Trump and the strategy of chaos
In his latest book, essayist and political advisor Giuliano da Empoli states, The hour of the predators (Ediciones 62), that "chaos is no longer the weapon of insurgents but the hallmark of power." In the book, he explains that new world leaders like Trump or Putin act as agents of chaos because it is the way to consolidate their authority in a world where there are no rules but brute force. Donald Trump's actions in the last few hours perfectly fit this definition.
The US president, desperate because he can't find a way to bring the Iranian regime to its knees, issued an ultimatum: if they don't open the Strait of Hormuz in 48 hours, I will bomb their electrical installations and leave the country without power. Faced with this threat, Iran replied that if this happened, it would consider critical infrastructure in the Gulf countries, such as desalination plants, as legitimate targets. Faced with the prospect of an all-out war in the Gulf region, the markets began to decline and the price of oil climbed rapidly. Then, to the panic of his golf allies and his economic advisors, Trump backtracked, saying that after "productive conversations" with a "senior" person in the regime, he had decided to postpone the ultimatum for five days, thus giving diplomacy a chance. Immediately, the markets rebounded sharply, and the price of crude oil plummeted, lining the pockets of some investors who suspiciously bought assets fifteen minutes before the presidential declaration, as explained by the Financial Times.
The day after this shift, however, things on the ground remain the same, and there are no signs of diplomatic contacts between the United States and Iran. Tehran, in fact, has warned that it is all a crude maneuver to manipulate the market. Everything points, then, to Trump simply launching a message that would allow him to buy time and slow the market decline. In reality, Trump's strategy resembles the one he already used with tariffs—raising them one day and lowering them the next—which in the United States is known as TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out), which can be translated as "Trump always backs down."
The problem is that, while he held all the cards in the trade war because he was the one setting the tariffs, it's far from clear that the situation in Iran is exactly the same. Trump can't unilaterally decide when the war ends, among other things because if he leaves now, everyone will interpret it as Iran being the real winner. Meanwhile, he continues to fuel the chaos, and his latest decision is to send another 3,000 troops to the Gulf, which fuels speculation about a possible ground operation. However, all of this demonstrates what has already been established: that the United States didn't have a clear plan in this war if the regime's decapitation on the first day didn't lead to its collapse. And since then, Trump's vacillations have only confirmed an alarming lack of strategic planning.
