MAYBE CHAOS IS THE POINT

The Atlantic's Tom Nichols sees Donald Trump's war in Iran as one of "Operational Excellence [and] Strategic Incompetence."

The war in Iran has reaffirmed two truths. One is that the United States is blessed with the most professional and effective military in the world.... The other truth is that the Trump administration, when it comes to strategy, is incompetent.

... The president and his team ... have not enunciated an overarching goal for this war—or, more accurately, they have presented multiple goals and chosen among them almost randomly, depending on the day or the hour. This means that highly effective military operations are taking place in a strategic vacuum.

... Operational competence ... cannot answer the question of national purpose. What is the war about, and when will America know it’s done?

I'm thinking about this in the context of a piece by David Sanger that ran in The New York Times a couple of days ago under the headline "Trump Follows His Gut. His National Security Advisers Try to Keep Up."

On a range of issues, from the goals of the Iran strike to Mr. Trump’s objectives in Venezuela or even in threatening Greenland, there are a blitz of answers. Inconsistency is sometimes celebrated by the administration as wily strategic deception, rather than as a failure to think several chess moves ahead.

... A top Arab diplomat said this week that his government has no real insight into the administration’s planning for a transition of government in Iran — or even whether it wants to play a role, given Mr. Hegseth’s repeated statements that “nation building” was not on the Pentagon’s list of tasks.

When I look at this war, and when I look at the ever-changing tariffs, I start to think that -- apart from the obvious motivations (self-aggrandizement, self-enrichment) -- the chaos is the point for Trump. He spent much of his life wanting to be the most important person in his world -- the biggest builder in New York, the richest, and the most admired -- but he could never pull it off. Other people with less chaotic and more strategic brains were better at building, made more money, and easily avoided the bankruptcies that plagued Trump. The adrenalized fizziness of Trump's brain made him bad at planning, bad at passing up whatever seemed immediately gratifying. He overpaid for what he wanted. He experienced failure.

He's no better at being president -- but what he can do, now that he has a 100% loyal Cabinet, Congress, and Supreme Court, is try to drag the world down to his level. He doesn't know what he's doing (on trade, in geopolitics), but that's fine if no one else knows what he's doing either. Global destabilization is the point. It makes smarter people struggle to react. It makes the world as jittery as Trump's brain.