As U.S. and Israeli strikes enter their second week, a leading defense scholar argues the Trump administration is prosecuting a war without a coherent political strategy — and that history warns of the consequences.
Since U.S. and Israeli forces launched joint strikes on Iran on February 28, the military campaign has been sweeping in its reach. According to Trump, speaking to Republican lawmakers, the operation has targeted over 5,000 locations, neutralized much of Iran's missile arsenal, and eliminated drone production sites. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening salvo, with Iran subsequently naming his hardline son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as his successor. Yet for all the tactical momentum, a fundamental question hangs unanswered: what does Washington actually want from this war?
Writing in Foreign Affairs on March 10, Colin H. Kahl — Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy under President Biden — argues that the Trump administration has launched a "war of choice" without clearly defined political objectives, a failure that he warns could prove strategically catastrophic.
"Wars begun without clear political objectives rarely end well," Kahl writes. "When political goals are undefined or contested, the war lacks a logical stopping point." He invokes the nineteenth-century Prussian theorist Carl von Clausewitz, who held that war is politics by other means — but Kahl emphasizes the corollary: without a clear political purpose, war becomes an end in itself.
Shifting Goalposts
Trump's public statements have done little to resolve the ambiguity. On February 28, he called for regime change outright, urging Iranians to "take over your government." Since then, however, administration officials have offered at least four distinct framings: regime change, unconditional surrender, destruction of Iran's nuclear program, and degradation of its military projection capabilities . Trump compounded the confusion on Monday, hinting the war could end soon to calm surging oil markets, then hours later telling Republican lawmakers, "We go forward more determined than ever to achieve ultimate victory".
Kahl stresses that these are not variations on the same goal — they demand fundamentally different wars, resources, timelines, and post-conflict plans. Among the most alarming uncertainties, according to Kahl, is the fate of Iran's nuclear stockpile. As of last June, the International Atomic Energy Agency estimated Iran held more than 400 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity — sufficient fissile material, with further processing, for roughly ten nuclear weapons. Following strikes, the IAEA can no longer confirm the size or location of that stockpile . "No one knows exactly where hundreds of kilograms of near weapons-grade fissile material is right now," Kahl writes, warning that a weakened Iran may grow more determined to weaponize its residual capability as a deterrent against future attack .
Strategic Overstretch
Beyond the nuclear dimension, Kahl raises the specter of broader strategic depletion. General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reportedly warned before the war that a prolonged Middle East conflict could drain critical U.S. munitions stockpiles, leaving Washington less capable of deterring aggression from China or Russia . The early phase of the war has already burned through significant reserves of long-range strike munitions and air defense interceptors.
Kahl also flags the geopolitical damage to international norms. The Trump administration launched the Iran campaign without a congressional vote, UN authorization, or a public intelligence case — a precedent, Kahl argues, that hands Beijing and Moscow a ready-made justification for future unilateral actions of their own . "Every norm the United States erodes now is one it cannot compel others to respect in the future," he writes.
The war's opening chapter has demonstrated undeniable U.S. and Israeli military power. But as Kahl concludes, "Wars are not judged by how well they start. They are judged by how they end — and by whether the country that started the fight is stronger or weaker when the guns finally go quiet".
Photo: Perplexity