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.

President 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, Trump 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........

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