US President Donald Trump has shown a commitment to rely on airpower when his presidency decides that using military force worldwide is needed in the first 100 times of his second term.
The next Trump administration has so far carried out a weeklong attacks against the Iranian-aligned Houthis, who control most of Yemen and launched limited attacks in Somalia. In the event that negotiations over a new nuclear deal fall, the senator has also threatened immediate strikes against Iran.
I find it logical for Trump to use air power. Airpower is less expensive than floor war, and it typically comes with fewer fatalities for those carrying the strikes. This helps to explain why US leaders usually find it attractive, even Trump, a self-declared “anti-war president.”
However, if the Trump administration doesn’t take proper precautions, it may drop into the “airpower trap,” as military planners affectionately refer to it.
This occurs when the mentioned goals of military pressure are too large for airpower to accomplish, which was, if history serves as a guide, result in a face-saving escalation of conflict.
US president like Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Lyndon Johnson all fell into this snare. In Vietnam, the Balkans, and Syria, both, ended up with much larger war than they had anticipated, resulting in civilian casualties, peace, and harm to America’s popularity worldwide.
As an expert on US policy toward the Middle East and its location, I think Iran is at risk of joining the airpower capture in Yemen and that the Trump administration may use force against Tehran.
The best chance the US government has of preventing a further increase into a full-scale war might be to acknowledge this military and historic chance and to choose some sort of off-ramp from continued airstrikes.
The airborne bombardment’s boundaries
Research indicates that airpower is most effective when it’s used for constrained goals, such as removing extremist group leaders or degrading rival features, or in support of earth businesses for more ambitious targets, such as strengthening or overturning governments.
A typical mistake among American planners in special is the idea that significant strategic gains can only be made by dropping explosives from the sky, given the elegance of US airpower.
However, when airpower only fails, leaders may feel pressure to amplify the opportunity of a conflict and make more military commitments than they had anticipated.
Johnson chose to send half a million US soldiers to the war after his original airpower-only attempt to stop socialism in South Vietnam failed miserably.
Years of war were the result of that expanded fight, with severe humanitarian and political repercussions for people in Southeast Asia and America, as well as long-lasting reputational harm to the US.
Clinton launched strikes in the early 1990s as a result of her concern for the legitimacy of the US and NATO, almost to the level of deploying ground forces.
In addition, Obama’s first airpower-only plan to “degrade and damage” the Islamic State group immediately faltered, leading to Obama putting hundreds of ground troops in place to battle the team’s territorial gains across Syria and Iraq.
In each case, airpower alone failed to accomplish their goals in the end.
The air force shack in Yemen
There are arguments to support the notion that Trump could also be stricken by a similar trap.
Trump has chosen an airpower-only strategy to” completely annihilate” the Houthis, a powerful rebel movement that has all but won the Yemeni civil war. The immediate cause of the air campaign is to restore the free flow of shipping in the Red Sea, which the Houthis have forcedly protest Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza. This policy was introduced by the Biden administration and dramatically expanded by Trump.
The first indications are that this air campaign is failing.
The Houthis are unaffected, and the volume of Red Sea shipping continues to decline as it has always been, despite the US burning through finite munitions supplies at a cost of US$ 1 billion to bomb at least 800 sites since March 15. Houthi attacks on Israeli and US ships continue. On May 4, a Houthi missile veeringly past Israel’s Ben-Gurion airport.
In fact, the Houthis ‘ direct attacks and the rapidly rising casualty count among Yemeni civilians from the Trump administration’s bombing campaign appear to be strengthening the Houthis ‘ political standing in Yemen. In a remarkably shocking case, US bombs reportedly struck an African migrant camp, killing and injuring dozens of people.
Similar effects were effected by the brutal bombing campaign by the Saudi-led coalition against the Houthis in the late 2010s.
Airpower also played a significant role at the time. The Saudi coalition carried out about 25, 000 air raids against the Houthis, killing or mutilating about 19, 000 civilians, with the support of the United States. However, despite such overwhelming force, the Houthis continued to seize territory and eventually won the civil war, according to experts.
Since then, they have been the de facto rulers of the nation.
Trump is now looking into ways to use force to defeat the Houthis. According to reports, his administration may purchase weapons, training, and enabling anti-Houthi resistance fighters who are allegedly operatively affiliated with Yemen’s government to launch ground operations.
Between diplomacy and a jumble
When caught in the airpower trap, proxy use is a common tool for US leaders. These proxies, like the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, who helped the US overthrow the Islamic State caliphate in 2019, occasionally accomplish American policy objectives.
US proxies frequently fail in both strategic and humanitarian ways, leading to further escalation, strategic quagmires for the US, and political sovereignty-loss for the people at risk. An instructive example of this was South Vietnam.
The South Vietnamese army and government were so ineffective at defeating the North Vietnamese that Johnson made the decision to launch a ground war after US air force failed, due to corruption, poor governance, weakness, and political infighting.
The anti-Houthi resistance in Yemen resembles the South Vietnamese government significantly more than the Kurdish YPG today. The anti-Houthi forces are poorly trained, according to a report released by the security think tank Soufan Center in 2025, and are viewed as incapable of defeating the Houthis without significant US support.
An estimated 85, 000 Houthis fighter force members make up the anti-Houthi resistance, compared to 350, 000 for the Houthis. US officials can still pursue diplomacy in order to try to find a political solution to the Yemen conflict despite continuing to engage in the air war or turning it into a more global conflict.
Despite the Trump administration’s public threats, Iran, the country’s main sponsor, is already in talks with the US.
The Houthis, for their part, continue to press for the end of the US-backed Israeli-led war in Gaza, as was recently demonstrated by the recent Gaza ceasefire, saying that they will stop attacking ships in the Red Sea.
If the Trump administration wants to avoid getting caught up in a growing conflict in Yemen, it might look into alternative options, such as direct or indirect talks. History is full of instances of what occurs when air power adopts a unique logic.
Wake Forest University professor of politics and international affairs Charles Walldorf
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