Even as the passing weeks have left Iran still standing, Trump’s words and deeds have already inflicted severe damage on the global economy and regional peace in the Middle East. Trump’s turn toward a wartime posture is striking, but not entirely unexpected. His second-term conduct shows a growing tendency to push an earlier taste for disruption toward outright destruction — at home and abroad.
He now routinely acts in the belief that those who dare to resist his plans deserve the severest forms of punishment that imperial presidential power can deliver. But Trump’s conduct is grounded in centuries of American experience. The US has an enduring tendency toward retribution and destruction.