Underestimating the enemy is a dangerous path for Trump to follow

Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin underestimated the Ukrainians in 2022. Adolf Hitler underestimated the Slavs in 1941. The latest addition to the list may be Donald Trump, who appears to have underestimated the Iranians in 2026. 

There are many more examples of leaders who start wars in the expectation that their opponents will lose quickly and then find themselves confronting unexpected outcomes ranging from stalemates to defeats. Such costly miscalculations have many reasons.

Intelligence may be flawed or disbelieved. Powerful interest groups and government factions may push agendas that leaders are compelled to endorse. Ideology may promote expansionist designs. Leaders may suffer from various obsessions. The people may demand that neighboring states be punished. 

And then there’s what the late Arkansas Sen. J. William Fulbright termed the “arrogance of power,” the belief that one’s powerful state or influential culture is superior precisely because they are powerful and influential. In turn, superiority translates into the right, or even the obligation, to impose one’s will on others. 

Hitler’s division of the world into Aryans and Untermenschen, or subhumans, is the classic example. The former were meant to rule, while the latter were meant to be ruled or exterminated. Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 was supposed to result in a quick victory, the collapse of the Soviet state, the implementation of a “hunger plan” that would kill 30 million........

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