The US Giant With A Limp

People protest against U.S. military attack on Iran in New York, the United States There is a particular kind of chaos that only the most powerful institutions can produce. This is the kind where everything is happening at once, nothing makes sense, and everyone involved insists it is all under control.

That is America in 2026. Right now, the United States is simultaneously waging a war and negotiating peace with the same country. It is blockading Iran’s ports while brokering a deal to reopen them.

It struck Iranian missile sites on Monday, what the military called “self-defence strikes”, while a ceasefire is technically in place. On Wednesday, Trump sat in a Cabinet meeting and promised a great deal, warned Iran not to wait him out, and declared that the Strait of Hormuz would be “open to everybody” with the US watching over it. The following day, American forces struck again.

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This is not what decisive looks like. This is what improvisation looks like when it has aircraft carriers behind it. The Iran war has revealed something important.

Not about America’s military, (which remains without peer) but about the distance between American power and American strategy. The two are not the same thing. Power is the ability to act.

Strategy is knowing what you are acting toward. The strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites last year damaged real infrastructure. The assassination of Khamenei in February reshaped the Middle East permanently.

Those were consequential acts. What has followed (the blockade, the ceasefire, the resumed strikes, the leaked deal, the White House denying the leaked deal), reads less like a strategy and more like a negotiation conducted at gunpoint with no clear endgame. At home, things are no prettier.

Trump’s approval on the economy stands at 30%. Not his overall number, his economy number, the one that was supposed to be his strongest suit. A CNN poll found that 77% of Americans, including a majority of his own Republicans, believe his policies have raised their cost of living.

Petrol prices are up 33% since February. Inflation is running above 3% with no sign of coming down soon. Economists are using the word stagflation.

That is the rare and miserable condition where prices keep rising while growth slows and the Federal Reserve cannot do much about either without making the other worse. The tariffs that were meant to punish trading partners and bring factories home have functioned, in practice, as a tax on ordinary Americans. The effective tariff rate has gone from just over 2% to nearly 12% in little over a year.

The last time America taxed imports at this rate, 1909 was approaching. It did not work then either. None of this is a death sentence for Trump’s political standing.

Incumbents have recovered from worse. But the midterms are in November, and independent voters, the ones who actually decide elections, are sitting at 34% approval. Every president who lost a wave midterm saw that number fall below 40% before Election Day. The math is not comfortable.

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