Trump’s Fatal Thinking Trap; Why He Can’t Win in Iran

There is no “off ramp” for Trump in the Middle East, even if he wants one. And the reason why is due to his own inability to understand the situation correctly.

In February of last year I wrote Can Only Trump Go to Russia? I had very high hopes for Comrade Trump, mainly because resolving the Ukraine war was such incredibly easy low-hanging fruit. Russia was pretty directly offering him the chance to not just become the “peace president” that he promised constituents, he had the opportunity to shape a new world order. There could be no greater feather in the cap of a man who apparently is very excited to have a legacy. At the time I argued that Russia’s western flank was their greatest national security problem, so an American agreement to withdraw from Eastern Europe could get some fairly massive concessions in return. It was just so easy.

And… Trump completely blew it. The reason why Trump blew it is because he shares the same perception problem as the rest of the US government. He thinks diplomacy is a unilateral affair of the US making demands and everyone else obeying them. The existence of a second party that might have demands of their own that have to be recognized is a completely alien concept to Trump and just about everyone else in Washington.

I don’t think Trump and his minions were lying when they kept saying like a broken record that they wanted to find a diplomatic solution to Ukraine. But this never happens because their teeny tiny little brains cannot fathom that Russia won’t even entertain a deal that doesn’t resolve the reasons they went to war over in the first place. Nothing has changed since their demands in Winter 2021, but the US does not recognize the idea of demands except their own. So there can be no negotiated peace, only complete victory for one side and equally complete defeat for the other side.

Another reason I am unhappy is because my optimism was based on Trump’s massive leverage over Ukraine and Europe. But he mostly squandered this leverage and got nothing. Trump should have reached a concrete consensus with Russia then forced it down Ukraine’s throat under the threat of rug-pulling them. Instead, Trump acted like a schoolyard bully, passive aggressively delaying and freezing aid, and forcing Europe to pay for weapons. It would be reasonable for a pro-war president to shift more of the cost onto Europe, the problem is that apparently Trump wanted the war to end, not to continue. Europe did eat the cost without complaint, was physically capable of the burden (at least for now), and has had time to prepare its own satellite networks for the possibility of a complete US withdrawal, so even that threat doesn’t hold much water anymore either.

While I was optimistic, just after Trump’s inauguration I warned that Ukraine could become a Vietnam for him.

Since 2022 I have argued that there was an obvious and growing schism between the military and civilian leadership of the USA. There have been such schisms in the past like Korea, Vietnam and the Cuban Missile Crisis, but in those conflicts it was typically military leaders who were overly aggressive while civilian leaders insisted on restraint and diplomacy. This time it was the reverse. Military leaders argued restraint and a quick segway to diplomacy, while civilian leaders insisted on escalation and dragging out the conflict as long as possible…

Now Trump has the opportunity to be the genius who pulls the USA out of a quagmire, but from the looks of things, he’s probably going to blow it. Steve Bannon said, correctly, that Trump is at risk of becoming the next Nixon and Ukraine is his Vietnam. Nixon had the opportunity to end the Vietnam War, but instead doubled down on it and Vietnam became his war, not Johnson’s. At least part of the reason Trump’s team is struggling is because, as mentioned in my points about intelligence and noticing trends too late, they still have an inaccurate picture of the war. There’s no reason or need for Russia to accept Trump’s ludicrous demands. At the current pace of Ukrainian losses and desertions, Russia will almost certainly have a total victory, with or without Trump’s attempts at negotiations.

The opening paragraph about the military pushing restraint while civilian leaders want war, though written in the context of Biden in Ukraine, feels prophetic of Trump’s attack against Iran.

But now, even if Trump wants the war with Iran to end, his own world view will probably prevent him from doing so. He likely assumes that he can just offer peace and Iran will gladly accept it, but that’s probably not true. This war is existential for Iran, they cannot afford to be the punching bag of every US president with low approval ratings, which is what will happen if they accept anything less than a clear victory. But I am absolutely sure the US will, likewise, refuse to offer anything that would be perceived as a win for Iran, especially since there are so many cards that haven’t been played yet. So I predict that the war will continue and escalate until Iran is either defeated, or the US runs out of cards to play… and I would not completely dismiss the idea that Trump, or Israel, will become desperate enough to use nuclear weapons.

Naysayers tell me that the US can’t escalate to a full-scale ground invasion, and I think they’re wrong. A month ago I would have agreed that a return to conscription to support a Middle East invasion would be politically impossible, and that was still more or less my thinking when I wrote about the subject of mobilization of troops earlier, but now I think nothing is off the table.

Ian Kummer

I now have a new YouTube channel that I will use to upload videos from my travels around Russia. Expect new content there soon. Please give me a follow here.

Also feel free to connect with me on Quora (I sometimes share unique articles there).

---