War through weakness prolongs conflicts, strengthens Russia and Iran, and erodes U.S. credibility, alliances and strategic power.
By Timothy Snyder
We know the phrase “peace through strength.” Its logic is self-evident. A strong country can deter others from making war. A strong country can support reconstruction after a conflict. A strong country attracts allies and builds relationships. If necessary, a strong country can win a war. Under Donald Trump, the United States is not a strong country in any of these senses, or indeed in any sense at all. Instead, it is a country that generates and extends war through weakness.
Donald Trump poses, luridly and increasingly absurdly, as a strong man. But he is not seen as such anywhere in the world. And that is for very good reason: in his year and a half of office, he has brought about what can only be described as a superpower suicide. When I first spoke of superpower suicide in April, I had in mind Trump’s rapid and obvious defeat in Iran and his persistent submissiveness to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, as well as domestic policies that undermine the future bases of American strength. Six months on, the self-destruction is even more glaring. The failure in Iran is all the more obvious, and it has provided Trump with another pretext to seek further defeat in Russia. Weakness has become the occasion for more weakness.
The war in Iran is a strategic catastrophe. The United States has gained nothing from the thousands of deaths and the billions of dollars spent. In a few days, the Americans wasted munitions (including missile interceptors) that a wiser country could have used to win a war or to defend itself. The United States has been forced to reduce its presence in bases in the Middle East and even to withdraw strategic bombers from Great Britain — something unimaginable during earlier wars in the Middle East and during the Cold War. The Strait of Hormuz has become an Iranian strategic weapon, with the United States unable to open an oil route that was perfectly functional before Trump began his war of whimsy. Iran’s allies are now attacking American allies with impunity throughout the region. The Houthis just attacked the airport in Riyadh, and there is not much anyone can now do about it.
From the beginning, there was no chance that Trump could win such a war. Although the United States was by far the stronger military power, it was governed by people who have no idea how war works. The Americans seemed to have convinced themselves that other countries would fold in the face of a combination of missiles and bluster; when this did not happen, there was no plan B. There was not really even a plan A: just gender-affirming projectiles and a cornucopia of self-praise.
A plan was needed, because of what war is. War is about forcing a change in the politics of the adversary. Wars are only very rarely advisable, but when fought they must be taken seriously. Frivolity, however, is all that this White House can muster. Although Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, speak about how important their goals in Iran are, there was never any possibility that they would commit a US invasion force. Since Iran knew this from the beginning, Iran has had escalation dominance throughout the war. This means that it can raise the stakes of the war, for example by closing world oil routes or attacking US bases abroad, without fear of meaningful retribution. To be clear: I am not saying that the United States should have invaded Iran. What I am saying is that starting a war without any notion of how to win it is weakness, and is seen as such throughout the world.
And now the war in Iran continues because Trump is weak. He has no way to get out of it and, at this point, no apparent desire to do so. The war is extremely unpopular in the United States, and generates higher gasoline prices, which Americans also do not like. In the present strategic configuration, which Trump cannot change, he cannot make peace with Iran on terms that are not be humiliating. And so Trump will not try to parlay real weakness into the appearance of strength.
It appears that what he wants is for the Iran war to spread to the United States, so that he can then live through a 9/11 himself and enjoy a burst of popularity. What else, after all, can he hope to gain from the war? All that is left is weakness brought by weakness, which in the setting of a disaster that he himself provokes he can hope to pantomime for a domestic audience as strength. In his speech at the UN, he kept connecting Iran to the elections. In two recent campaign appearances, he fantasized about Iran destroying American cities. I do not believe that anything of the sort will happen, since Iran has no reason to give Trump a gift. But it does show where Trump’s mind is: the weakness of a lost war can translate into the weakness of failing to prevent terror, and he can then hope to somehow be the man of the hour again.
Weakness is dangerous, and Trump is dangerously weak. And, as weaklings do, he blames others for his own failures, and thereby makes everything worse.
World oil prices are high because of Trump’s Iranian misadventure and his strategic defeat. So, following the logic of his own character rather than the logic of events, Trump blames Ukraine. I spent much of last month in that country, where the injustice of these accusations was painfully palpable.
Russia was destroying Ukrainian power infrastructure with ballistic missiles and even Ukrainian gas stations with drones. The missiles are now getting through now because the Americans no longer supply interceptors, which they either fired pointlessly over Iran or refuse to give or sell. Ukrainians trying to get gas risk their lives. Meanwhile, Americans face higher prices at the gas pumps because their president has chosen to fight and lose a war in Iran.
Trump blames people who risk dying trying to get gas for the expenses that Americans face — when both problems are completely his fault, and his fault personally. If he had chosen to help Ukraine win, for which there were bountiful strategic arguments, instead of choosing calamitous weapon-wastingdefeat in Iran, then Ukrainians would have protection from missiles and Americans would have lower gas prices. Instead Trump takes his failure in his war of whimsy and tries to bring down the Ukrainians down with him. In blaming them for what he himself did, he finds a pretext for helping his patron Putin — which is obviously what matters most to him.
From the beginning, for a decade now, the most obvious element of Trump’s weakness is his personal desire to submit to Putin. This was clear even in his first campaign for the presidency, back in 2016, and has been true ever since. For whatever reason, he rarely misses a chance to help the Russian dictator.
And so, since Trump returned to office in January 2025, American policy in the Russo-Ukrainian war has radically shifted. Trump might have brought peace to Ukraine. All he had to do was continue the Biden policy of sending weapons to Ukraine and continue the Biden policy of enforcing sanctions. Instead, he pursued a policy of war through weakness. The Biden foreign policy might have been insufficient, but it was at least based upon the correct premise that a war of aggression can only end when an aggressor was resisted. Another year or two of a similar policy would have been enough; Moscow’s only hope was for a friend in office who would do even less.
Trump was that person. Throughout the presidential campaign of 2024, the Russian propagandists did not even try to hide their enthusiasm for “our Trumpushka”; his weakness was their hope of continuing the war. And he has done just as Putin wished. Trump ended American weapons transfers and even sales to Ukraine, and now he wants to support the Russian war economy by buying Russian diesel fuel.
This outrage is grounded upon level after level of weakness. At first glance the problem seems to be that Trump is so weak at home that he needs to pander to dictators abroad. What appears to be the case is that Trump, facing high gas prices at home, wants a quick fix before the elections. But this cannot be the motivation, unless Trump is an economic fool, a hypothesis that I suppose one is constrained by experience entertain. Buying diesel from Russia will not change the price of diesel. It is questionable that Russia can actually deliver the diesel fuel. It is facing domestic shortages itself. Like a typical Trump deal, this could well end in an appeal to American taxpayers to pay for something two or three times which was advertised as a gift for them. But let us imagine that Russian ships actually dock in American ports with diesel fuel. All that this would mean is that Russia broke some prior contracts with other partners in order to make Trump feel grateful. The overall supply of diesel on the world market would not change. The price of diesel will not change.
The step is thus symbolic, but the symbol is an important one: Trump is placing the United States visibly on the side of Russia. He is pretending to help Americans and intending to hurt Ukrainians solely to be able to promote Putin’s cause. The one and only effect of breaking sanctions on Russia is to help Russia. And the price of doing so is very high, beginning with the American executive breaking American law. If the United States cannot follow its own laws and practices on sanctions to the aggressor, then it is easier for other countries to follow suit.
That Trump has put himself on the side of Russia without actually gaining anything for Americans — that can be taken for granted. But he hasn’t even gained anything for himself (unless, of course, he was paid). He has only helped Putin by ostentatiously breaking the principle that a war of aggression should not be rewarded.
Trump’s approach to Russia is a policy of pure submission. It is not just weakness in the sense that it is an American policy of giving way to the aggressor, which of course would be bad enough. It is not only weakness in the sense of Trump doing what Putin wants, which would be humiliating enough. It is Trump doing what Putin wants without even gaining anything for himself personally — unless, of course, there are side deals which involve personal payouts. Given that Russia has offered sweet oil deals to the Americans who are supposed to be negotiating for peace, and these Americans happen to be Trump’s son-in-law and his friend, this has to be judged as more likely than not. We do not at this point have a foreign policy in the normal sense; we have clans that circle around Trump-made disasters seeking to transform them into grifts.
This compound of weakness and corruption is, of course, strategic disaster for the United States, an element of our superpower suicide. Much of our strength as a country is based upon making the laws and following the laws. To buy diesel fuel from Russia is illegal, given existing American sanctions against Russia. The United States has not imported fuel from Russia since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. By law the US cannot buy Russian fuel unless Russia withdraws from Ukraine. For that matter, Trump just signed a law a few weeks ago that required him not just to sanction Russian oil and gas but to penalize other countries that imported Russian hydrocarbons. This makes the whole situation even more grotesque, if possible; but there is a serious underlying issue. It makes us weaker as a country when we cannot obey our own laws, and instead follow the fake strongman as he seeks opportunities to submit to the real strongman. Whether or not the president is Trump, we weaken ourselves as a country when our laws become meaningless.
American weakness in Iran generates American weakness in Russia, which then generates even more American weakness in Iran. Even if we make the effort to enter the MAGA mental world, and imagine that foreign policy priorities are exactly as Trump says they are, this step makes absolutely no sense, and is indeed wildly contradictory. In MAGA propaganda, we are fighting a righteous war against Iran that is of world historical significance. The war is so important, Trump says, that it would be worth losing American cities just to stay involved in it. But… as everyone knows, Russia and Iran are close allies. Each supplies the other with weapons and intelligence, including targeting intelligence. Iran supplies Russia with drones and at the beginning of the war even sent trainers to occupied Ukraine to train Russians in their use. Russian nuclear experts are hard at work inside Iran right now. Russia is openly backing Iran in the war with the United States. In sending American hard currency to Moscow, Trump is helping Teheran. In trying to make friends with Putin, Trump is trying to ally with the country that is backing his enemy. He is, in effect, paying the other side to kill his troops.
By making American foreign policy openly pro-Russian, which is the only way to understand this symbolic step, Trump has made the entire world far more dangerous. If Russia wins this war, aggressors everywhere will be encouraged. By now saying that Ukraine should get rid of its elected president, which is an outrage in any context, Trump is echoing Russian propaganda, and endorsing the notion that invaders (not, for example, voters) get to decide upon governments. Trump’s idea is that Ukraine should cease to defend itself against Russia, without Russia ceasing to attack Ukraine, and without Russia making any proposal for peace, and indeed while Russia is saying that it has no intention of negotiating.
And of course the reason why Putin has no intention of negotiating is that the United States, under Trump, is so unbelievably yielding — so unbelievably weak. Trump decided that the United States should buy Russian diesel after a phone call with Putin, one in which he was supposed to be talking to the Russian dictator about a leak of pneumonic plague from a Russian laboratory (a fact which raises serious questions of the sort that we cannot expect Trump to raise). That is quite a change of subject! It does not seem that Trump has much to say in these conversations with Putin. He is Putin putty. And the irony of all this is that Putin himself is playing a very weak hand in the war against Ukraine. He is only strong through Trump’s weakness.
Trump, unable to win his foolish war against Iran, blames its consequences on Ukraine, and uses the lie to justify ending sanctions against Russia, thereby working to extend that war as well. This is war through weakness, not only as a fact, but almost as a conviction, or even a doctrine. America must lose, and lose, and lose again, and wars must be started, or extended, or promoted, so that a few men around Trump can make money. When Trump’s apologists make excuses for any of this, they add their own weakness to the mix, making matters still worse. Trump is not a man who can be trusted with power of any sort. To pretend otherwise is to participate in our ongoing superpower suicide.
Source: substack.com