The iron laws of the world that govern Donald Trump’s presidency — strength, force and power — are increasingly being challenged at home and abroad.
Trump and his subordinates have made no secret of his belief in his own dominance and his willingness to wield untamed American might in pursuit of economic, geopolitical and domestic wins. His policies are an extension of a personal brand built on confrontation and the escalation of disputes.
But an increasingly chaotic international situation and growing domestic tumult suggest that the president’s methodology of escalation and coercion has limits — and that it may be leading him into damaging political corners.
The war in Iran is proving the ultimate test of Trump’s approach.
His instincts may help explain his decision to launch an assault on Iran’s military, nuclear and regional ambitions that previous presidents avoided. But Tehran’s refusal to surrender to Trump’s demands is beginning to reveal the limits of America’s power — and his own.
This has left the president with tough choices. He could escalate the conflict to try to compel Iran to comply with his demands, but that might increase US casualties and trigger intense economic blowback. He could claim a win and walk away — but Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz and retention of its enriched uranium stocks would belie any such claim.
To escape the trap, Trump has chosen a path that involves twinning American military power with his own refusal to cede ground to an enemy fighting back. His own new blockade of the strait is an attempt to throttle Iran’s economy despite the potential grave blowback on global energy markets.The search for an endgame in Iran is the most important crisis for the president. But his erratic war leadership was previewed in other controversies.
He has failed to force NATO allies into joining a war they opposed and were not told about in advance. Even his threats to leave the alliance didn’t convince nations to abandon what they regard as their own national interests. Their lack of buy-in has cost the US options it often relied upon in past wars.
Trump’s brusque approach can work, such as when he cut some deals by using tariff warfare against US trading partners. But China, itself an economic superpower, hit back by threatening to cut off critical rare earths exports. Beijing used the potential of a trade war to melt down global markets and force Trump to back down.Iran seems to have learned from that episode that the US is vulnerable to shocks in the global economy — and has done its best to hold it hostage with its own closure of the strait.
The sense that some of Trump’s powers are ebbing goes beyond the Iran impasse. He has seen the limits of his political magnetism after deploying his political movement to support Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. But the effort failed Sunday as voters rejected the strongman and damaged Trump’s project to turn Europe MAGA.
As with his Hungarian counterpart, some of Trump’s domestic policies are causing a backlash. Public opinion forced him into a climbdown over his mass deportation program after the killings of two Americans by federal agents in Minnesota earlier this year. And the failure of most of Trump’s attempts to use the law to punish his political enemies — which helped trigger the firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi — shows that at least some constitutional guardrails are still penning him in.
Even Pope Leo XIV — an American who has angered the president with his vocal opposition to the war in Iran — was moved to say Monday, “I have no fear of the Trump administration.
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