An act of self-harm: Trump’s latest war might be his undoing

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The economist. Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Jason Pa. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Democratic institutions have been taking a beating in Turkey at the same time, and perhaps as a distraction, Turkey has been making itself important on the world stage. All that bodes ill for the opposition politician at the middle of a massive criminal trial. And we do try to paint a nuanced picture for you when it comes to the narrative of the bots are coming for us all. But delivery bots? Well, they're already here. Weird thing about them though, Americans in particular just really hate them. First up, though, The back and forth of the war in Iran continues. Overnight, Israel hit South Pars, the world's largest natural gas field, in the middle of the Persian Gulf. Iran launched its own attacks, causing serious damage to a natural gas facility in Qatar that accounts for about a fifth of global gas. Saudi Arabia said it intercepted missiles aimed at a gas facility there, which makes Donald Trump's recent assertion that the war was very complete pretty much make even less sense. He threatened to massively blow up that South Pars gas field if Iran struck Qatar again. Maybe so. What also seems probable is that this war will massively blow up his presidency.

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This is an extraordinary self inflicted wound by Donald Trump. He's leapt into a war without thinking about it, and now this looks like the kind of crisis that could dramatically weaken his presidency.

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Robert Guest is a deputy editor of the Economist.

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There may be upsides to him being weakened, but also if he starts to feel that people think he's a loser, he may lash.

2:32

Why do you think this is so different a moment than moments we've seen before?

2:42

It erodes Trump's what you might call his three political superpowers. So his ability to impose his own reality on the world and make people believe it, his remorseless use of leverage to coerce people, and his dominion over the Republican Party. These were always likely to diminish after the midterm elections in November, but the war is likely to accelerate that process.

2:46

Okay, well, let's take the superpowers, as you call them, in turn. How do you think this in particular affects his ability to call what reality is.

3:13

Well, throughout his career, he has said things that are not true, said things that are wildly exaggerated, said things that are totally made up, and he's got away with it. What's different this time is that voters can see with their own eyes that what he is saying is not true. So he says he's won a great victory. He says that he destroyed 100% of Iran's military capacity. Yet somehow, with the zero percent that remains, Iran is able to cause total global economic havoc. And voters can see that because the price of oil is not one of those bits of news that you can censor by taking away people's broadcast licenses. It's displayed outside gas stations all over America, which people drive past every day. So they can see how his foreign policy, his supposed great victory, is making their lives worse.

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Okay? And this particular situation affecting his superpower of relentless use of leverage.

4:20

So, again, this was a war that he thought was going to be very easy, because the previous operation in Venezuela was very easy for him. One can argue about whether he achieved anything useful there, but the operation was tactically brilliant and over very quickly. He thought it'd be the same this time. He's run into the mud. He's asking people for help. But here's the thing. Trump's allies now know that they can expect bad treatment from him. He's asking for help from NATO when he has disparaged the alliance. He has threatened not to come to their help if they don't do what he says. He's threatened to annex territory belonging to another NATO member, Denmark. And now when he's asking them for help and saying that it'd be very bad for NATO if they don't supply that help, well, amazingly, they're not that willing to help him out of a mess that he created without consulting them

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and then going on to say, well, I didn't need your help anyway.

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I would point out, yes, of course he says that, but I mean, again, this is undermining his ability to shape reality. Everybody can see that he's lying, right?

5:25

And as for how this might damage his hold on the party, there's a

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big chunk of the Republican Party that will continue to support him absolutely regardless of what he does. They love him. But in order to win elections, such as the midterms that are coming up, he has to be able to gather in waverers and people in the middle. And he got a lot of people in 2024 with promises that he would not get involved in any foreign wars. And that he would not merely end inflation. He said he would bring prices back down on day one. And given that a lot of younger voters, hard up voters, Hispanic voters, were really concerned about inflation under Biden, which was partly a knock on effect of the COVID pandemic, he got a lot of votes from them. They believed him. Well, he has spectacularly broken both those promises. He started a war of choice despite there not being an imminent threat to America. And he's done things, not just the tariffs, which kind of raise prices in a slightly less obvious way, but he's raising prices, prices now in a very obvious way. Everyone can understand the idea that if you start a war and the people you're starting a war with start blowing up oil tankers from the most important oil producing part of the world, that there's less oil and so the price goes up. So that is making him less popular, that is making Republicans, Republican office holders around the country, start panicking at the scale of the loss they're expecting in November. So before the war started, the betting markets thought that there was a pretty good chance the Dems would take the House of Representatives, but that they probably wouldn't take the Senate. Now that's moved about 10 points in the space of a couple of weeks and it's looking 50, 50 that the Democrats might take the Senate. And that will impose enormous constraints on the Trump administration. It means they won't be able to pass any legislation without Democratic assent. And it means that the Democrats will have subpoena power. They will be able to call in people in the administration to test before Congress under oath. So with the possibility of going to prison if they're caught lying. And that will make it just much harder for people to operate in the Trump administration, particularly if they're doing things which are dodgy or criminal, I might

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argue that a fourth superpower he has shown over the years is the ability to do a U turn and not call it as such. Why, if he sees himself being disempowered by all this, does he not just pull the plug on the whole operation and go back to business as it was?

7:56

So he doesn't like to admit that he's wrong about anything. Undoubtedly at some point he will declare victory. The question is, and the question that he's wrestling with at the moment is when he could obviously declare victory today if he wanted to. The problem is the Iranians get a vote as well. So if the Iranians decide that in order to create deterrence, to create a sense that if you come after US Again, we're going to cause lots of trouble. They have an incentive to cause lots of trouble now. And by inflicting immense damage on the global economy, they're raising the cost of future military actions against them. So even if he declares victory and stops now, it's quite likely that the Iranians will carry on shooting for a while, not forever. They don't want to make enemies of the entire world indefinitely. That's not sustainable. But certainly they can do a lot of harm. And it will take time for energy markets to recover, particularly with things like gas, where you have to lower it to a very low temperature in order to liquefy it, to load it onto tankers. It takes time to get that machinery up and running again. It takes time to get oil shipments going where they're needed. So even if he stops it today, it's still going to be a significant hit to the global economy and to

8:10

Americans and to the President's superpowers, as you've laid out. You hinted that he might lash out then. What form does that take at this stage?

9:26

It seems odd to talk about lashing out for a man who's just started yet another unilateral military action, but the kinds of things one would worry about. So supposing he does lose the midterms badly and he's constrained next year in what he can do, he could do immense damage. He could do damage at home by pursuing more frivolous prosecutions of his political enemies, by putting out executive orders and waiting for the courts to strike them down, by sicing Ice Agen on democratic cities. And then abroad, he could abandon NATO de facto. He could cut loose Ukraine just to punish Europe by not giving them weapons or intelligence. He could bully Latin America in the name of fighting crime and drugs. He could demand money for defending Japan and South Korea. There's lots of things he could do that would be destabilizing and damaging for the world. And there's lots of ways that other powers would might respond to the perception that he is weaker. There's a possibility that Russia or China might try to take advantage of that, that Russia might decide that now's a good time to invade the Baltics.

9:36

Do you not get the sense that perhaps both adversaries and allies have already perceived that his power is on the wane?

10:45

Yes, they're aware that there's an electoral timetable in the United States, and certainly that's something the Iranians are very conscious of and trying to use as a lever to make him stop bombing them. But he's still in charge of the Executive Branch of the United States of America, which is still the most powerful country in the world. So even if he's very unpopular at home, even if he's hemmed in by Congress, he's still very dangerous. And the world may not have liked it when he was full of macho's self confidence, but they may like it even less when he's not. He may prove to be a very bad loser.

10:52

Robert, thank you very much for joining us.

11:34

Thank you Jason.

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One of the more interesting facets of this shift of opinion is deep within the American right among the MAGA faithful. That's the topic of this week's Insider, our video series for subscribers. Our Editor in Chief, Zanny Minton Beddoes interviews Tucker Carlson, perhaps the most vocal anti war pundit on the right. Look for Insider in the Economist app or on economist.com from 6pm in London 2pm in New York.

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Last week I traveled to Silivrin, a town on the outskirts of Istanbul, to attend a court hearing at a courthouse outside a maximum security prison.

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Piotr Zalewski is our Turkey correspondent.

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The courtroom itself is packed. About 400 people are on trial. The man many had come out to see, Academy Manuldu, the deposed mayor of Istanbul, received a resounding round of applause the moment he entered the Courtroom. One woman finally spotted her husband surrounded by a flock of police shutdowns, and cried out, he saw me. Before collapsing into her chair, sobbing. It was March 9, and it was the start of Turkey's most important trial in years.

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And so give us a little history here, Piotr. What is he charged with?

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Eklivi Mahoglu was arrested exactly a year ago on March 19 on corruption and terrorism, char charges which he and his party deny. He was arrested only days before, nominated as his Republican People Party's presidential candidate. The Republican People's Party, it is the country's main opposition. He was then deposed as mayor of Istanbul, a post he has occupied since 2019. The CHP points to a clear political motive. It says that the whole point of the case and his arrest is to prevent Imamolu from from running in the 2028 presidential elections. President Recep Tayyip Ergamman, who many see as the man pulling the strings in the case, swears by the independence of Turkey's judiciary. But it was he who appointed the Prosecutor who oversaw Mr. Imamolu's arrest as his justice minister earlier this year. Imamolu faces up to 2,532 years in prison. The trial could take years.

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And so, insofar as his supporters and the Republican People's Party think this is politically motivated, what are they trying to do? How are they handling this situation?

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Well, a few days after the start of the trial, I caught up with the leader of the chp, Ozgur Ezel, and I asked him whether the party was considering the new candidate, given the very real risk that Imamolu will not be set free before the elections. Ozzel told me it was too early to and that Erdogan needed to pay a political price for placing his top rival behind bars. Ozat also said that to choose a new candidate now, especially a strong candidate, would give Erdogan and his government ample time to go after the new candidate and have him arrested as well. Basically, that's why he said it's not right to say anything or do anything just now.

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And you said that Mr. Erdogan swears by the judiciary's independence. He says there's nothing fishy going on here.

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He has been very outspoken about the case itself. As the trial began, he accused the CHP of tarnishing his government's name when bigger things were at stake. And by bigger things, he was referring to the war in Iran. And that seems to be a sign of a relatively new political strategy on which Erdogan is turning to foreign policy to obscure problems at home. And that is a strategy pitched to both Turkish voters and Turkey's allies. The first group, meaning voters, are asked to pay more attention to Turkey's growing footprint abroad than to persistent inflation or the crackdown against the opposition. The second group, meaning Western allies, is asked to overlook Erdoan's autocratic excesses so as to keep Turkey onside. And at least in terms of relations with Europe and the U.S. that strategy seems to be working. Ozel had quite a few things to say on the subject as well. One of the things he told me was that Europe's security concerns, regional wars, and Erdogan's transactionalism are helping mask Turkey's democratic decline.

16:36

So when you say Turkey's growing footprint abroad, what do you mean?

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Well, Turkey matters to the west, and in times like these, it matters more than ever. Its geopolitical role has acquired additional importance. Turkey is something of a gatekeeper in the Black Sea in that its control of the straits allows it to control the passage of warships, among other things. Turkey has also become something of a kingmaker in Syria and has played a very visible role as an occasional mediator between Russia and Ukraine. That's the extent to which Turkey matters to its foreign allies. But Erdogan has also tried to use use foreign policy accomplishments to try to win more votes. He has a few foreign policy victories to his name. He has squeezed the pkk, the Kurdistan Workers Party, Turkey's main regional foe. He has squeezed them in northern Iraq, in Turkey, and most recently with the help of Ahmed Al Shara's government, in Syria. In Syria. It's also in Syria that Turkey has become a key security player and a major investor. The relations with the US are also something that Erdogan can point to as a major success, at least in the Trump era. His rapport with Trump has already paid dividends. And America's war with Iran cements the sense that Turkey is an indispensable partner in the region for the US but

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to be clear here, where does Turkey stand on the war?

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Turkey has opposed the war from the start. It threatens and has already disrupted trade and can set off yet another humanitarian crisis on Turkey's doorstep. But the war also shows how critical its regional role has become when it comes to migration. The EU has once again seen Turkey as a buffer between it and the chaos in the Middle east, and has made clear that in case of a mass exodus from Iran, the EU is counting on Turkey, just as it did during the war in Syria, to take in Iranian war refugees. Where a negotiated solution to become possible, then Turkey also stands to play a key role. Turkey would have an important role in negotiations, largely because of the fact it is amicable with Trump and with the Iranian regime. That's what makes it so important for Western leaders to keep Turkey onside.

19:36

And in that sense, it leaves a lot more room for what might be termed a show trial. In the case of Mr. Imogen.

20:33

Exactly. The commentators will say that Turkey's growing importance for regional security gives Erdogan more room to push ahead with his domestic agenda, including his crackdown against the opposition. So this is not good news for Igon Moldu, and it's not good news for Turkey's democracy, or what remains of it.

20:40

Piotr, thank you very much for your time.

20:58

Thanks for having me.

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One of the great pleasures of living in the 21st century is the ubiquity of food delivery services.

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Rebecca Jackson is our Southern correspondent.

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Empty fridge Uber Eats can fix that. Working late? Just doordash yourself a meal. Suddenly confronted with your total lack of culinary acumen and the crushing weight of independent adult living, grubhub doesn't judge. And increasingly, the couriers themselves are being technologically optimized. That's because automated delivery robots are slowly overtaking humans. In fact, thousands of cooler sized food delivery robots now roam American streets. Thanks to contracts with major food delivery companies, they're now some of the most visible examples of artificial intelligence taking human jobs. The bots use the same cameras and sensors as self driving cars to map their surroundings. And they use AI to help them decide how to cross the road, dodge runners and scale snowbanks. The makers of these bots promise efficiency. An analysis by the firm Thundersat Energy found that they can be up to 100 times more energy efficient than a motorcycle. Plus they're certainly cheaper than a trip across town. One exec put it to me this moving a 2 pound burrito in a 2 ton car doesn't make a lot of sense. And he is not wrong. There is, however, one slight problem. People seem to hate them. Social media videos of pedestrians assaulting these robots have gone viral. In one clip, a woman climbs on top of one and begins to gyrate. The robot screams in alarm. In another video from Miami, a man tries to chuck a similarly shrieking bot off a bridge.

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Look at that. It's crazy.

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In Chicago, 3,300 residents have signed a petition asking their city to ban the bots. In Indiana, the University of Notre Dame's student paper called for a boycott. But this disdain for robots isn't new, especially in America. Back in 2014, researchers from Toronto built Hitchbot, a full body hitchhiking robot designed to test human robot interactions.

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We've created a robot that is a

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helpless robot and it really does tap into people's sense of helpfulness.

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Hitchbot successfully got strangers to carry it across Canada, Germany and the Netherlands.

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I am a robot. I am hitchhiking west across Canada from

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Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Victoria, British Columbia.

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Going my way, okay?

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Two weeks into its American trek, though, it was found stripped, dismembered and decapitated in Philadelphia.

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I am Hitchbot, a hitchhiking rope.

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Years later, a security robot patrolling San Francisco's Mission District was discovered besmirched by barbecue sauce and befouled by feces. According to local news, these acts of human robot violence may only get worse as AI becomes more common. A recent survey by Pew found that Americans are far more concerned about AI intruding on their daily lives than people in other rich countries. Perhaps these acts of aggression are really an outward expression of some pent up anxiety about technology taking over the world. Or maybe it's just about nabbing some fruit Pad Thai.

24:53

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. We'll see you back here tomorrow.

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