I am not saying it is a good strategy, I genuinely do not know.  But the people behind the scenes, what are they thinking?  Did we not just, not too long ago, take out or at least disable some big chunk of the Iranian nuclear assets?  So what are we going after this time?  Can we really affect regime change without large numbers of troops on the ground?  Is there a “Venezuela version” of an Iranian intervention?

My simple model is as follows.  The Trump people believe that previous administration, along many dimensions, simply never tried hard enough.  They were too bound by previous conventions, too captive to polite society, and also they did not exercise executive power enough.  When it comes to foreign policy, they did not threaten other nations enough to achieve American ends.  When it comes to military action, they did not summon enough forces backed by enough executive will.

This time around, the goal is to make big threats backed by big, serious forces.  Which indeed America is doing.  The rest of the details will be filled in later.

If you think the binding constraint in the past was “not enough threats backed by serious enough executive will,” that constraint (it seems?) is being relaxed now.

Of course if the binding constraints lie along other dimensions, or along other dimensions as well, the current strategy could fail badly.  The plan is simply not complete enough.

I suppose we are likely to find out.