. The geek with a bowtie who often found Reagan beneath him surely would loathe Trump and his classless administration based as much on their crass style as their America First policies. 

Unlike many NeverTrumpers, his raw hatred for Trump didn’t turn him into a liberal; he is, as much as one person can be, the same as he was in 1979. Dry, arrogant, measured for the most part, and center-right. It’s not like he went all Bill Kristol or George Conway on us, so I usually roll my eyes rather than grit my teeth when I read him on those few occasions I do. 

Has that replaced this??? 🙄https://t.co/R0IZ0KRA7G

— Alley Kat (@DanFan65) March 2, 2026

Will finds Trump, and of course Pete Hegseth, unbearable. Foreign policy is Will’s great love, and having come to prominence in the buttoned-up Reagan years, he cringes every time he sees Hegseth or Trump speak on foreign policy. He has been remarkably blind to Trump’s pretty obvious strategy to reset foreign relations and reestablish American dominance, to the extent that he uncharacteristically spews bile. 

Until now. Does he suddenly get it?

Now George Fwill has not reached the point where he can utter either Trump’s or Hegseth’s name approvingly, but man, did he almost get there.

Some say that U.S. involvement in Iran constitutes a “war of choice.” That too casually bandied phrase rarely fits untidy reality. America’s Civil War was a choice: Lincoln chose not to heed those — they were not few — who agreed with the prominent publisher Horace Greeley. He said of the seceding Southern states, “Let the erring sisters go in peace.” Lincoln chose against such national suicide. Donald Trump’s administration has chosen not to wager U.S. safety on Iran’s abandoning its multi-decade pursuit of nuclear weapons, or on Iran’s acquiring them but not really meaning “Death to America.”

For Israel, the death of Iran’s self-proclaimed genocidal regime was a choice only in the sense that Israel chose to believe the regime when it called Israel a “one-bomb country.” Tyrants lie promiscuously, but occasionally are candid. In 1939, Adolf Hitler said a world war would mean “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.” Israel exists because Hitler meant that. Israel’s survival depends on forever thinking that nothing is unthinkable.

The U.S. action for regime change in Iran is not sufficient to produce regional tranquility. It is, however, a necessity for beginning to reestablish a precondition for a more peaceable world: the credibility of U.S. deterrence.

No kidding, George. Every adversary of the  United States has been given a clinic on what it means to mess with the United States. Merely having the most powerful military in the world is not sufficient to deter enemies if you are feckless and incompetent, and our leaders in recent decades have been extraordinarily so. 

A nadir of post-1945 U.S. power — and its precondition, confidence — was the 1975 departure of the last helicopter from the U.S. Embassy roof in Saigon. A second low point was reached when Barack Obama drew, in 2012, and then ignored a red line (concerning Syrian chemical weapons). A third was in 2021 when Joe Biden produced a chaotic exit from Afghanistan.

Today, Vladimir Putin is watching Venezuela, Iran (a source of some of Putin’s drones) and soon, perhaps, Cuba, join Syria as vanished clients. The swiftness of their downfall illustrates the hollowness of Russia’s claim to be a formidable global actor.

Forget Russia, which really isn’t the regional power we should worry about that much; China is watching its cheap oil supplies dry up, and its air defenses collapse in real time. A country with which they just performed naval exercises is now being demilitarized before the world’s eyes. 

Oooh. We’re scared!

Let there be no more incomprehension akin to Obama’s first inaugural, in which he said, with Iran likely in mind, “We will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” Or George H.W. Bush’s inaugural, in which he said to belligerent nations, “Good will begets good will.”

Iran’s potential for flourishing is in what is ancient and what is young. It can draw on more than 20 centuries of cultural identity that preceded the recent decades of theocratic primitivism. And the median age of Iranians is about 34. This guarantees the restless energy that freedom requires.

Does Will suddenly get what is going on here? It sure sounds like it. All the kvetching from the conservative foreign policy establishment about Trump’s roiling the waters and annoying our allies suddenly looks remarkably stupid. 

Even Emmanuel Macron seems to have opened his eyes a bit. 

Trump has won the ideological battle with Europe. If a generation of Europeans hadn’t blinded themselves to this hard but necessary truth, the world, the EU and the transatlantic relationship would be better off. https://t.co/8WVlBNuZNp

— Walter Russell Mead (@wrmead) March 2, 2026

It’s unlikely that any of Trump’s critics will acknowledge that Trump was right all along. But at least they seem to be learning.

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