--- title: The World Is Watching Trump’s War and Turning Away description: The American president has no coalition, no coherent rationale, and no regard for allies. The world is taking notes. canonical: https://time.com/article/2026/03/18/iran-israel-china-india-trump-war/ author: Bobby Ghosh article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-03-18T10:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-18T17:49:48.165Z og:title: The World Is Watching Trump’s War and Turning Away og:description: "The American president has no coalition, no coherent rationale, and no regard for allies. The world is taking notes," writes Bobby Ghosh og:url: https://time.com/article/2026/03/18/iran-israel-china-india-trump-war/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0dbd5f9ed98af396/69b9570837384bb269597d86/GettyImages-2266243698.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: GettyImages-2266243698.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The World Is Watching Trump’s War and Turning Away twitter:description: "The American president has no coalition, no coherent rationale, and no regard for allies. The world is taking notes," writes Bobby Ghosh twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0dbd5f9ed98af396/69b9570837384bb269597d86/GettyImages-2266243698.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The World Is Watching Trump’s War and Turning Away by [Bobby Ghosh](/author/bobby-ghosh/) ## Bobby Ghosh Ghosh, a former TIME foreign correspondent and International Editor, is a commentator on geopolitics. Mar 18, 2026 10:00 AM CUT  A house in Tehran, Iran damaged by missile attacks on March 15, 2026. A house in Tehran, Iran damaged by missile attacks on March 15, 2026.Majid Saeedi––Getty Images by [Bobby Ghosh](/author/bobby-ghosh/) ## Bobby Ghosh Ghosh, a former TIME foreign correspondent and International Editor, is a commentator on geopolitics. Mar 18, 2026 10:00 AM CUT In the spring of 2003, I was in Baghdad when President George W. Bush stood on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared [“Mission Accomplished.”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission%5FAccomplished%5Fspeech "undefined") The city was burning around me with the first embers of the insurgency that would consume Iraq for years. We knew, those of us on the ground, that the mission was far from accomplished. But Bush’s cringe worthy triumphalism had a certain recognizable political logic: he wanted to show his countrymen and the wider world that the sacrifice, whether of American treasure or Iraqi blood,had been worth it. I thought of that moment when Donald Trump spoke with undisguised glee on Mar. 10 about his military [sinking 46 Iranian naval vessels](https://twitchy.com/justmindy/2026/03/10/trump-says-they-like-sinking-iran-warships-n2425851 "undefined") rather than capturing them. “It’s more fun to sink them,” Trump quoted his commanders as saying. “I said, that’s a — they like sinking them better.” Fun. The president of the United States described the destruction of a navy, the killing of sailors as fun. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” was politically cynical and factually wrong. Trump’s open delight in the violence he is orchestrating is something qualitatively different. It is a signal to every country on earth — ally, adversary, and everyone in between — about the callous, even nihilistic, power America has become**.** I spent more than five years reporting from Iraq during the American occupation. I watched how the war eroded U.S. standing not just in the Arab world, but globally. The invasion itself was contested; the occupation became a byword for hubris; the failure to find weapons of mass destruction turned justified skepticism into permanent distrust. Bush paid a steep diplomatic price for all of it. ### George Bush in Baghdad Bush spent months making his case at the United Nations, lobbying allies, trying to construct at least a veneer of legitimacy, and built a threadbare “coalition of the willing” before he invaded Iraq. He and his team were aware, even if they sometimes ignored it, that American power depended not just on its military might but on its moral standing. When that standing was damaged, they at least pretended to care. The president himself apologized the for [Abu Ghraib abuses](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/may/07/usa.iraq2 "undefined"), and the [desecration of a Quran](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2008/5/21/bush-apologises-for-quran-shooting "undefined") by an American soldier. Nobody in his cabinet dismissed the rules of engagement as “[stupid](https://www.military.com/feature/2026/03/05/hegseths-stupid-rules-of-engagement-line-and-what-roe-actually-do.html "undefined"),” nor did his generals describe the killing of enemy combatants as [“fun.” ](https://www.dailymirror.lk/print/international/Trump-says-US-generals-called-sinking-Iranian-ship-near-Sri-Lanka-fun/107-335082 "undefined") Trump has dispensed with even the pretense. He started the war against Iran [on Feb. 28](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/28/trump-us-military-iran-strikes-middle-east-oil.html "undefined") without a declaration from Congress, without a coherent public rationale, without a warning to most American allies. This brazen unilateralism starkly illustrated that the American president has no interest in the architecture of international norms, laws, and structures that generations of U.S. leaders, Republicans and Democrats, labored to build. The reasons the Trump Administration offered for going to the war have [shifted almost by the day](https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/03/politics/trump-iran-war-explanations-goals "undefined"). Was it Iran’s nuclear program? Its ballistic missiles? Its support for terrorist proxies? The imminent threat to U.S. forces? All of the above, apparently, depending on who was speaking and when. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth offered one explanation; Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered another, at odds with the first. An [assessment](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-statements-made-by-trump-to-justify-u-s-strikes-on-iran "undefined") by the Defense Intelligence Agency last year said Iran was not producing nuclear weapons and could not develop intercontinental missiles until 2035\. In his State of the Union address, days before the U.S. military strikes o Iran, Trump declared, that Iran could “soon” have missiles reaching the American homeland.When the Bush Administration ginned up the case for Iraq, it had the discipline to stick to a single fabricated story: Weapons of Mass Destruction. ### Trump, Tehran, and the world The incoherence of the Trump Administration’s war aims shouts that the reasons do not matter. America will strike when and where it chooses. The damage to American standing is visible in the reactions of countries that Washington has long counted as friends. Consider India. New Delhi has spent years carefully cultivating what it calls “strategic autonomy” — a careful balance between its ties to the U.S. and its historic relationships with countries like Iran. On Feb. 25, the Iranian ship IRIS Dena participated in a major naval exercise [hosted](https://www.military.com/daily-news/investigations-and-features/2026/03/05/iranian-ship-was-leaving-indian-naval-exercise-when-sunk-raising-concerns-new-delhi.html "undefined") by the Indian Navy in the port of Visakhapatnam. India’s Defense Minister Rajnath Singh presided over the [opening](https://x.com/KanwalSibal/status/2029438199546954240 "undefined") ceremony. Nine days later, a U.S. submarine fired a Mark 48 torpedo into the hull of the Iranian ship as she sailed home, in international waters off the coast of Sri Lanka. [Eighty-seven bodies were recovered.](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/iranian-warship-was-sailing-home-from-india-exhibition-when-u-s-sank-it "undefined") Washington apparently never told the Indian government about the planned attack. The reaction in India was illuminating. Arun Prakash, a retired Admiral of the Indian Navy described the sinking of the Iranian ship as, [“a senseless and inflammatory act.”](https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/international/us-navy-embarrasses-india-by-sinking-unarmed-iranian-warship "undefined") Brahma Chellaney, a strategic analyst, wrote that Washington had effectively turned India’s maritime neighborhood “into a war zone.” Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in India, [accused](https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/asia/2026/03/06/modi-criticised-for-silence-over-us-sinking-of-iranian-ship-returning-from-indian-naval-exercises/ "undefined") Prime Minister Narendra Modi of surrendering India’s strategic independence. Modi, who had been eager to be seen as Trump’s friend and who recently visited Israel stayed quiet for days. Seen from New Delhi, American unilateralism is seen as humiliating India, a country that has invested years in presenting itself as the “net security provider” of the Indian Ocean. In diplomatic terms, the sinking violated “the unwritten code of naval hospitality.” It made America’s friends feel like pawns. The Gulf Arab states are equally unsettled, if differently exposed. The governments of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman [were not formally notified](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/gulf-allies-disappointed-u-s-didnt-notify-about-iran-attacks-and-ignored-their-warnings-sources-say "undefined") before the Trump Administration started military strikes on Iran. Italy’s defense ministerwas on a private [visit to Dubai](https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/italys-stranded-defence-minister-return-dubai-military-aircraft-2026-03-01/ "undefined") when the bombs started falling. He had no advance warning. “This is Netanyahu’s war,” Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former Saudi intelligence chief, [told CNN bluntly](https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/09/politics/trump-iran-israel-europe-gulf-allies-analysis "undefined"). “He somehow convinced the president to support his views.” Saudi Arabia has since been quietly using its [diplomatic](https://www.timesofisrael.com/saudi-arabia-said-to-intensify-talks-with-iran-to-defuse-mideast-war/ "undefined") backchannel with Iran to try to contain the blowback. These are not the actions of countries that feel they are partners in an enterprise; these are countries scrambling to manage a crisis that was dumped on them. And then there is East Asia, where the strategic stakes are existential. A mere three months ago, Washington unveiled [a national security strategy](https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf "undefined") that named the Indo-Pacific as the primary geopolitical battleground and the deterrence of China as its central objective. Since then, the Abraham Lincoln [carrier strike group](https://japantoday.com/category/politics/analysis-trump's-asian-allies-fear-iran-war-will-sap-defences-against-china "undefined") and at least six missile destroyers have been pulled from Pacific ports and redeployed to theater of war in the Middle East. The Trump Administration has notified the South Korean government that it might relocate the [Patriot](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/10/south-korea-patriot-transfer-iran-war-air-defenses.html "undefined") air defense missile systems based in the country— vital to deterring North Korea —to the Middle East. Seoul has objected; Washington has not fully relented. Taiwanese officials are [increasingly](https://theprint.in/world/trumps-asian-allies-fear-iran-war-will-sap-defences-against-china/2869295/?amp "undefined") anxious. China has watched quietly and carefully. Every week that the U.S. is consumed in the Middle East is a week that China can press its advantages in the Pacific undisturbed.The costs of American unilateralism were apparent after Iraq. But there are crucial differences between Bush and Trump, and they compound the damage. ### Great power, great callousness When Bush went to war in Afghanistan, much of the worldstill believed American intentions were, at bottom, benign— even when its judgment was catastrophically wrong. That belief had faded by the time he launched the war in Iraq. Trump is going to war after bullying the world with tariffs, threatening to annex Greenland, bullying NATO allies, and a regime change operation in Venezuela—in a world that has already recalibrated its assessment of American reliability. The trust deficit that Bush created, Trump has turned into a structural feature of global politics. And then there is the economic dimension. In Iraq, Bush disrupted a regional power that was already under sanctions and largely isolated. Trump has ensured the [effectively closure of the Strait of Hormuz](https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/3/3/shutdown-of-hormuz-strait-raises-fears-of-soaring-oil-prices "undefined"), through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas flows. [Oil has topped $100 a barrel](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-05/iran-war-how-oil-prices-are-surging-as-hormuz-shipping-production-disrupted "undefined") for the first time since 2022\. Gasoline prices in the U.S. have [increased](https://www.axios.com/2026/03/09/oil-prices-iran-war-strait-hormuz "undefined") by 17% since the war began. Qatar’s gas production has halted after Iranian drone strikes. A former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund has referred to it as “[the nightmare scenario](https://www.euronews.com/business/2026/03/10/iran-war-shocks-continue-to-ripple-through-the-global-economy "undefined").” European natural gas prices have nearly doubled. The world’s central banks are facing an inflationary shock that will fall hardest on the poorest countries — nations that have no stake in this conflict and no ability to protect themselves from its consequences. Trump has shrugged. Rising oil prices, he said, are [“a very small price to pay.”](https://www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/live-blog/live-updates-iran-president-must-respond-attacks-strikes-hit-rcna262269 "undefined") Only fools would disagree with him, he added. The leaders of countries watching their economies destabilize might be forgiven for drawing their own conclusions about who, exactly, is behaving foolishly. I think often about what the Iraqis I knew used to say in the dark years after the invasion: that America had come to their country with good weapons and bad plans. They distinguished, often generously, between the destruction that was intended and the destruction that was merely careless. That distinction still mattered to them, even as they suffered from both. I am no longer sure that distinction is available to the world watching this war. When a president describes sinking ships as “fun,” when allies are blindsided and friends humiliated, when the reasons for war shift with the news cycle and the global economy buckles — the question is no longer whether the destruction is intended or careless. The question is whether anyone, anywhere, still believes that American power comes with a sense of responsibility attached. 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