March 20, 2026

The U.S. Wants War Without Entanglement. It May Not Exist.

By: Becca Wasser

This article was originally published on Bloomberg.

Donald Trump believes America can fight wars without becoming trapped in them.

The strikes on Iran are the latest expression of that belief: delivering swift, decisive force from a distance, not backed by a multi-country coalition or boots on the ground. They aim to deliver overwhelming but bounded force to coerce adversaries without dragging the US into another Iraq or Afghanistan.

This approach to warfare appears to rest on three pillars: speed, unilateral action and limited violence imposed from a distance.

Trump’s approach rejects many of the tenets of the American way of war that emerged after the Cold War. In his model, the US applies pressure and shapes outcomes, then steps back. No large ground wars. No open-ended campaigns. No coalitions of the willing or nation-building as an endgame.

As the Iran war stretches into its fourth week, the tensions inherent in this approach are becoming harder to ignore. Trump may have articulated a doctrine of war without entanglement, but it remains unclear whether such a thing is possible. His second-term record shows a preference for limited force paired with a growing willingness to use it. Yet this more muscular military vision rarely produces the political outcomes he desires. Instead, it has pushed Trump to greenlight strikes — and follow-on re-strikes — creating a vicious cycle that amounts to its own form of entanglement.

Read the full article on Bloomberg.

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