In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq without deciding whether it should. The George W Bush administration failed to ask whether the costs, risks and likely consequences of regime change justified the gamble. The result was tragedy – for Iraq, for the Middle East and for America.
Donald Trump’s attack on Iran now follows the same pattern – but with an even narrower logic of performative power. In the run-up to Iraq, Washington devoted enormous energy to planning the invasion. Almost no attention was given to the more important question: was war necessary, and could it realistically produce a stable political outcome?
Now history is repeating itself. Having torn up the Iran nuclear deal and escalated pressure, the president has now initiated a military campaign explicitly aimed at regime collapse. Yet there has been no serious public reckoning with the risks, much less the plausibility of the political end state he claims to seek. By weaponising the military for the sake of the attention economy, Washington has traded grand strategy for the immediate gratification of the news cycle.
This is because the outcome of the war is less important to Trump than violent conflict with America’s enemy and the performative use of US power.
Trump’s foreign policy is not guided by a coherent theory of order, deterrence or alliance management. It is driven instead by the demonstration of dominance, the creation of spectacle and the command of the news cycle. Military force, in this framework, is not a tool subordinated to strategy. It is the strategy.
His escalation against Iran comes as he faces mounting domestic pressure, for attacking the civil rights of US citizens in Minneapolis, amid renewed scrutiny surrounding the Epstein files, and just days after the US supreme court struck down the legal justification for his global tariff policy. In this light, the strikes function as a classic “diversionary war” – an attempt to hijack the global narrative and drown out domestic scandal with the thunder of cruise missiles.
In this effort, Trump is effectively riding the political currents of a US capital that has drifted toward confrontation. He knows that bombing Tehran remains an article of faith for the Republican rank and file, for whom “maximum” is the only acceptable pressure when it comes to Iran. Simultaneously, the Iranian regime’s own odious attacks on its citizens have served to soften Democratic resistance. By framing the escalation as a response to a uniquely repressive adversary, Trump has neutralised much of the domestic opposition that might otherwise constrain a rush to war.
If the objective is display rather than durable political effect, then long-term consequences become secondary. Whether a stable successor regime in Tehran is feasible, whether regional escalation can be contained, whether alliances are strengthened or weakened – these questions are peripheral to a foreign policy built on showing the world what Trump is capable of doing.
To the extent that the White House has a theory of the case, it appears to be that destabilising an authoritarian state from the air will cause a more favourable political order to emerge on its own. But recent history offers little support for that belief. From Libya to Afghanistan, weakening central authority in divided societies has more often produced fragmentation than freedom. The American military is an extraordinary smashing machine. It is not designed to construct political orders out of what it smashes.
If Trump cares little for strategy, this does not make strategy irrelevant. The risks of the non-strategic use of force extend well beyond Iran’s borders. A destabilised Iran risks a new, massive humanitarian crisis on Europe’s doorstep, potentially triggering refugee flows that would further embolden the far-right movements currently fracturing western democracies. Escalation could draw in regional actors, threaten shipping in the Gulf and widen into a broader confrontation.
Iran’s oil exports may slow dramatically – and could even collapse entirely – tightening global markets. That would hurt China, but it would also benefit other energy exporters, including Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. At a moment when Washington is already managing strategic competition in Asia and sustaining commitments in Europe, another open-ended Middle Eastern conflict risks stretching American bandwidth and weakening deterrence elsewhere.
Unlike in 2003, when the United States assembled a “coalition of the willing” despite deep controversy, Europe and other traditional allies are so far standing on the sidelines. The diplomatic isolation is notable – and strategically costly for America, deepening the divide Trump has already created by threatening Greenland, putting up indiscriminate tariffs and creating uncertainty for the world.
Even if the opening phase appears successful – even if Iranian capabilities are degraded and the regime weakened or killed – the long-term costs for the United States may be severe. Deterrence rests not only on strength, but on credibility, predictability and alliance cohesion. A foreign policy driven by spectacle erodes all three.
It is not impossible that events will break in Washington’s favour. A weakened regime could fracture, and a successor government might consolidate enough authority to stabilise the country. But such outcomes have been rare in the history of post-cold war interventions. More often, the removal or weakening of central authority has produced prolonged instability, factional struggle and humanitarian crisis.
Again, in 2003, the United States went to war without fully confronting the question of whether it should. Today the danger is not only the absence of deliberation, but the substitution of performance for strategy. Wars begun for display rarely end on favourable terms. And even those that look like victories at the outset can leave a country weaker in the long run.
Christopher S Chivvis is a senior fellow and director of the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
