From Minneapolis to Iran, Trump’s strategy is coercion, not persuasion

2026-03-22 - 13:21

Wars of choice, at home and abroad, have become the defining feature of President Donald Trump’s tumultuous second term. From Minneapolis and Los Angeles to Caracas and Tehran, instigating conflicts with perceived adversaries has become Trump’s principal means of pursuing his domestic and international goals. He’s deployed military force in Iran, Venezuela and at least five other countries; launched trade wars against nations across the globe; sent militarized immigration sweeps through big blue cities; pressured the Justice Department to initiate federal criminal prosecutions of individuals and institutions he considers his adversaries; and supported primary challenges against congressional Republicans who have crossed him. In all these ways Trump has turned on its head the famous advice from political scientist Richard Neustadt, who wrote in a classic 1960 book that the core presidential power “is the power to persuade.” Trump has governed as if he believes that the core, and perhaps only relevant, presidential power is the power to coerce. Those sympathetic to Trump’s approach believe he is simply leveraging all the massive powers of the presidency in ways that his predecessors would not, particularly to defend America’s interests around the world. “No one can read the president’s mind, that’s clear,” said Nadia Schadlow, a deputy national security adviser during Trump’s first term who is now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. “But it certainly seems that he is absolutely willing to use all forms of leverage in all different ways, including asymmetric ways, and is not bounded by processes that have often constrained past presidents.” But Trump’s critics believe the limits of his confrontational strategy are becoming more apparent as he faces unexpectedly effective resistance from targets as varied as the government of Iran and the ordinary citizens of Minneapolis who opposed his immigration offensive. Trump is learning that even with the world’s biggest hammer, sometimes the nails can push back. “On initial glance he looks like the domineering, titanic force ... he stands on the bridge of the ship and is giving orders, and the initial response appears to be that he is getting action,” said political scientist Lawrence Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. “But we’re now at a point where we can look at what are the effects and results of what he is doing. And what I’m seeing now is much more the limitations of his approach.” Federal officials escort Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in Manhattan on January 5. Adam Gray/Reuters A flood of threats Type the phrase “Trump threatens” into any search engine and the results overflow. In Trump’s lexicon, he rarely requests; instead, he demands. And those demands are almost always backstopped by threats of catastrophic consequences for any individual or institution that resists. Every day in the Trump administration feels a little like the iconic baptism scene in “The Godfather” when Michael Corleone intones, “Today I settle all family business.” In just the past few weeks, Trump has signaled that the US will reconsider its role in NATO if members of the alliance don’t provide support he’s demanding to reopen the Strait of Hormuz; pledged to “cut off all trade” with Spain for refusing the use of its airbases in the war; warned Cuba that he intends to replace its government through military or economic pressure; praised his combative FCC chair, Brendan Carr, for threatening the broadcast licenses of outlets that cover the Iran war in ways the administration dislikes; informed Congress he will not sign any other legislation until the Senate ditches the filibuster to pass nationwide restrictions on voting; traveled to Kentucky to endorse a primary opponent against Rep. Thomas Massie, the House Republican who most consistently opposes him; and, of course, joined with Israel to launch an unprecedented bombing campaign against Iran after it refused his demands during negotiations. President Donald Trump at the White House on March 20. Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg/Getty Images Over his two terms, Trump has backed off enough of his threats — particularly on tariffs — to inspire the TACO meme: the idea that while he talks tough, Trump Always Chickens Out. But as the above list makes clear, the assumption that Trump always blinks is a comforting illusion for his critics. Trump has repeatedly precipitated domestic and international confrontations his predecessors avoided. Trump’s uniquely confrontational approach to the office is the product of his personal experience and the institutional context of his presidency. Starting with his apprenticeship in New York real estate, Trump has always behaved as if he considers all negotiations a zero-sum contest that only one side can win. Over his business career, he treated the law less as a guidepost to constrain behavior than as an obstacle to be overcome, or a weapon to be marshalled. Trump arrived in the political arena with a fully formed ethos that the ends always justifies the means, an approach that bore the imprint of his ferocious longtime lawyer Roy Cohn, the former right-hand aide to Sen. Joe McCarthy during the Red Scare. Trump also arrived in the White House amid a long reassessment of the president’s powers. Neustadt issued his famous dictum about persuasion in his book, “Presidential Power,” in 1960. That was a moment when the president appeared uniquely constrained, largely because the intractable internal divisions between liberals and conservatives within each congressional party made it so difficult to pass legislation and what little did pass required endless bipartisan compromise. Those constraints shaped Neustadt’s thinking. But in the decades since, presidents of both parties have asserted far greater authority to act unilaterally — through executive orders, regulatory decisions, and in the management of foreign affairs, including the use of military force. Today, the idea that the most effective power of the presidency is the ability to persuade “has evolved,” says Jacobs, who co-edited a 2000 book reassessing Neustadt’s theory. “There are enormous institutional, administrative and formal powers that presidents have assumed and asserted since Neustadt. It would be naïve to say that presidential power is his personal bargaining alone.” Even within this long evolution, Trump represents a radical break. In almost every possible way, he has sought to centralize more power in the presidency and degrade the ability of Congress, the courts, or political opponents to check him. He has offered a vision of presidential authority that is virtually unbounded. In his first term, he famously declared, “I have an Article II (of the Constitution), where I have to the right to do whatever I want as president.” Brown University political scientist Corey Brettschneider, the author of two books exploring presidents’ use of their powers, says it is the combination of Trump’s disdainful personal attitude toward legal restraints and the growing institutional strength of the presidency that has produced such an unconstrained administration. “When you combine that amoral view of power with the power of the presidency, that’s the lethal combination,” said Brettschneider, co-host of “The Oath and The Office” podcast, named for one of his books on presidential authority. Paul Starr, a Princeton University sociologist and author of “American Contradiction,” a 2025 history of America’s widening political divisions since the 1950s, points to one final factor that has unleashed Trump’s aggression in his second term: the collapse of internal restraints, not only from the Republican Congress but within his administration. “The four years out of power provided him the opportunity to identify the people who would let him do what he wanted to do from the beginning,” Starr said, “and it is a strategy of intense conflict against everything he hates and that he believes his base hates.” Pressure yields mixed results It is one thing to agree, as most political scientists and political professionals now do, that persuasion is no longer a president’s principal power. It is another to conclude, as Trump apparently has, that the president’s powers of coercion are so great that he need not make more than a token effort at persuasion. Yet before going to war with Iran, Trump made virtually no attempt to explain the action to the American public. He was equally uninterested in soliciting the views of traditional US allies beyond Israel. Even when Trump belatedly sought help last week from those allies to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, he wrapped the request in a threat that refusal “will be very bad for the future of NATO.” An F/A-18F Super Hornet launches from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in support of Operation Epic Fury on March 1. US Navy Such threats have become routine in Trump II, even for America’s closest historic allies. He’s threatened to impose punishing tariffs around a long list of grievances — from Canada pursuing a trade agreement with China to European nations not supporting his attempts to seize Greenland. Besides the countries where he has used force, and the occasional suggestions he would use force to acquire Greenland, Trump has also threatened unilateral military action, over the objections of the local government, against drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia and has repeatedly struck small boats in the Caribbean that the administration says are ferrying drugs. Even some of Trump’s critics acknowledge that his pressure on other countries has produced some concessions, for instance favorable terms in new trade deals he’s negotiated, or agreements from Central and South American countries to pursue drug traffickers more robustly. “It’s working because we’ve created an environment where people trusted us for a long time and they’ve become dependent on us, and he’s weaponized that dependence in a way that gives us enormous leverage,” said one former senior national security official in a Democratic administration, who asked not to be identified. “[But] the collateral damage is enormous. Everybody has concluded that they have to figure out how to get out of this relationship with the United States, both because they can’t count on the US to help them and they can’t afford to be as vulnerable to American coercion.” Smoke and flames rise at the site of airstrikes on an oil depot in Tehran on March 7. Sasan/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images To Trump’s critics, the Iran war distills the limits of his approach. While the bombing campaign has decimated Iran’s leadership and degraded its military capacity, they argue, it has so far failed at the strategic objective of dislodging the regime or moderating its behavior; instead, Iran’s successful moves to disrupt oil shipping have demonstrated that even the most powerful military force can be vulnerable to asymmetric responses. And the brusque rejection by allies of Trump’s belated entreaties for help in safeguarding oil supplies shows the price of so consistently slighting those relationships. Schadlow agrees that Trump sees less value than previous presidents in consultation for its own sake. “He seems to chafe at the idea that he should change his goals, that the US should change its goals, in the interest of getting more buy-in from other countries,” she said. But she says critics are premature to conclude this approach will weaken America’s international position. For one thing, she said, Trump’s willingness to use force so assertively means “it’s probably fair to say that [American] deterrence has been in many respects restored. For a long, long time, it had been degraded.” The ledger, she says, on Trump’s approach to international relations is unfinished. “The problem is now that everyone reacts in a very short-term, tactical way,” Schadlow said. “In a broader sense we are seeing a reshaping that is taking place, across trade, across defense relationships and in some ways political alignments too. It is all unfolding now.” Assymetric conflict Compared with his dealings with international allies, Trump has shown even less interest in negotiating or consulting with Democrats in blue states and cities. Instead, he’s tried to pressure them with a broad arsenal of coercive techniques, including his massive, militarized immigration sweeps; the actual or attempted deployment of the National Guard into several Democratic-run cities (until the US Supreme Court stopped him); attempts to cut off federal funding for virtually every major domestic activity to jurisdictions that refuse to adopt conservative policies on diversity, transgender rights and immigration; and criminal investigations of multiple Democratic officials (including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey). Institutions such as law firms, universities and media organizations that Trump considers aligned with blue America have received the same strong-arm treatment through his moves to deny them government grants and contracts or to subject them to federal investigations. Trump has made some legislative accommodations to congressional Republicans. But he’s been nearly as rough with the few of them who have displayed independence from him. Measured against Trump’s own goals, Starr says, this belligerent approach has unquestionably succeeded in some ways — though at a very high cost. “It has worked in dominating the Republican Party — and by dominating the Republican Party he has been able to muscle through a great many changes,” Starr said. “But this pattern of ruling by conflict is disastrous for the country. Its inflaming all the divisions that exist and making it harder for our political institutions and everyday life to work in this country.” An F/A-18F Super Hornet prepares to launch from the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on March 3. US Navy/Reuters As in Iran, Trump’s approach also has left him vulnerable to asymmetric pushback at home. Opponents have snarled many of his hostile maneuvers (such as the threatened funding cut-offs for blue states and cities) in lower federal courts, and while the Supreme Court has usually sided with him, the justices have also invalidated some of his most aggressive moves. An even bigger obstacle for Trump has been opposition from average Americans. In a classic example of asymmetric conflict, the determined resistance of ordinary citizens in Minneapolis, armed only with whistles and smart phones, ultimately forced Trump to retreat from his immigration enforcement sweep there after federal forces killed two US citizens. Though Trump’s immigration agents in Minneapolis commanded incalculably more firepower than the protesters, he could not translate that tactical advantage into a political victory — a dynamic that broadly foreshadowed his dilemma in Iran. Brettschneider says the public pressure that forced Trump to reverse course in Minneapolis shows there’s no guarantee his coercive techniques will allow him to fully consolidate power in a manner that undermines the nation’s democratic system. But, he says, Trump’s setbacks so far are also no guarantee he will fail. “That view of power doesn’t always work,” Brettschneider said. “If you threaten people, sometimes they stand up for themselves. But will it work in the end? I wish I could say no, but we are at a fragile moment.” What’s clear is that while Trump, as in Minneapolis, may be forced into tactical reversals, his determination to subjugate those he considers adversaries at home and abroad remains undiminished. Jacobs, the political scientist, says Trump is right that the president does command “an awesome arsenal of powers” but is nonetheless trapped in a “delusion” that those powers allow him to impose his preferences, domestically or internationally. “Those formal powers do not translate into control,” Jacobs said. “In fact, they can well translate into quagmires, vulnerabilities and historic setbacks and I think we are seeing that right now with Iran.” The most effective presidents, Jacobs continued, inevitably recognize that one pillar of Neustadt’s analysis remains indisputable: For all the awesome power of the office, even the president must build consensus within the political (and global) system to achieve durable success. “That’s never happened with Donald Trump,” Jacobs said. “He’s rolling from one imperial moment to another.” The Iran war is the latest, but surely not the last, of Trump’s “imperial moments” to trigger shockwaves across the nation and the world.