2026年4月14日 美国东部时间凌晨00:00 / CNN
斯蒂芬·科林森 分析
4月10日，唐纳德·特朗普总统在马里兰州安德鲁斯联合基地登上空军一号前向记者发表讲话。
温·麦克name / 盖蒂图片社
支配特朗普总统任期的世界铁律——实力、武力与强权——正日益在国内外遭遇挑战。
特朗普及其幕僚从不掩饰他对自身主导地位的信念，以及他愿意动用不受约束的美国实力，以谋求经济、地缘政治和国内层面的胜利。他的政策是其建立在对抗与争端升级之上的个人风格的延伸。
但日益混乱的国际局势与愈演愈烈的国内动荡表明，这位总统的升级与胁迫手段正触及极限，甚至可能将他拖入损害自身政治声誉的困境。
伊朗战事正成为特朗普施政方式的终极考验。
他的本能或许可以解释他为何决定发动针对伊朗军事、核计划与地区野心的打击——而此前历届总统都避免了这一做法。但德黑兰拒绝屈服于特朗普的要求，这开始暴露美国实力的局限，以及他个人的局限。
这让总统面临艰难抉择。他可以升级冲突，迫使伊朗遵从其要求，但这可能增加美军伤亡，并引发强烈的经济反噬。他也可以宣称取得胜利并抽身而退——但伊朗对霍尔木兹海峡的控制以及其浓缩铀储备的保留，将使这种说法站不住脚。
为摆脱这一困境，特朗普选择了一条将美国军事力量与自身绝不向反击的敌人让步的道路结合起来的路径。尽管可能对全球能源市场造成严重反噬，他新实施的海峡封锁仍试图扼杀伊朗经济。
霍尔木兹海峡阿曼穆桑达姆省沿岸的一艘船只，4月12日摄。
特约摄影师/路透社
寻找伊朗问题的解决方案是总统面临的最重大危机。但他反复无常的战争领导风格已在其他争议中显露端倪。
他未能迫使北约盟国加入一场他们反对且事先未获通报的战争。即便他威胁要退出北约，也未能说服各国放弃他们眼中的自身国家利益。这些国家的不配合，让美国失去了其在过往战争中常常依赖的选项。
特朗普的强硬手段有时能奏效，比如他通过对美国贸易伙伴发动关税战达成了一些协议。但作为经济超级大国的中国予以反击，威胁切断关键稀土出口。北京方面利用贸易战的可能性冲击全球市场，迫使特朗普让步。
伊朗似乎从这一事件中意识到，美国易受全球经济冲击，并已竭尽所能通过封锁海峡将全球经济作为人质。
特朗普部分权力正在削弱的迹象，不仅限于伊朗僵局。在动用其政治运动支持匈牙利总理维克多·欧尔班后，他见识到了自身政治吸引力的极限。但周日的选举中选民否决了这位强人，损害了特朗普将欧洲转向“让美国再次伟大”（MAGA）的计划，此次行动以失败告终。
与匈牙利同行一样，特朗普的部分国内政策也引发了反弹。今年早些时候明尼苏达州两名美国人被联邦特工杀害后，公众舆论迫使他在大规模驱逐计划上做出让步。而他试图利用法律打击政治对手的多数尝试均告失败——这直接导致了司法部长帕姆·邦迪被解职——这表明至少部分宪法制衡仍在限制他的行动。
就连教皇利奥十四世——一位因直言反对伊朗战争而激怒特朗普的美国人——也在周一表态：“我不怕特朗普政府。”
特朗普为何坚信自己的权力绝对化
特朗普从不掩饰他认为自己拥有不受挑战的权力。“我有权做任何我想做的事。我是美国总统，”特朗普去年8月说道。他今年告诉《纽约时报》，他在海外行动的唯一限制是“我自己的道德准则”。
这种信念体现在他拒绝征求国会意见，也未在这场已持续六周的战争爆发前让国家做好战斗准备。
特朗普于4月12日抵达白宫。
马特·麦克莱恩 / 盖蒂图片社
当被问及伊朗问题的后续行动时，白宫官员常以“只有总统……知道他会怎么做”之类的说法回应，凸显出拒绝共和制权力分享原则的趋势。
支撑特朗普第二任期的实力与升级信条，在白宫办公厅副主任斯蒂芬·米勒的讲话中得到了最清晰的体现。
“我们生活在一个现实世界里……这个世界由实力统治，由武力统治，由强权统治，”米勒今年1月在白宫因抓获委内瑞拉强人尼古拉斯·马杜罗而一片欢腾时，对CNN的杰克·塔珀说道。
特朗普的强权姿态在其总统任期早期似乎效果更佳。他将共和党打造成贯彻其意志的工具，尽管支持率暴跌，共和党仍不愿约束其最激进的冲动。
今年1月特种部队突袭将马杜罗从其家中抓获的行动，对特朗普而言是巨大的成功。在他提出的主导西半球的“多诺罗主义”框架下，他还利用政治影响力帮助志同道合的领导人在阿根廷和洪都拉斯赢得选举。
伊朗如何削弱特朗普无所不能的光环
但特朗普的好运或许在伊朗问题上开始耗尽。
战争以其他21世纪美国冲突中常见的毁灭性场面开场，但很快便凸显了一个历史教训：仅凭大规模空中优势无法取得明确胜利或实现政权更迭。
从一个角度看，特朗普的海峡封锁是为了恢复他本人和美国对伊朗的主导地位，以改善通过谈判解决问题的前景。切断伊朗的石油收入与进口渠道可能使其经济自由落体。届时伊朗可能别无选择，只能按照特朗普的条件求和。
但这场战争的一个教训是，伊朗领导人认为他们身处一场生存之战，他们准备好让本国人民承受无尽苦难。他们或许押注特朗普在中期选举年无法忍受油价和汽油价格上涨以及通胀飙升。封锁可能需要数月时间才能让伊朗屈服。而共和党国会候选人可没有这么多时间。
类似的无法主导局势的情况也在欧洲上演。
匈牙利总理维克多·欧尔班在4月12日匈牙利大选期间向布达佩斯的支持者致意。
阿提拉·基斯贝内德克 / 法新社盖蒂图片社
欧尔班长达16年的民族主义统治终结，使“让美国再次伟大”运动失去了一位对移民和媒体实施压制、将大企业和法律体系政治化的榜样。他的下台将使特朗普政府失去在欧盟内部的一位盟友——而特朗普素来蔑视欧盟。这对副总统J.D.万斯也是一记重击，他刚刚前往匈牙利恳求选民继续支持欧尔班。
而选民大规模投票否决民粹主义和民族主义的场面——此次选举失败规模之大，无法否认——可能令白宫感到担忧。
但这对美国民主党人也有启示。周日的结果很难说是左翼进步价值观的胜利。获胜候选人彼得·马贾尔本身就是一位中右翼领导人，曾是欧尔班的忠实追随者。除非他能打破欧洲民主领导人的魔咒，修复陷入困境的经济和医疗服务，否则民粹主义可能仍是一股强大的政治力量。
从更广泛的意义上说，欧尔班的失势表明，强人领导的崇拜——至少在准民主社会中——无法永远战胜强大的政治潮流和执政者的诅咒。
特朗普坚信自己拥有不受约束的权力，这一信念从未基于宪法或美国政治传统。而第二任期总统职位固有的不可避免的权力衰减，可能会进一步削弱他，恰好在伊朗问题从外部挑战他的强人光环之际。
但这引出了另一个棘手的问题：他可能会做些什么来证明自己的权力并未衰减？
Iran crisis epitomizes a world increasingly resistant to Trump’s demands
Apr 14, 2026, 12:00 AM ET / CNN
Analysis by Stephen Collinson
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on April 10.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
The iron laws of the world that govern Donald Trump’s presidency — strength, force and power — are increasingly being challenged at home and abroad.
Trump and his subordinates have made no secret of his belief in his own dominance and his willingness to wield untamed American might in pursuit of economic, geopolitical and domestic wins. His policies are an extension of a personal brand built on confrontation and the escalation of disputes.
But an increasingly chaotic international situation and growing domestic tumult suggest that the president’s methodology of escalation and coercion has limits — and that it may be leading him into damaging political corners.
The war in Iran is proving the ultimate test of Trump’s approach.
His instincts may help explain his decision to launch an assault on Iran’s military, nuclear and regional ambitions that previous presidents avoided. But Tehran’s refusal to surrender to Trump’s demands is beginning to reveal the limits of America’s power — and his own.
This has left the president with tough choices. He could escalate the conflict to try to compel Iran to comply with his demands, but that might increase US casualties and trigger intense economic blowback. He could claim a win and walk away — but Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz and retention of its enriched uranium stocks would belie any such claim.
To escape the trap, Trump has chosen a path that involves twinning American military power with his own refusal to cede ground to an enemy fighting back. His own new blockade of the strait is an attempt to throttle Iran’s economy despite the potential grave blowback on global energy markets.
A vessel at the Strait of Hormuz, off the coast of Oman’s Musandam province, on April 12.
Stringer/Reuters
The search for an endgame in Iran is the most important crisis for the president. But his erratic war leadership was previewed in other controversies.
He has failed to force NATO allies into joining a war they opposed and were not told about in advance. Even his threats to leave the alliance didn’t convince nations to abandon what they regard as their own national interests. Their lack of buy-in has cost the US options it often relied upon in past wars.
Trump’s brusque approach can work, such as when he cut some deals by using tariff warfare against US trading partners. But China, itself an economic superpower, hit back by threatening to cut off critical rare earths exports. Beijing used the potential of a trade war to melt down global markets and force Trump to back down.
Iran seems to have learned from that episode that the US is vulnerable to shocks in the global economy — and has done its best to hold it hostage with its own closure of the strait.
The sense that some of Trump’s powers are ebbing goes beyond the Iran impasse. He has seen the limits of his political magnetism after deploying his political movement to support Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. But the effort failed Sunday as voters rejected the strongman and damaged Trump’s project to turn Europe MAGA.
As with his Hungarian counterpart, some of Trump’s domestic policies are causing a backlash. Public opinion forced him into a climbdown over his mass deportation program after the killings of two Americans by federal agents in Minnesota earlier this year. And the failure of most of Trump’s attempts to use the law to punish his political enemies — which helped trigger the firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi — shows that at least some constitutional guardrails are still penning him in.
Even Pope Leo XIV — an American who has angered the president with his vocal opposition to the war in Iran — was moved to say Monday, “I have no fear of the Trump administration.”
Why Trump believes his power is absolute
Trump has made no secret of his belief that he enjoys unchallenged power. “I (have) the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States,” Trump said last August. He told The New York Times this year that the only curb on his actions abroad was “my own morality.”
That belief is reflected in his refusal to seek the input of Congress or to prepare the country for combat before launching a war that has now lasted six weeks.
President Donald Trump arrives at the White House on April 12.
Matt McClain/Getty Images
White House officials, when asked about next courses of action in Iran, often reply with a variant of “only the President … knows what he will do” highlighting a trend of rejecting the power-sharing principles of the republican system.
The creed of might and escalation that underpins Trump’s second term was best expressed by deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller.
“We live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper in January amid White House euphoria over the capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro.
Trump’s dominance plays seemed to work better earlier in his presidential career. He turned the Republican Party into a vessel of his will that remains unwilling to constrain his wildest impulses despite tanking approval ratings.
The special forces raid that snatched Maduro from his home in January was a huge success for Trump. And under his “Donroe Doctrine” of Western Hemisphere dominance, he also used his political influence to help like-minded leaders win elections in Argentina and Honduras.
How Iran is undercutting Trump’s aura of omnipotence
But Trump’s luck may have started to run out in Iran.
The war started with a show of destruction familiar from other 21st century American conflicts, but it soon began to highlight the historical lesson that a massive air power advantage cannot on its own create unequivocal wins or regime change.
One way of looking at Trump’s strait blockade is as a bid to restore his own and America’s dominance over Iran to improve prospects for a negotiated solution. Choking Iran’s oil revenues and imports could send its economy into free fall. It might then have no choice but to sue for peace on Trump’s terms.
But one lesson of the war is that Iran’s leaders believe they are in an existential fight, and they’re prepared to inflict infinite suffering on their people. They may be betting Trump lacks the political tolerance for higher oil and gasoline prices and an inflation spike in a midterm election year. It could take months for the blockade to bring Iran to its knees. Time is a luxury that GOP congressional candidates lack.
A similar inability to dictate outcomes is unfolding in Europe.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán salutes supporters in Budapest during the general election in Hungary on April 12.
Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images
The end of Orbán’s 16-year nationalist rule deprives the MAGA movement of a role model who effected crackdowns on immigration and the press, and who politicized big business and the law. His departure will deprive the administration of an ally inside the European Union, which Trump disdains. It’s a blow to Vice President JD Vance, who just traveled to Hungary to plead with voters to stick with Orbán.
And the spectacle of a massive turnout of voters rejecting populism and nationalism in an election defeat that is too big to deny may worry the White House.
But there are lessons for US Democrats too. Sunday’s result was hardly a victory of left-wing progressive values. The winning candidate, Péter Magyar, is himself a center-right leader who was once an Orbán loyalist. And unless he can beat the curse of European democratic leaders and fix struggling economies and health services, populism may remain a potent force.
In a broader sense, Orbán’s eclipse suggests that the cult of strongman leadership — at least in a quasi-democratic society — cannot indefinitely overcome powerful political currents and the curses of incumbency.
Trump’s belief that he enjoys untamed power was never founded in the Constitution or the American political tradition. And the inevitable decay inherent in second-term presidencies may weaken him further just as Iran is challenging his strongman’s aura externally.
But that leads to another difficult question: What might he do to prove his power is not ebbing away?
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