The Trump administration is simultaneously conducting military operations in Iran, Venezuela, and Nigeria - three conflicts on three continents, each with a different stated objective but a shared structural weakness. Robert D. Kaplan, writing in Foreign Affairs, has argued that all three lack the local cultural knowledge and day-after planning needed to prevent them from spiraling into prolonged, unwinnable engagements.
Each theater represents a distinct variation of the same historical mistake, Kaplan argued in his Foreign Affairs essay covered by "Hvylya".
In Iran, the demand for regime surrender combined with continued bombing risks producing not a compliant government but outright anarchy that destabilizes the Persian Gulf. The "gap between toppling an existing order and erecting a new, more pliable one can be vast," Kaplan warned.
In Venezuela, the military action to remove President Nicolas Maduro carries domestic implications that are "as ambiguous and unpredictable as Iraq's were in 2003." A post-Maduro Venezuela could transform into a functioning democracy, Kaplan acknowledged, but it could just as easily descend into prolonged instability with no clear path to stable governance.
Nigeria is perhaps the most poorly understood of the three. The Trump administration's missile strikes came in response to attacks on Christians, but Kaplan argued the administration "seems not to realize that internal attacks on Christians are part of a slow, complex unraveling of the Nigerian state itself, especially in the hinterlands." This is not a problem that can be solved with air strikes - it is a structural crisis with "the potential to escalate into broader warfare."
Across all three theaters, Kaplan identified a common failure: too much attention to geopolitics and not enough to conditions on the ground. He cited historian Barbara Tuchman's argument that the biggest U.S. foreign policy disasters happened because leaders were "obsessed with regional and global consequences they often could not properly manage, and thus ignored critical conditions on the ground." In Vietnam, they missed the power of Vietnamese nationalism; in Iraq, it was sectarianism. The question is what critical local factor the administration is missing now.
All three operations are currently conducted primarily with air and naval assets. Kaplan acknowledged this is "a good thing" but warned that it provides only temporary protection. The slippery slope of incrementalism - advisers, then special forces, then a growing ground presence - has turned air-only campaigns into ground wars before.
Previously: Petraeus on Iran: "We Haven't Learned Enough From Ukraine"