Trump Is Repeating Putin’s Blunder
Both men thought they could start easy, quick regime-change wars at minimal cost.
THE IDEA THAT INDIVIDUAL PERSONALITIES are major drivers of world history is often dismissed as overly simplistic. The “great man theory,” the argument goes, is a cartoon version of history that ignores structural factors such as the organization of the international system, economic forces, and so on. But as the Ukraine war grinds into its fourth year, Xi Jinping weighs whether to invade Taiwan, and American bombers pummel Iran with no clear objective, the great man (or not-so-great man) theory of history is overdue for a reconsideration.
In fact, without taking into account the particular personalities of two major world leaders, it’s hard to explain two of the most important international events of the last five years: Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and Donald Trump’s recent attacks against Iran.
The CIA doesn’t know exactly when Vladimir Putin decided to launch the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but it was likely sometime in the first half of 2020. According to a recent Guardian report on how U.S. and British intelligence exposed Putin’s war plans, “During those months, Putin passed constitutional amendments to ensure he could stay in power beyond 2024. Then, locked away in isolation for months during Covid, he devoured books on Russian history and pondered his own place in it.” In the summer of 2021, Putin published a long essay titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” which made the case that Ukraine is an inseparable part of Russia.
This partially explains why Putin thought the war in Ukraine would be easy—he believed many Ukrainians would accept Russian control of their country.1 U.S. and British intelligence were correct about Putin’s plans, but they assumed Russia would steamroll Ukraine in a matter of weeks. This is because intercepted internal communications drastically overstated the Russian military’s capabilities. One reason European governments were skeptical of the U.S. and British intelligence was how detached from reality Russia’s ambitions were. “We didn’t believe it would happen,” one European intelligence official said, “because we thought the idea that they would be able to walk into Kyiv and just install a puppet government was completely insane.” As one U.S. intelligence official put it: “The system encourages them to make things sound better than they are.”
The initial Russian invasion force expected little resistance but was met with a ferocious Ukrainian response. Putin assumed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would either flee or be killed, but he remained in Kyiv and turned out to be the most effective wartime leader in a generation. These are all factors that have contributed to what has become a historic strategic disaster for Russia. After four years, Russian forces control less than they controlled before the first Ukrainian counteroffensive in the spring of 2022. Hundreds of thousands of Russians are dead and more than a million are wounded.
Compared with Russia’s catastrophically incompetent invasion of Ukraine, the United States’ strikes in Iran are a major success (so far). But this is partly because this operation plays to the unique strengths of the U.S. military—namely, air power delivered via bombers based in the continental United States, strike aircraft based around the world in allied and partner countries, naval aircraft operating off multiple supercarriers, sophisticated land-attack missiles, and the logistics and intelligence apparatus to make them all work together. But while the U.S. military can plan an air campaign, it’s up to the civilian leadership to set strategy and determine which ends America’s mighty means are working toward. This is precisely what the administration has failed to do, and it’s where the similarities between Trump and Putin become alarming.
SINCE THE BOMBING CAMPAIGN in Iran last summer, a series of extraordinary military triumphs have emboldened Trump like never before. With a cratering approval rating across many of his core issues—from immigration to the economy—he has become increasingly focused on foreign policy. Like Putin, Trump is fixated on his legacy. In his second inaugural address, he declared that the “United States will once again consider itself a growing nation—one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations, and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons.” In the Western Hemisphere, Trump meant for his comments about a “growing nation” to be taken literally. He still wants Greenland, and he says the United States will “take back” the Panama Canal. He has been threatening other governments in the hemisphere, from Cuba to Colombia. The war in Iran is an extension of this impulse, and Trump doesn’t care that it violates his promise to focus on America’s own “back yard.”
In a recent interview with the New York Times, reporters asked President Trump if there are any limits on his power to act globally. “Yeah, there is one thing,” he said. “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” When the United States joined Israel in waging war on Iran, Trump didn’t bother asking Congress. He had an opportunity to make his case to the American people just days before the assault began during his State of the Union address, but he chose not to. Instead of having a serious discussion about war aims and risks with his advisers, the decision reportedly was made with very little internal dissent.
Trump has surrounded himself with sycophants who are constantly outbidding each other for his attention and approval. As he weighed whether to go to war in Iran, even members of the administration who may have been expected to push back told the boss what he wanted to hear. In 2023, then-Sen. JD Vance wrote an op-ed titled “Trump’s Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars.” Vance has long been fiercely hostile to military interventionism, and has expressed particular disdain for regime-change wars in the Middle East. When the time came to choose between his publicly stated opposition to Middle East wars and his standing in the administration, Vance counseled Trump to “go big and go fast.”
Trump willfully misinterpreted the few sober warnings that he heard. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine warned Trump that a regime-change war in Iran wouldn’t be like the raid to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. He said American soldiers would be killed and wounded. But Trump declared on Truth Social that Caine believed a military operation in Iran would be “easily won.”
Putin’s decision to escalate his war against Ukraine was also made with very little dissent, which we know because he forced all of his major advisers and underlings to support his plan on video, and he mocked and derided those who showed less than complete enthusiasm.
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S MESSAGING on Iran since the attacks began has been confusing and contradictory. Immediately after launching the war, Trump said the United States was fighting for the “freedom” of the Iranian people. Days later, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the war has nothing to do with nation-building or democracy. In other theaters, Trump has made it clear that democracy promotion is not a goal of U.S. foreign policy. There’s no reason to believe Trump cares about Iranian democracy.
So what is Trump trying to accomplish in Iran? In his formal notification of Congress, required by the War Powers Act, Trump cited no acute or urgent threat that had to be addressed with immediate military action. Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that Israel’s plan to strike Iran meant American forces would be at risk, so a preemptive attack was necessary—which suggested that the administration was acting more in Israel’s interest than America’s, or at least that Trump’s foreign policy was being decided by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. So Rubio later walked that comment back.
Trump told Congress it is “not possible at this time to know the full scope and duration of military options that may be necessary.” This is all the more reason that the administration should have sought congressional approval for the war. Trump’s refusal to do so, along with the groupthink in the administration, have created an extremely dangerous situation in which U.S. foreign policy is being driven by the whims of one man. Foreign policy is a space where American presidents can get away with far more substantial unilateral action than on the domestic front, which is why it’s no surprise that Trump has turned his focus there. What Trump values most is the elimination of constraints on his ability to act.
It’s entirely possible that the war in Iran will be good for the world. A brutal regime has suffered a near-fatal blow. Anyone who cares about freedom and human dignity should welcome the sight of Iranians celebrating the death of a vicious theocrat who oversaw the deaths of thousands of protesters in the streets earlier this year, and many more thousands in prisons and execution sites over the decades. The regime has crushed dissent and cruelly stifled a young, dynamic, and creative population for far too long. Iran’s “ring of fire”—composed of proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah, along with friendly governments like the former Assad regime in Syria—is all but extinguished. Its nuclear program has been set back by many years and its offensive capabilities are rapidly degrading. Its ability to project power has been severely diminished, and it is difficult to imagine a reconstitution of that ability any time soon.
But none of this changes the reality that Iran is now in an extremely combustible situation. Nor does it change the complete lack of strategic focus from the Trump administration. By launching an open-ended war on a major state, Trump is taking a far greater risk than he did in Iran last summer or in Venezuela in January. By cutting off the head of the Iranian leadership, the United States and Israel have unleashed forces that could drag the country into a bloody civil war or a regional conflagration. Trump and other top officials like Vance have long insisted that the United States’ regime-change adventures in the Middle East were a costly distraction from much more important threats like China. If Iran descends into chaos, will Trump continue to tie up a massive concentration of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf? He may get lucky and not have to answer this question. Then again, he may not.
On the surface, the war in Iran seems politically inexplicable. Trump is violating innumerable promises he made to his MAGA base, and he has adopted a foreign policy that mirrors the one he has spent his entire political career condemning.
Just as Putin’s arrogance blinded him to the risks of war in Ukraine, Trump’s construction of an echo chamber in the executive branch has warped his judgment. He has convinced himself that the military is an instrument of personal prestige rather than a last resort to be deployed with great care in defense of the national interest. Perhaps this is why he is so enamored with Putin.
Six American soldiers are already dead, and Trump is apparently willing to accept more casualties. However, as his popularity continues to wane and he fails to make a coherent case for war, the rest of the country will have a very low tolerance for more flag-draped coffins. Trump’s echo chamber is much more likely than Putin’s to be pierced by the cries of disgruntled, distressed citizens. Americans should be raising their voices now. Trump has pushed Iran to the edge of the abyss, and if it plunges in, he has no plan for getting it back out. If this happens, there will be nobody to blame but the “great” man who started the war with no plan for how to finish it.
The month before he ordered the full-scale invasion, Putin sent troops into Kazakhstan amid a national uprising to facilitate the transfer of power from Nursultan Nazarbayev to Kasym-Jomart Tokayev. The month before he ordered the massive air war on Iran, Trump sent the U.S. military to abduct Nicolás Maduro. In both cases, the former operation was quick, relatively clean, and successful at least insofar as it helped one authoritarian replace another—and both were followed by much messier and more audacious operations.
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