SCARBOROUGH, ONT.—It is often said that the first casualty of war is truth. In the case of a war involving United States President Donald Trump, however, truth was a casualty long before the first shot was fired.

In Trump’s world, truth has been expendable for decades. That was true throughout his business career, true during his presidency, and true during his legal trials. It is also true on the ironically—perhaps comically—named platform Truth Social, where truth is frequently the first thing sacrificed.

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What has not been a casualty is stupidity. Former U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower once said, “Wars are stupid and they can start stupidly.”

Who starts a war with no clear strategy?

The Israelis appear to have one. Israel has articulated clear objectives, and is executing its campaign with discipline and precision. Their junior partner—who believes itself to be the senior partner—is another matter. The United States—the very large junior partner—cannot even articulate a coherent goal.

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The original objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear capability—something the American president himself claimed had already been “obliterated” the previous June “for a generation.” Apparently, a generation now lasts about eight months.

Then, the objective shifted to the destruction of missile sites—something that might logically have been the goal last June.

Then it became regime change, with Trump urging Iranians to rise up and seize what he described as a once‑in‑a‑lifetime opportunity to overthrow their government. The Iranian public quite wisely declined the opportunity to be slaughtered.

Next came suggestions that Trump might help choose the next Iranian leader. Even the most committed democracy activist would decline such advice knowing that any leader associated with Trump would be instantly compromised.

Most recently, the demand has been “unconditional surrender.”

Before that, the justification was an alleged imminent threat to the American homeland—though no evidence of such a threat was ever presented. Perhaps the reference was to the alleged Iranian assassination plot against Trump, but as he himself said, “I got him first.”

What we do know is this: the goals—if they can be called that—keep shifting. Without an overall strategy, there can be no clear definition of an endgame, let alone a definition of success.

Timelines shift, as well, from days to weeks. Meanwhile, U.S. Vice-President JD Vance assures Americans that there is “just no way” that Trump is going to allow this country to get into a multi‑year conflict with no clear end in sight and no clear objective.

No clear objective: mission accomplished. No clear end in sight: to be determined.

Iran knows it cannot confront the overwhelming military superiority of Israel and the U.S. directly and expect to survive. Instead, it has developed alternative tactics. The most obvious is to widen the conflict geographically—particularly toward countries that have placed their faith under the umbrella of American military protection.

Unfortunately for them, the umbrella leaks.

Each day Iran launches missiles and drones toward American client states, and some inevitably find their targets. Iran has even launched attacks against Azerbaijan and Turkey—the latter a member of NATO. None of these countries were consulted about the war.

Clogging up the Strait of Hormuz buys time and inflicts economic pain on countries that are not party to the war. If your strategy is survival, spreading the pain is a brilliant tactic.

All nations will feel the inflationary effects of the conflict, even those that do not directly depend on Middle Eastern oil, such as Canada. Energy markets are global. Disruption in the Gulf quickly translates into higher costs everywhere: fuel, shipping, food, and manufacturing.

Spreading the pain, cost, and confusion is exactly what a weaker power does when facing overwhelming military superiority. If survival is the strategy, widening the economic and political consequences of the war is an entirely rational tactic.

The conflict has also sown confusion among allies who are neither belligerents, nor participants, and, in many cases, were not even consulted. Spain has been quite clear in its opposition. The broader European response has been more ambiguous. Canada’s position has been more ambiguous still.

Prime Minister Mark Carney may, in retrospect, wish he had been less hasty in his initial comments and more precise in clarifying them afterward. There is also an old rule of journalism that politicians ignore at their peril: never answer a journalist’s hypothetical question.

Positioning oneself alongside a president who cannot articulate a coherent strategy is not wise. The administration’s approach appears to be tactics without strategy—shifting goals, improvised justifications, and escalation by impulse.

Iran, by contrast, has a strategy: survival. Its tactics evolve, but they serve that single, consistent objective.

The U.S. appears to have either no strategy at all, or several competing ones—arguably worse than none. The principal tactic seems to be simple enough: bomb everything.

History offers some cautionary examples. It did not work in Vietnam. It did not work in Afghanistan. It did not work in either the Gulf War or the Iraq War in the sense that matters most: winning the political game.

Whatever happened to learning curves?

Which brings us back to the “reassuring” words of Vance, who promises that there is no way the U.S. will be drawn into a multi‑year conflict without clear objectives or a defined end.

Why, then, do those words provide so little comfort?

John McKay is the former Liberal Member of Parliament for Scarborough-Guildwood, Ont., and is the former Canadian co-chair of the Canada-U.S. Inter-Parliamentary Group.

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