Trump didn’t have a plan going into this war, and now doesn’t have a plan to get out of it, while demanding help from allies he routinely attacks.
President Trump ‘demands’ countries help protect Strait of Hormuz
Trump pushes countries to help secure the Strait of Hormuz amid rising Middle East tensions and stalled international commitments.
President Donald Trump pitched two very different versions of his war of choice in Iran on March 16 – Iran is “literally obliterated,” but also America needs our reluctant allies to help us win that war.
Cognitive dissonance has always been a destabilizing factor in Trump’s unhinged rhetoric. So this was just another Monday at the White House.
And Trump has always been harder on America’s allies than he has on geopolitical foes like Russia. So how did he expect America’s allies to react after he plunged the planet into an oil crisis with a war they had no part in starting?
Trump always needs a fall guy when he fouls up. He’s incapable of accepting responsibility. And he never misses a chance to unfairly attack the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the 32-nation pact known as NATO.
Iran remains able to attack oil tankers and other vessels that need to transit the Strait of Hormuz to get from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and then the Arabian Sea and beyond. The International Energy Agency estimates that about 80% of the oil that took that route in 2025 was headed to Asian countries.
So there was Trump, in yet another rambling monologue at the White House, calling on China, Japan and South Korea to help him secure the Strait of Hormuz in a war that he also keeps declaring he has already won.
Trump says America doesn’t need allies, but also why aren’t our allies helping?
Japan and South Korea are giving off “Don’t call us, we’ll call you” vibes. China sounds more interested in de-escalating Trump’s war than joining in.
But he just keeps asking, while claiming to have already secured help from countries he refused to name.
“We strongly encourage other nations, whose economies depend on the strait far more than ours,” Trump said. “We want them to come and help us with the strait. We have it in very good shape.”
Got that? We’re in great shape. Come help us. Would you buy a war from this guy?
Trump, answering a reporter’s question about whether France would help, sounded pretty peeved at other nations for not jumping into his war. But he prefaced that complaint with this.
“I don’t do a hard sell on them, because my attitude is, we don’t need anybody,” Trump said. “We’re the strongest nation in the world. We have the strongest military, by far, in the world. We don’t need them.”
Got that? America doesn’t need any allies. But why won’t our allies help us?
Trump then claimed that he didn’t really need any help. It’s all a test, you see: He just asked “because I want to find out how they react.”
If NATO bails on us, Trump has himself to blame
Trump has launched a war he doesn’t know how to end. Only he would see that as an opportunity to again attack NATO.
The president said he was surprised that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer didn’t initially send his navy to help America defeat Iran, but then claimed “the war essentially ended” and Iran was “obliterated.”
“So I was very upset with – not upset – I was not happy with the U.K.,” Trump said. “I think they’ll be involved. Yeah, maybe, but they should be involved enthusiastically. We’ve been protecting these countries for years with NATO.”
Trump doesn’t just want American allies to join in his war. He wants them to be eager to help him (while denying that he needs the help). This sort of attack on NATO has been a dodgy dogma in Trump’s political messaging for a decade. He’s always acted as if America is the only country that can be relied on in the pact, while often acting completely unreliable.
Remember his obsession with Greenland, a self-governing, autonomous part of the Kingdom of Denmark, which is part of NATO? Trump didn’t care that Denmark is an ally. He wanted Greenland, which doesn’t want him. So he made threats.
The heart of NATO is Article 5, which says an attack on any member “shall be considered an attack against them all.” It’s a call to arms. And it’s only been invoked once – after the terrorist attacks on America on Sept. 11, 2001.
Denmark suffered the highest per capita casualty rate of any country while fighting with America in Afghanistan after those attacks.
But still, Trump attacks our allies as if they’re our enemies, while whining that they won’t join a war they had no hand in starting. Iran didn’t attack America. Article 5 isn’t invoked here.
He wrapped up his remarks with a preposterous claim that “nobody expected” Iran to attack neighboring countries, which is impacting the price of oil around the world.
“We were shocked,” Trump said about the least surprising aspect of this war. “They fought back.”
That’s the president of the United States acknowledging out loud that he didn’t have a plan going into this war and now doesn’t have a plan to get out of it, while demanding help from allies he routinely attacks. If NATO ghosts Trump, he has only himself to blame.
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