Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

Trump’s Iran war fits an old US pattern. As always, it will shift the global order

For all the talk of Trump’s ‘warmongering’ and the US Congress’s failure to rein him in, the Iran conflict recalls a familiar trajectory. It is an evolving continuum of great power behaviour.

As US President Donald Trump, who campaigned on ending America’s costly wars, takes the United States back to the battlefields of West Asia, the fragile equilibrium shaped by the region’s persistent security dilemmas appears increasingly unsettled.

The consequences of great power wars extend far beyond the immediate combatants. They reshape the very architecture of regional and global order. At their core, international relations and geopolitics continue to revolve around a deceptively simple question: why do states go to war? The answers lie at multiple levels, ranging from individual leadership and decision-making to the predispositions of certain states toward conflict, as well as the structural condition of anarchy in the international system, where the absence of a central regulating authority creates enduring incentives for competition and war.

For all the talk of Trump’s ‘warmongering’ and the US Congress’s failure to rein him in, the current situation has well-established precedents, and invites a broader historical reflection.

It recalls a familiar trajectory: that of a rising Western power expanding beyond its geographical confines, projecting force across distant theatres, joining European allies in two world wars, entering a prolonged Cold War with the Soviet Union, waging proxy conflicts across regions, and later engaging in wars of regime change and counterterrorism.

In essence, the story is not new. It is an evolving continuum of great power behaviour, adapting to new contexts, but retaining its fundamental patterns.

Also Read: The new paradox of American hegemony under Trump — great strength, greater anxiety

The making of a global power through war

Across these wars, American presidents have led the United States into foreign conflicts, sometimes reluctantly, often decisively, and almost always with profound consequences for American power and the global order.

US involvement has revealed a recurring pattern: presidential initiative, congressional ambiguity, initial public support, prolonged engagement, and eventual war fatigue. Over time, these experiences have shaped not only how the US understands the use of force, but also how great powers in general manage military reverses, cope with economic overstretch, confront the limits of global leadership, and grapple with the difficulty of achieving clear political outcomes.

The story of US overseas military engagement arguably begins in 1898, when President William McKinley led the country into the........

© ThePrint