In the Gulf, Trump is invoking the spirit of the Carter Doctrine

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Unappreciated, unacknowledged and now apparently unavoidable, U.S. foreign policy in the Trump era is being governed by one much-forgotten sentence delivered 46 years ago by an embattled president facing a brutal renomination fight and destined to be defeated in an election 10 months later.

But as a reminder of the power of the proverb that, eventually, everything old is new again, the United States is reinvigorating a doctrine promulgated by the one modern president that Donald Trump least wants to emulate, particularly as he wages war against Iran.

And yet the president who declared his own corollary to the Monroe Doctrine is implementing a plan that attempts to satisfy the goals of the Carter Doctrine, which calls for the United States to assure the safe passage of oil from the Middle East.

Paralyzed by the Iran hostage crisis, struggling with a stubborn energy crisis, pressured by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and threatened by the renomination challenge from Democratic Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, Jimmy Carter set forth this vow in his 1980 State of the Union address:

“Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

Now Iran, one of the forces Mr. Carter had in mind, is attempting to choke off the region’s most critical waterway, the Strait of Hormuz, which sits between the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman and leads to the open waters of the Indian Ocean. The route takes to market about a fifth of the world’s oil supply.

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With gasoline prices spiking at home and inflation fears growing as the midterm congressional elections approach, Mr. Trump now shares with Mr. Carter the incentive to keep oil flowing and the rise in the price of fuel slowing.

As a result, without crediting his widely discredited presidential predecessor, Mr. Trump is invoking the spirit if not the name of the Carter Doctrine.

Amid calls to keep the vital waterways clear, U.S. forces have destroyed at least 16 Iranian mine-laying vessels. With three commercial ships hit in the strait Wednesday, more aggressive seaborne efforts against Iran are expected in the coming days.

Mr. Carter died in 2024, and Mr. Trump attended his funeral. But the perceived failures of the Carter years − the harsh memories ameliorated slightly by recent studies that have softened the historical evaluation of the 39th president − have kept Mr. Trump from speaking positively of the man who occupied the White House in the hard years from 1977 to 1981. Mr. Trump has often indicated that he likes “winners,” and Mr. Carter’s record in office and failure to be re-elected likely makes him, in Mr. Trump’s estimation, a “loser.”

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Even so, Mr. Trump may be working from the Carter playbook, which called for the capacity to deploy U.S. forces to the region and dispatch naval assets quickly to keep the sea passages free from hostile interests.

While the Trump administration − wary of academic studies and resistant to precedent − shows signs of mid-mission improvisation, the Carter Doctrine grew out of an examination of past American presidents’ desires and doctrines.

National-security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski presented Mr. Carter with a memo titled “Relevance of the Truman Doctrine to Current Situation” that set out the precedents leading to the Truman Doctrine, which called for the United States to assist democratic countries threatened by communist expansionism, especially in the eastern Mediterranean.

The targets of the Carter Doctrine were the twin American irritants of Iran (which was holding U.S. diplomats hostage) and the Soviet Union (then feared to be looking beyond Afghanistan toward the Persian Gulf).

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Mr. Brzezinski cited Mr. Truman, who served from 1945 to 1953, and an earlier crisis that in his judgment had “some striking parallels” with Afghanistan and concluded: “The Gulf is unquestionably more vital to Western interests today than were Greece and Turkey 30 years ago.”

In a study prepared for the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, Middle East scholar Cole Bunzel wrote that “henceforth projecting and sustaining military force in the region would be a key component of U.S. Middle East strategy.”

He explained that the new U.S. commitment essentially substituted American security guarantees in the region for the guarantees Great Britain historically had provided but had withdrawn in 1971.

“With its vast oil reserves, this was an area of immense strategic importance,” Mr. Bunzel wrote. “Washington could not allow it to be dominated by a hostile foreign power.”

A year-and-a-half later, Ronald Reagan, leading an administration that in large measure was a repudiation of Mr. Carter’s programs and priorities, affirmed the goals of the Carter Doctrine and even expanded on them − without ever mentioning the doctrine by name.

“Saudi Arabia,” Mr. Reagan said in a news conference, “we will not permit to be an Iran.”

In that same news conference, Mr. Reagan warned Israel that the Jewish state should not attempt to manipulate the United States. This theme has echoes in the current war, where there have been suggestions, issued by the Trump administration and then played down, that Israeli interests nudged the United States into the conflict in Iran.

The context for Mr. Reagan’s warning was the dispute, also long forgotten, over whether the U.S. would sell its pioneering Airborne Warning and Control System, known as AWACS, to the Saudis, which it eventually did.

“It is not the business of other nations to make American foreign policy,” Mr. Reagan said, adding, “I suppose what really is the most important thing is a perception that other countries must not get, a perception that we are being unduly influenced one way or the other with regard to foreign policy.”

Years later, Barack Obama expressed skepticism of the precepts of the Carter Doctrine, saying he was reluctant to have the U.S. “start coming in and using our military power to settle scores.”

But that is what the U.S. is doing now, breathing new life into a long-forgotten commitment declared by a president whose successors dare not speak his name − but whose policy goals and energy needs dare not permit them to ignore his doctrine.