Trump’s Schrödinger’s problem
The MAGA base reelected Donald Trump on the promises to end unnecessary interferences, and “endless wars” in foreign lands that dragged on for years, and hurt the domestic purchasing power. The US president built his image around the rhetoric of calling the previous wars as blunders that cost Americans blood and treasure. He famously opposed the wars in Iraq (2003), Afghanistan (2001-2021), Libya (2011), and the tendency of the presidents to change regimes in nations that were far from their spheres of influence.
The arrival of Trump as a “Peace President” was heralded as a gamechanger for geopolitics and world affairs. Yet, in his first tenure, he engaged in catastrophic decisions like bombing Iran (2020), airstrikes on Al-Qaeda, support to the Saudi Arabia-UAE interventions in Yemen and Syria, and sending troops to Syria and paratroopers at a base in Kuwait. During his second tenure, the 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June 2025, and the current more than one-month-old Iran war, which started one of the most ravaging multi-nation war after World War II, shows that Trump’s foreign policy can be characterised by an aversion to diplomacy, and a knee-jerk reliance on hostility.
An interesting feature of the ongoing war is Schrodinger’s dilemma. This diplomatic situation, which mirrors the probabilistic uncertainties of quantum physics, arises when there is ambiguity about the causes, impacts, rationale, and exits related to a war. In the case of the present crisis in West Asia, the public is left in a condition of perpetual uncertainty due to the leaders' contradictory claims that the war is resolved while acting as though it is growing. Schrodinger’s wars are those which keep lurking, and remain incomplete, without a clear strategy on how to end the war.
So, temporary diplomatic measures substitute for concrete thought-out ones to end a particular phase of fighting, and postpone the war for the next level of escalation. Rhetoric, false victory parades, and biased media narratives emerge as useful tools to make the absurd phenomenon sound reasonable and rooted in strategic wisdom. This paradoxical thinking has engulfed the strategic thinking of nations, starkly evident with the Trump theatrics. What is interesting is that in most wars and conflicts related to Trump, he proclaims that he has ended them successfully. In reality, they lie low, and simmer for bigger clashes.
These Schrodinger’s wars, as we call them, witness brief pauses, yet the problem, the root cause, remains unaddressed, and brings forth a series of fresh escalations. The paradoxical and contradictory stance to re-start an unfinished previous Schrodinger war in West Asia, does a de-service to the strategic realism and efforts at international peace negotiations. The lack of clarity is evident not only with the president but with the officials who crusade for the war to continue. Robert A Pape, an academician, made this argument to show how escalation favours Iran, and deliberate horizontal escalation by Iran has successfully worked.
Pape argues that “the initial strike (by Israel-US) may have solved a tactical problem, but it created a strategic one.” This is why a Schrodinger’s war collapsed the strategic thinking of the US, and its closest ally, Israel. Political pundits and commentators reason that the American war on Iran has backfired. In an article in the reputed Foreign Affairs magazine, Nate Swanson explains the reasons for the failure of strategic reality. Implicit in his arguments is Trump's Schrodinger behaviour when he writes that “Trump likely wants to declare victory soon.” But the success remains elusive, even as there is an urgency to declare the winners and losers by the administration without achieving the goals.
Over the past few weeks, the demands and guarantees regarding Tehran, initially total annihilation, roll back or end of nuclear enrichment, opening the Strait of Hormuz, and a peace minus Strait, have changed. Some demands related to nuclear and shipping issues were non-issues as Tehran fulfilled them before the war. By dishonestly walking out of ongoing peace negotiations, and attacking Tehran, the US failed at a regime change. Last summer, Trump declared during the 12-day war that the US B2 bomber strikes ‘obliterated’ Iran’s nuclear programme. This was supported by the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, before the Senate Hearings in March 2026.
Unable to decide why the US went to war, and what the goal of the war is, the administration behaves in a contradictory fashion. As David A Graham of The Atlantic magazine writes, “Now it cannot even decide whether the war is still going on.” In an interview during the first week of the war, Trump confidently declared, “I think the war is very complete, pretty much.” Yet, a post by the department of defense on X the same day stated, “We have Only Just Begun to Fight.” Such messages and conflicting signals can frustrate any war strategy.
Schrodinger’s wars inherently pose a threat to rational game theory. Aaron David Miller and Daniel C Kurtzer point in an article in Foreign Policy magazine that failed negotiations “reveal that the negotiating structure that US President Donald Trump has created to deal with conflict is a hot mess.” They argue that assigning important posts to relatives, sons-in-law, and best friends reveal the deep lack of strategic thinking minds. They add that family and friends “are no Kissinger. And when it comes to strategic thinking, Trump is no Richard Nixon (former president who tried détente with the USSR and China).”
The bottom line is that the war that Trump started has no good ending. At some point, he needs to choose the logic and stability of the market, or a continuation of war. What will be interesting to watch is how the Iranian elite military moves forward. The decapitation strikes on Iran, and Trump’s ‘little excursion’ phrase legitimised the Iranian guards, which now has the support of the majority Iran. Tehran does not seem to be in a mood to end the war on normal concessions after the Trump war legitimised their otherwise shattering credentials.
By doing this, Trump created a legacy which only he feels will be remembered for its good conclusions. His war and diplomacy legacy may well turn out to be an acknowledgement that he, as we said before, is no Nixon, who with his national security advisor and secretary of state, the renowned Henry Kissinger, pulled off three history-defining moments. They opened the pathway to China, initiated Paris peace accords on Vietnam, and worked on three disengagement accords after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.
