TORONTO — The United States is seven months away from the most consequential midterm elections in its history. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump, together with Israel, has started a war against Iran. These are the ideal conditions for a head of state to seize power in a coup.
Trump’s chief concern is preserving his own comfort and power, much of which will be lost if the Democrats retake control of the House of Representatives, as they look poised to do. Clearly, Trump has no qualms about election meddling: he already attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and has mused about canceling the midterms. More recently, he has tried to push through legislation that would severely restrict voting, making it a privilege.
When it comes to Iran, Trump and U.S. Secretary of “War” (Defense) Pete Hegseth have been stuck in the logic of escalation, according to which the feeling of defeat today can be reversed by doing the first thing that comes to mind tomorrow. Each day that the conflict and uncertainty about it continue — including about whether the current two-week ceasefire with Iran will hold — people around the president will profit (through insider trading, political bets, or arms dealing). And the longer the situation lasts, the greater the chance that it will be exploited for a coup attempt.
Against this backdrop, Trump’s proposal to boost the defense budget by more than 40% should be understood as a payoff for the officers whose backing he hopes to secure. Hegseth, for his part, is frantically purging people of principle from the highest ranks.
Admittedly, turning a foreign war into a domestic dictatorship is inherently difficult, and Trump’s position is weak. But if he did attempt a coup, it would likely follow one of five scenarios.
Trump could argue that an ongoing war requires a steady hand. U.S. President George W. Bush relied on this argument — which ignores whether the war was worth starting in the first place, and whether those in charge are qualified to wage one—to win the 2004 presidential election. By contrast, Trump would have to use it to cancel an election or to overturn the results.
Further complicating matters is that Trump would need allies who are willing to break the law. But most Americans oppose the war in Iran, and the conflict has exposed cracks in his MAGA movement. Moreover, some of the likely election riggers have been fired.
The second scenario is Bonapartism, in which the aspiring dictator fights for democracy abroad even as he dismantles it at home. As the name implies, this strategy was behind the Napoleonic Wars. Trump, however, has never pretended to care about democracy, instead preferring dictators like Russian President Vladimir Putin, and he campaigned against nation-building elsewhere, promising to spend the money on Americans.
Alternatively, Trump could pursue Bismarckian unification, in which the ruler seeks to bring the nation together. The Prussian leader Otto von Bismarck unified several German-speaking states by winning three wars (against Denmark, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and France) between 1864 and 1871. Because this was achieved by force rather than by revolution or elections, the new German Reich was a militaristic monarchy from the beginning, with an essentially symbolic parliament. Trump would no doubt like this model, but has the problem of being unable to win one war, let alone three.
The fourth approach would be that of the fascist leader who sacrifices enough of his own people in a major campaign to ensure that the survivors accept that everything is a struggle, enemies are everywhere, and the world is targeting them. Mass death becomes a source of meaning, uniting the Führer with his Volk. Putin’s war in Ukraine contains an element of this, but the classic example is the remarkably difficult Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, which, as Victor Klemperer’s diaries show, bolstered the fascist movement in Germany for more than three years.
Source: Korea Times News
