Why Trump’s Speech Was So Worrying

Wednesday night’s address to the nation by U.S. President Donald Trump felt like an occasion to draw firm and ominous conclusions.

Anxious viewers may have expected a clarifying statement of the purpose of the U.S. war against Iran, a vision of its conclusion, or at least a credible timeline for its end. Anyone old enough to remember prime-time speeches by previous presidents during wartime may have hoped for a return to some of the solemnity that has typically marked such moments.

On Wednesday, they got none of this. What national and global audiences saw instead was perhaps the clearest evidence yet that the leader of what has long been the world’s predominant superpower is an utterly chaotic thinker, whose aptitude for his job—never obvious to begin with—appears to be in accelerating decline.

Over a soporific 19 minutes, Trump repeated himself multiple times and contradicted his main points. At moments, he seemed to lose the thread altogether. He breathed oddly at the outset and then came close to mispronouncing the name of a major stake in the war, the Strait of Hormuz, which could almost be heard as the “strait of hormone.”

This has not offered humor. Nothing about it is remotely funny. Least amusing of all is that Trump seemed lost and confused throughout, especially on the questions that listeners most wanted answered: Where does this war go from here, and how can it be brought to a close in a way that delivers the world to a better place than when it began?

If commentators have had a field day itemizing the war’s many flaws in logic and self-inflicted setbacks from a U.S. perspective, it is because many of them are almost childishly obvious. Washington now wants others to help it successfully close out the war and police the Persian Gulf after having repeatedly denigrated its alliances around the world and forsworn prior consultation with them about confronting Iran.

At moments, Trump has also sounded as if he were ready to declare victory, even though Tehran’s hold on the Strait of Hormuz is incomparably stronger than it was before the United States and Israel jointly launched their attacks on Iran four weeks ago.

Tehran now unilaterally decides which oil tankers and other ships can and cannot move through this strategic passage, and Washington seems at such a loss about what to do about it that Trump suggested on Wednesday that the United States doesn’t really care.

In his speech, Trump claimed that the United States has already achieved its objectives in Iran by eliminating threats from the country, while also asking domestic and international publics for patience. Unaccountably, he indicated that a few more weeks of warfare still lie ahead, in which the United States will “bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.” How can this be squared with his claims in the same speech that there has already been “regime change” in Iran and that the country’s new leaders are reasonable people who are eager to settle matters?

Meanwhile, the United States seems to show little awareness that widespread attacks on an adversary’s infrastructure and the seemingly inevitable escalation of casualties on civilians that such attacks entail—as in Israel’s recent military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon—are antithetical to peacebuilding and may constitute war crimes.

Commentators have gone too long pretending that Trump’s wildly inconsistent statements reflect some genius enactment of the madman theory of international relations. The claim has been that his sharp and erratic ricochets are based on clever and subtle strategy aimed at keeping others off balance and thereby maximizing the United States’ options. By now, though, it feels less like strategy than incapacity. We appear to have a simpleton in charge, wildly vainglorious and impetuous, constantly boasting of his own brilliance amid an ever-deepening quagmire.

What worsens this, of course, is Trump’s choice of the people he surrounds himself with. Question marks hover above nearly the entire roster of key appointees in his second administration. Because this column is about foreign policy, and war in particular, I will limit my focus on two.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who generally cut the figure of a moderately conservative institutionalist on foreign-policy matters while he was a senator, seems to have abandoned those instincts in his current role. He has shown little hint of scruple or discomfort as Trump rides roughshod over conventional U.S. commitments to bedrock notions such as support for NATO, foreign aid, and human rights. Throughout the Iran war, Rubio has largely parroted the president’s thoughtless bellicosity, showing no signs of depth or self-awareness.

In one recent statement, Rubio lectured the Iranian government about how the country could do much better for its people if it did not squander its resources on armaments. Immediately obvious to almost everyone except, seemingly, to Rubio himself, was that the same is true of the United States. Then, less than a week later, Trump himself casually remarked that although it was a “big country,” the United States could not muster the resources for child care or for Medicare and Medicaid, even as it spends more than a billion dollars a day in pursuit of vague and shifting purposes in conflict with Iran.

Worst of all is Trump’s rootin’-tootin’, cantankerous cowboy-cum-secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, who comes across like a puffed-up cartoon character. Think Yosemite Sam, the swaggering Looney Tunes crusader whose combustible temper and lust to dominate prevent him from thinking even one or two steps ahead. Just as these qualities made him an easy mark for Bugs Bunny, Hegseth’s eagerness as a tin-pot vigilante, always ready to flatter his boss, has reduced Washington’s room to maneuver against powers, such as Tehran, that—despise them or not—have taken more careful measure of their own limits and the vulnerabilities of their enemies.

If Trump seemed unable during his muddled speech to elucidate the future course of the U.S. war with Iran, certain outcomes now nonetheless seem clearer than ever. His rashness and inconsistency have likely led governments worldwide to further reconsider the soundness of a U.S.-led global order and the wisdom of relying on Washington to uphold international norms. His go-it-alone impulses and his reflexive habit of blaming others when things go wrong have diminished the country’s standing. So have his unreasonable demands that others fly to the rescue to clean up messes that he has made, as with the Strait of Hormuz fiasco.

Worst, from a pure power perspective, has been the gratuitous insult and alienation of allies. NATO is the most commonly invoked example, but evidence of Washington’s self-harm lies in nearly every geographic direction. It began with the reckless use of tariffs on friend and foe alike. It continued with Trump’s threats to take over Greenland and absorb Canada. And it will almost certainly deepen with the only superficially successful takeover of Venezuela, whose resources the president now boasts of controlling. Things will only get worse if Trump follows through on vows to make Cuba “next,” imposing Washington’s dominion over another sovereign country.

Add to this Trump’s jokes about Pearl Harbor in a meeting with Japan’s prime minister and his remark that Saudi Arabia will soon be kissing his ass after he subdues Iran. These are contributing reasons behind my last column, which argued that the appearance of a U.S. “victory” against Iran would be good neither for Washington nor for the world. It would only heighten the sense of unlimited power and impunity of a leader who is steadily hollowing out what is left of U.S. legitimacy in the world and hastening the planet’s entry into a new age of violence and anarchy.