SCHLICHTER: Don’t Panic About Trump’s Iran Strategy Just Yet.

Let’s examine his strategy with an open mind, putting aside our prejudices and preconceptions. Trump is taking a different approach. A lot of people who agree with me that the best course of action is to simply kill them until they surrender are extremely upset with him. But here’s the thing: he may be wrong, but he’s not crazy. He comes at this strategic problem from a different perspective. He’s a guy who makes deals. He uses all his advantages. He is a guy who is not a hammer. I’m a hammer. I’m a soldier. Everything looks like a nail, and I want to pound it.

But Trump looks at things differently. He sees pressure points beyond the target list. You might argue that Donald Trump is using the elements of national power as levers to obtain the ultimate strategic objective more comprehensively than anyone has waged war against the Iranian regime in the past. What are the elements of national power? Well, that gets a little convoluted because people keep adding letters to the applicable acronym, but let’s keep it simple because I was in the infantry, and I like simple. And I will get grief from strategists about how I’m simplifying things, but that’s OK because anybody who calls himself a “strategist” is probably a dork anyway.

The applicable acronym for the elements of national power is DIME, and it stands for “Diplomacy, Information, Military, and Economic” power. These are the ways a nation-state exercises power.

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