The Long-Term Negative Consequences of Unilateralism

Trump’s order to bomb Iran demonstrated the power of the American military, but at what cost to other U.S. national interests?

Once receiving the order to attack Iran, the U.S. armed forces performed their duties brilliantly. I am not a military expert, but former generals I respect have concluded that this operation was a fantastic success. Whether you supported the decision to bomb Iran or not, all Americans should admire what our warriors can do. The B-2 long-range stealth bombers that flew from the United States to deliver the GBU-57 MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator) bombs to attack the Fordow facility, and the Tomahawks launched from submarines to attack targets near Isfahan, were an incredible display of American military might. And no American plane or ship was hit; no American life was lost. This operation sends a powerful signal to our adversaries of our extraordinary military capabilities. That’s a good outcome for American national security interests.

Whether this military operation achieved its political objective—the end of Iran’s nuclear weapons program—is harder to judge today. That will take a long time to assess. Without question, the American air strikes seriously damaged several elements of Iran’s nuclear program. How much damage they caused is still unknown. Alarmingly, the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that Iran could start enriching uranium again “in a matter of months.” That they can does not mean that they will. Hopefully, Iran’s theocrats will now finally realize that the pursuit of a nuclear weapons program did not enhance their security; just the opposite. That debate, however, could endure for a long time. We will only be able to judge the success of this military action compared to diplomacy decades from now. After all, the Iran nuclear deal (the JCPOA) was signed in 2015. A decade later, despite Trump’s imprudent decision to withdraw from the agreement in 2018, Iran still had not acquired a nuclear weapon. Trump’s bombing of Iran needs to give the world eleven years of no Iranian nuclear weapons—that is, to 2036—before it can be declared more successful than diplomacy in stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program. (And even then, one must think about the counterfactual—had the U.S. remained in the JCPOA, I believe that Iran would not have developed a nuclear weapon for even longer and maybe never.)

President Donald Trump and his national security team meet in the Situation Room of the White House on June 21, 2025. Photo by The White House via Wiki Commons.

There are also some signs that the American military strike has weakened the autocratic grip on power of the Supreme Leader and his supporters. (See my friend Abbas Milani, the director of Stanford’s Iranian Studies program, explore this topic at length here.) The regime’s crackdown on the remaining elements of independent civil society underscores its fear of backlash. While some Iranians are rallying around the flag, as citizens often do (including our own) after being attacked, other segments of Iranian society and significant portions of the Iranian diaspore are also blaming the theocrats for wasting billions on a nuclear program that has not produced much energy, led to the imposition of comprehensive sanctions weakening the Iranian economy, and now triggered a military attack from Israel and the United States. The Supreme Leader and his regime also failed to provide even basic security to some of its most prominent leaders, who Israel assassinated. This sign of weakness could trigger an internal debate within the regime. I remain in the skeptical camp, but if the Israeli and American strikes somehow mark the beginning of peaceful democratization—led by Iranians, not us!—that would be a fantastic achievement. After enduring decades of tyranny, the Iranian people deserve to live in freedom. And the threat from the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United States and our allies and partners only ends completely after a peaceful transition from theocracy to democracy in Iran.

These hopes about future positive outcomes from Trump’s bombing of Iran—and to underscore, they are just hopes right now, not assured outcomes—must be assessed next to the possible long-term costs to American national interests from the attack due to the way Trump carried it out —unilaterally. support the idea that the U.S. president should use preemptive military force alone—without the endorsement of the U.S. Congress, our NATO allies, or the United Nations Security Council—if our country is facing an imminent threat. However, that was surely not the case last month. First, there has been no credible evidence presented that Iran was “only weeks away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon,” as the White House claimed. Second, if somehow that was true, the Israeli attacks most certainly set back the program for some time, even without hitting the underground Fordow facility.

So that means that Trump made this decision to bomb Iran alone and without the United States being immediately threatened. I don’t like that. That hurts our unity at home and our reputation abroad.

“But all presidents act this way,” or so the Trump administration wants the American people to believe. That’s not true. To be sure, American presidents have launched attacks against terrorist organizations without congressional or UN approval. But this bombing campaign was against a sovereign state; it was an act of war. Thankfully, the Islamic Republic of Iran does not have the capability to strike back effectively. But if it did, we would be at war right now. For other acts of war, recent U.S. presidents have sought support from some other body so that they were not acting unilaterally.

President George H.W. Bush garnered the support of the U.S. Congress (majority votes in both houses) and the UN Security Council (UNSCR 678) for his war against Iraq in 1991. President Clinton had the support of NATO allies, who voted unanimously to endorse U.S. air strikes against Serbia in 1999. President George W. Bush had Congressional, NATO, and UNSC support for his invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Although he failed to win a UN Security Council resolution or a NATO vote of confidence, President George W. Bush at least had the blessing of both the Senate (77-23) and the House (296-133) for his invasion of Iraq in 2003. President Obama secured the passage of two UN Security resolutions (1970 & 1973)—Russia and China both abstained—to authorize the use of force against Libya in 2011. That bombing campaign included a coalition of not just NATO allies but Arab partners as well. Last month, President Trump did not secure the support of the UN Security Council, NATO, or the U.S. Congress to authorize his decision to attack Iran. He acted alone.

In acting alone, Trump sparked a polarizing debate at home about the legitimacy of the strike and our assessment of its success. Such divisions do not serve U.S. national interests. Had Trump declassified the intelligence showing the imminent threat, he could have persuaded more Americans and members of Congress about the necessity of using force. President Bush and his administration did that in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 2013, when President Obama could not secure congressional support to bomb Syria after it was discovered that Syrian dictator Assad was using chemical weapons against his own citizens, he decided not to attack. I was with Obama in St. Petersburg in September 2013 when he was making this decision. (I wrote about it in detail in Chapter Twenty of my last book, From Cold War to Hot Peace.) Obama rightly did not want to go at it alone.

When Americans are divided, especially about national security issues, our enemies win. When we are fighting among ourselves, we are not focused on fighting our adversaries abroad. No one cheers for American political polarization louder than Xi and Putin.

In attacking alone—or more precisely, with Israeli support and probably quiet tacit support from our Arab partners—Trump also underscored his disdain for multilateralism. Trump and his administration clearly do not value working with international institutions and multilateral organizations. I do. I write extensively about the virtues of partners, allies, and multilateralism in advancing American national interests, as well as the negative consequences of going it alone, in my new book, Autocrats versus Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New World Disorder. By unilaterally bombing Iran, the United States looks like the superpower in the world that does not respect sovereignty or international law, while China does. That does not help the United States to compete with Xi and the Communist Party of China globally, especially at a time when Xi is investing heavily in expanding Chinese influence in existing multilateral institutions, as well as creating new ones anchored by Beijing to the exclusion of Washington. Leaders and societies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America do not admire unilateralism. They tolerate it, of course, because they do not have the means to stop it. But they don’t like it. In the developing world, China’s rhetorical commitment (although its actual practice is more hypocritical) to respecting sovereignty and working within international institutions is gaining favor. To compete effectively with China in the 21st century, we must understand these attitudes and then develop new strategies to shape them in our favor. Bombing countries unilaterally is the opposite of that.

Finally, legitimizing preemptive wars also does not serve American national security interests. Putin, remember, claimed that he had to launch a preemptive war against Ukraine because of some alleged “imminent threat.” If Xi decides to invade Taiwan, he is likely to portray it as a necessary preemptive war, too. Our ability to rally the rest of the world to oppose such an attack will be weakened by our own preemptive attack on Iran. Many will say that we, great powers, are all guilty of preemptive war, and that's just what great powers do.

I do not want to return to a world where great powers attack weaker countries whenever they want. Been there, done that. Despite its flaws, the international system established by the United States after World War II has contributed to a more stable and prosperous world. Going back to the laws of the jungle—the practices that produced World War I and World War II and countless great powers wars before that—will ultimately not serve the long-term interests of the United States or the democratic world.