The Trump administration's war in Iran has the potential to evolve into the type of conflict that has historically ruined U.S. presidencies and shattered public trust in American foreign policy. Robert D. Kaplan, a distinguished senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin, has laid out the case that Washington is walking into a familiar and dangerous pattern - one that turned small military actions in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq into grinding, open-ended wars.

The core problem, Kaplan wrote in his Foreign Affairs analysis covered by "Hvylya", lies in what military historian James Stokesbury identified back in 1988: democracies excel at fighting either little wars reserved for professionals or massive wars that mobilize entire societies, but they have "very real problems trying to fight a middle-sized war, where some go and some stay home."

Kaplan argued that while the Trump administration has so far avoided deploying significant ground forces, relying instead on air and naval assets, the "slippery slope of incrementalism" poses a serious threat. If civil unrest or factional fighting erupts inside Iran, the administration may feel compelled to send special forces and advisers - exactly the pattern that escalated Vietnam from a small advisory mission into a full-scale war spanning two presidencies.

Kaplan drew a sharp distinction between limited wars - which are fought by design with clear objectives - and middle-sized wars, which grow uncontrollably out of what leaders intended as small operations. "Generals and political leaders know what they are doing in a limited war," Kaplan wrote. "U.S. leaders in today's middle-sized wars do not."

Kaplan acknowledged that the Iranian regime's nuclear progress in 2026 represents a more advanced threat than Saddam Hussein's capabilities did in 2003. But he questioned whether that progress "necessitated the risk of a middle-sized war, as the Trump administration has made a possibility." The gap between toppling an existing order and building a new, more cooperative one, he warned, can be vast - a lesson the U.S. learned at enormous cost in Iraq.

The United States exists as a de facto empire, Kaplan argued, and "misbegotten wars are embedded in the history of imperialism itself." If leaders cannot break the cycle, these conflicts will weaken America and "contribute to its ultimate demise."

Also read: McMaster Outlines Three Scenarios for Post-War Iran - and Two of Them Are Disastrous