Name: Why Trump's war is so risky for his political future | DW News
Uploaded: 2026-03-05T17:11:37.000Z
Duration: 12 min 48 s
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Adverbs of manner

When the US along with Israel, attacked Iran early on Saturday, they started another war in the Middle East.

But the Trump administration don't want to use the word.

Transition words & phrases

They don't want to officially declare it a war because that would require the backing of Congress.

And that has resulted in statements like this one from one of the most powerful Republicans in Washington.

We're four days in to a very specific, clear mission and operation, Operation Epic Fury.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's special military operation, otherwise known as Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine.

We want to discuss those verbal gymnastics and the reasons behind them with Scott R.

Anderson, who has spent many years advising US Policymakers, policymakers on legal issues, especially in connection to major events in the Middle East.

We'll come back to Scott in just a moment after we take a look at the push by many prominent Democrats and some Republicans to rein back Trump's war against Iran.

They accused the president of starting a war without congressional approval and want to limit Trump's ability to escalate military actions.

But one resolution to do that has already been knocked back by the Senate, and

another is expected to fail in the House.

The president has a responsibility to make the case to the American people as to the justification for this war, but

has provided no evidence that there was an imminent threat to the American people here or abroad.

The president has indicated that he's interested in regime change, but

we know that regime change, wars have never worked out for the American people.

And if you ask the American public, it seems that the majority agree with Hakeem Jeffries there.

A poll carried out this week by YouGov on behalf of CBS News asked Americans whether Trump needs congressional approval to continue military action against Iran.

A clear majority, 69%, said yes, he needs approval 31% said he does not need approval.

Now, Scott R. Anderson is a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution.

He has advised policymakers on legal questions connected to U.S.

foreign and national security policy, especially in the Middle East.

That's why he's so well qualified to be speaking to me right now.

If it's not a war against Iran, what is it?

So it's a fair question in the US Legal system, at least the way it's been interpreted by the executive branch.

And no court has ever reversed them or hedged them in on this understanding.

To date, the essential line is unclear, but

they've defined what the line for a War for constitutional purposes, meaning a war that requires congressional authorization as being a pretty high threshold, usually involving the exposure of US Soldiers, a significant number of US Soldiers to risk over an extended period of time, usually something like a major ground campaign on par with the Iraq War, the Vietnam War, something along those lines.

Air campaigns, many executive branch presidential administrations have said don't qualify, primarily because US Soldiers are really not put at risk in substantial numbers, particularly when you're dealing with a weaker adversary over whom the United States has air superiority.

it has been the view of the executive branch over the last few administrations, and

that is the sort of perspective the Trump administration is now leaning on and leveraging to its advantage to try and justify this campaign.

Scott, why are Republicans suddenly so sensitive about what it's called?

Well, in the current moment, there's a big part of the Republican Party that is restraint oriented, that's skeptical of overseas adventurism and particularly regime change.

President Trump really rallied these people.

He's espoused those reviews J.D. vance, the Vice president, have espoused very clearly for a long time.

And that part of the party is really skeptical of what's happening here.

So this effort to not call it a war is an effort by Republican politicians, I think, to try and make the case that this is limited in scale.

This isn't like the Iraq war or other major overseas adventures.

The problem is that's hard to reconcile with what the Trump administration is saying, what President Trump himself is saying, and

what we're seeing before our eyes, which is that this is a pretty major military undertaking that the White House is saying could last for weeks and has already expanded to the entire region, not just Iran.

Verbal gymnastics is not an uncommon game in politics when it comes to military action.

It is interesting, though, from Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who told assembled generals, the top brass, that the military would no longer walk on eggshells when it came to defining things.

The man who personally hung out the sign for the Department of War, he is suddenly very careful not to refer to what he has unleashed as war.

What would the legal implications be if war was formally declared?

If Congress were to formally declare war, it would essentially eliminate all the domestic legal and constitutional limitations that the president would otherwise face.

The main ones would be that question of whether this is a war for constitutional purposes.

Essentially, the president would be free to undertake a large scale, long term ground campaign.

The other barrier is a limitation imposed by Congress through the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which says after 60 to 90 days.

It's usually 60 days, but can flex a little bit in certain circumstances.

There either has to be congressional authorization or the War Powers Resolution says the President has to terminate the involvement of US Military personnel in that operation.

Once that line gets crossed, there are arguments the executive branch has deployed as to why certain types of campaigns, including air campaigns, can continue, but

they've never been subjected to do a judicial test.

And usually at that point, the legal risk of facing a legal challenge and having to justify one's arguments or face judicial scrutiny increases past that 60 to 90 day mark.

That's why most presidents have tended to wrap up their campaigns relatively soon after that line is crossed, even if they don't stop it shortly before that line, as the resolution, I think, is rightly understood to have intended.

You talked a little about how this sits with Trump's MAGA base, his supporters, the people Trump himself said would not care if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue.

How do you think they feel about being at war when they were promised specifically this is not what would happen.

I think this is gonna be a real point of controversy and concern, not just for President Trump, but

also for other members of the Republican Party.

The anti interventionist, restraint oriented wing of the Republican Party is really influential, and

it's a view of the world that we've seen informed other parts of what the Trump administration has put forward that now appears to have been moved away from really substantially.

We've really substantial debates within the Republican Party over aspects of this foreign policy, particularly relation to Israel, particularly relation to the Middle East.

And those heated debates are only gonna go hotter as this campaign continues, because it is exactly the fault line where different wings of the Republican Party disagree.

You can say the same thing of the Democratic Party as well, but

There's a lot more people kind of straddling the middle, and

of course, they're not the party in power, so they don't face the challenge of having to make the hard decision about to undertake this sort of action or not.

For any other politician that I can remember, this would surely be a huge problem already a central promise being smashed.

How is it always somehow okay for Donald Trump when he does these type of things?

You know, all I'll say is it's a very early.

This is a risky maneuver for the president, and

I think that may yet come back to bite him politically and in other ways.

For the moment, we have to bear in mind The President is in pretty strong control of his party, even though there's narrow control in Congress.

We are in election season and particularly Republican primary season.

He is able to rally a lot of strong support within the Republican base so that he can push to challenge people who are running for office, challenge them from the right essentially by people who support him more.

And so it's particularly sensitive moment for Republican members of Congress who are running for reelection.

However, as you get closer to election day, more and more of those Republican primaries will take place and you'll have more and more candidates who are looking forward to the general election where they have to run against a democr.

And in those cases, it's often useful to say, well, actually I'm gonna tack more towards the middle.

I'm gonna reject some of the more less popular things the President may be doing, or at least try and differentiate myself so that I can make a case to swing voters who might not like the most controversial elements of the President's policies.

So as time goes on, the political dynamics are gonna shift.

But at this moment, this early in this campaign, I think it's hard for even Republican senators who, Congressmen who would be skeptical of what the President is doing to buck him too.

Hard to, because it's so early in this campaign.

The costs haven't really piled up quite yet for Americans.

But as this campaign continues, that is going to change.

Does your experience tell you about how our attitudes to this war or any other war tend to change if it starts to drag on 100%?

I think that is the universal experience, is that as these campaigns drag on further, sometimes they fall off the media headlines, sometimes they get kind of forgotten in the background.

You can think of Syria intervention or to some extent the campaign against the Houthis over the last few years has fallen in that way.

But those were much lower tempo, much lower risk, substantial, but not anything like this scale.

Here you are seeing hundreds, thousands of Americans have their lives disrupted.

We have US Embassies being evacuated of non essential personnel across a region.