THE PUNDIT

In 2016, two groups of Republican national security experts signed two letters, in March and August, opposing Donald Trump’s candidacy for the American presidency. Their arguments focused mainly on his lack of merit, possible recklessness, and inconsistency with American values. Signing these letters was seen almost as a symbolic gesture in the atmosphere of 2016, when many believed Trump had only a limited chance of defeating Hillary Clinton. Ten years later, these letters appear more relevant than ever in the context of the future of world order.

When Trump won his first term in 2016, he took unprecedented foreign policy steps by moving the embassy to Jerusalem, threatening European allies, and normalizing relations between Israel and several Arab countries. The question in political debates became whether populism, represented by Trump, could achieve greater strategic gains than the sophisticated and conservative approaches adopted by several presidents before him. In January 2026, Trump celebrated with his supporters the success of his surgical offensive on Venezuela with almost zero losses, renewing the question of the feasibility of populism in international relations. A few weeks later, Trump initiated a war against Iran, placing the U.S. and the world in a real dilemma.

Sandra Destradi and Johannes Plagemann worked extensively on the topic of populism in foreign policy, particularly in India, and defined it as a personalized way of managing foreign policy and a tool of democratic mobilization for specific policies. The central problem of populism is shifting decision-making processes from institutions to personal relations between leaders and their close aides, with an accompanying departure from regular rules of rationalization. Looking back at the two letters mentioned above, the criticisms directed at Trump focused on two main pillars: merit and morality. Current criticism from John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs also focuses on these same pillars.

Trump shares with Obama a vision of the decline of the U.S. as a superpower, but he does not share Obama’s proposed remedy. While Obama suggested reallocating American resources to face threats emerging from the East, Trump believes changing the current world order is the key to ending American decline. His transactional approach focuses on the immediate gains of American investments and does not recognize strategic, long-term, and intangible benefits.

Based on this vision, Trump initiated the war against Iran as a blitzkrieg-style collective decapitation of the Iranian leadership on February 28. Trump, who launched the war early on a Saturday morning with expectations of regime collapse within days, did not plan for a prolonged conflict. His administration failed to provide a persuasive reason to the public for starting the war. The New York Times report on the war decision reinforced claims that Trump ignored recommendations and assessments from his institutions and instead favored Netanyahu’s promise of a quick victory over Iran. In other words, Trump’s populism adopted the personalized style Destradi and Plagemann described, but it failed to mobilize the public in support of the war. Opposition among Americans rose from 54% in March to 58% in April.

Sachs’ criticism of Trump’s foreign policy highlights its inconsistency with American values through its disregard for international law, human rights, multilateralism, and international organizations. Mearsheimer offers a more realist critique, focused on the feasibility of Trump’s transactional approach. In his view, the world order founded after World War II still serves American interests, and dismantling it at this moment is not a rational or calculated move.

The current dilemma surrounding the closure of the Hormuz Strait illustrates Mearsheimer’s criticism. The central question is why Iran did not close the Strait before the war, despite suffering under international and American sanctions that placed the country under severe economic pressure. The answer is that the Iranian regime sought to advance its interests within the rules of the current world order, especially international law. The U.S. succeeded in imposing a tough package of sanctions on Iran without major financial or human cost by using the mechanisms of that order. During Trump’s second term, however, he broke those rules and struck Iran twice while negotiating with it.

The current war pushed Iran to weaponize the Strait. Twenty-five percent of the world’s oil, 20% of its gas, and 30% of its fertilizers pass through the waterway. In other words, geography granted Iran the ability to sanction the world if the world sanctions it. Although Iranian officials still adopt a cautious discourse, justifying control over the Strait as a response to American-Israeli aggression, Iranian actions reflect a desire to play according to Trump’s new rules: disregarding international law and the norms of the existing world order.

The war on Iran not only reveals the dangers of populism but may also mark the beginning of its decline as a political ideology. The recent loss of the Hungarian populist Viktor Orbán, along with the shrinking of the MAGA base among registered voters from 36% in 2025 to 30% in 2026, are strong signs of weakening populism as a political preference. It remains unclear where the war on Iran will lead the world economy, but it may demonstrate that populism is dangerous enough to cease being a viable option.