The Trump administration is not facing a single foreign policy crisis but at least five distinct conflicts, each carrying the potential to escalate from a contained operation into a prolonged military entanglement. Robert D. Kaplan, writing in Foreign Affairs, has mapped out how Iran, Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria, and the Taiwan Strait all present variations of the same strategic trap.

Kaplan sees a pattern across all five theaters, "Hvylya" reports, citing his essay in Foreign Affairs: initial operations designed to be quick and decisive, but local conditions on the ground that make open-ended escalation far more likely than a clean exit.

In Iran, the administration's air and sea campaign risks triggering internal chaos that could draw in U.S. ground forces. In Mexico, Trump has designated drug cartels as terrorist organizations, but Kaplan warned that a military conflict with the cartels "would have all the makings of an irregular, grinding, middle-sized war in which locating enemies would be difficult, and permanently defeating them would be nearly impossible."

Venezuela presents a different version of the same problem. The Trump administration's military action to remove President Nicolas Maduro could result in a functioning democracy - or descend into anarchy. Kaplan noted that the domestic considerations in a post-Maduro Venezuela are "as ambiguous and unpredictable as Iraq's were in 2003."

In Nigeria, the administration's missile strikes in response to attacks on Christians overlook a deeper structural crisis. Kaplan argued that these attacks are "part of a slow, complex unraveling of the Nigerian state itself, especially in the hinterlands, which has the potential to escalate into broader warfare." Meanwhile, the western Pacific remains the highest-stakes theater of all - home to the world's most vital shipping lanes, supply chains, and semiconductor production.

The common thread across all five, Kaplan said, is a dangerous disconnect: too much focus on geopolitics and not enough on local cultural and political realities. Historian Barbara Tuchman's observation that the U.S. would have fared better in Vietnam by thinking "less geopolitically and more locally" applies to every one of these theaters today.

Also read: The Atlantic Reveals a "Glaring Oversight" in US War Plan Against Iran