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Has there ever been more confusion about what a U.S. president is up to? In the days since Donald Trump launched his war of choice against Iran on Feb. 28, it’s been impossible to get a straight answer out of him or his team about what his goal is. Does Trump even have one?

In fact, there is evidence that Trump does. And we’re missing the point when we focus separately on his various acts of aggression toward Iran, Venezuela, or Greenland, or on Trump’s previous pledge to his MAGA base that he wouldn’t start foreign wars.

Has there ever been more confusion about what a U.S. president is up to? In the days since Donald Trump launched his war of choice against Iran on Feb. 28, it’s been impossible to get a straight answer out of him or his team about what his goal is. Does Trump even have one?

In fact, there is evidence that Trump does. And we’re missing the point when we focus separately on his various acts of aggression toward Iran, Venezuela, or Greenland, or on Trump’s previous pledge to his MAGA base that he wouldn’t start foreign wars.

What many of his critics fail to see is that Trump is very likely pursuing a broader strategic vision in his own mind, misguided and possibly delusional though it may be.

For those who have written biographies about him and perhaps know him best, the Trump vision is about discarding what he sees as a weak, failing world order and turning himself into the author of a new one that will always have his name on it.

“For Trump, it’s always been all about branding. Now he’s branding the planet,” said Gwenda Blair, the author of The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a President.

Looking back over Trump’s entire career, one sees a consistent throughline: He appears intent on remaking the global landscape in his image, including when he sought to remake the New York skyline in a “bid for immortality,” as the New York Times wrote in 1985; or reconceiving the Republican Party’s agenda from top to bottom after 2016 and putting his “America First” stamp on it; or the way he is reconfiguring Washington, D.C., itself into a kind of Trump Town, plastering his name on prominent buildings.

Now Trump is intent on creating a kind of Trump World—a global legacy that will far surpass that of his predecessors and fulfill his self-image as the “one of the greatest” presidents in U.S. history and author of a new “golden age,” as he’s put it.

Indian laborers prepare to collect bricks as they work on building the road leading to the under-construction Trump Tower in Kolkata on Feb. 20, 2018. Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP via Getty Images

His is a career built on grandiose ambition and an egoism for the ages—as well as a cunning killer instinct for spotting and exploiting the indecisiveness and weakness of opponents who, to Trump’s mind, remained stuck in the practices of the past.

Blair points to his record as president of discarding and condemning any previously negotiated deals—among them NAFTA, the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and the Paris climate agreement—in part because he wasn’t the one to negotiate them, along with newer efforts like trying to replace the United Nations with a “Board of Peace” and making himself the head of it for life.

It can hardly be an accident that Trump complains obsessively that he’s been deprived of the ultimate global brand for a statesman, the Nobel Peace Prize. On March 3, Israeli Consul General Ofir Akunis proposed—in surely one of the most Orwellian moments of 2026—that Trump and his partner-in-war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, be jointly awarded the honor.

Blair, along with others who have long followed Trump’s career, argues that in Trump’s mind there’s probably also no real contradiction between his campaign pledge to be a peacemaker and the military operations he has launched against Iran and Venezuela.

“I think a world order that he’s in charge of—that to him is the definition of peace,” said Blair.

Trump himself has suggested as much, declaring that the Iran operation is an example of his policy of “peace through strength.” “We’re doing this for the future,” Trump said in announcing the Iran operation on Feb. 28.

U.S. President Donald Trump is greeted by as he arrives at Qasr al-Watan in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on May 15, 2025.Win McNamee/Getty Images

That future may also possibly include a dynastic vision for his family, including the accumulation of enormous wealth, position, and power for his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. It may not be entirely a coincidence that the Trump family is doing billions of dollars of deals with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two nations opposed to the Iranian regime.

Yet there are signs of trouble ahead for the Trump global brand—especially as Iran continues to retaliate ferociously and oil prices have spiked since the start of the U.S.-Israeli attacks and the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior Iranian leaders. It’s noteworthy that Trump’s personal........

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