In the first 100 days of his second term, US President Donald Trump has shown a willingness to lean on airpower when his administration decides that military force is necessary abroad.
So far, the second Trump administration has launched limited airstrikes in Somalia and carried out a weekslong air campaign against the Iranian-aligned Houthis who rule most of Yemen. The president has also threatened direct strikes against Iran itself should talks on a new nuclear deal collapse.
This turn to airpower for Trump makes sense to me. Airpower is cheap when compared with ground wars, and it usually comes with fewer casualties for those conducting the strikes. This helps explain why US leaders, including Trump as a self-proclaimed “anti-war president,” typically find it attractive.
But if the Trump administration is not careful, it could fall into what military strategists informally call the “airpower trap.”
This happens when the stated objectives of military force are too big for airpower alone to achieve, potentially leading to a face-saving escalation of conflict that could – if history is a guide – draw in ground forces from the US or their local allies.
US presidents such as Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all fell into this trap. In Vietnam, the Balkans and Syria, respectively, all ended up with far bigger wars than they bargained for, with consequences for civilian casualties, international peace and damage to America’s reputation abroad.
As an expert on US national security policy and the Middle East region, I believe the Trump administration is in danger of falling into the airpower trap in Yemen and could potentially do the same in Iran should it elect to use direct force against Tehran.
Recognizing this military and historical risk, and opting for some kind of off-ramp from continued airstrikes, might be the best hope the US government has to avoid a further escalation into full-scale war.
The limits of air bombardment
Research shows airpower is most effective when it’s used for limited objectives – things like taking out leaders of terrorist groups or degrading rival capabilities – or in support of ground operations for more ambitious ends, like bolstering or overturning governments.
Given the sophistication of US airpower, a common fallacy among American strategists in particular is to think that big strategic gains can be achieved solely by dropping bombs from above.
But when airpower alone fails, leaders can feel the pressure to expand the scope of conflict and end up with bigger military commitments than expected.
Johnson’s initial airpower-only strategy for attempting to stop communism in South Vietnam failed miserably, leading to his decision to commit half a million US troops to the war.
That expanded conflict presaged years of war, with massive humanitarian and political consequences for people in Southeast Asia and America, as well as lasting reputational damage to the US.
Worried about US and NATO credibility, Clinton escalated airstrikes – nearly to the point of introducing ground troops – for the ambitious end of stopping genocide in the Balkans during the early 1990s.
Likewise, Obama’s initial airpower-only strategy to “degrade and destroy” the Islamic State group quickly faltered, leading Obama, under intense pressure at home and abroad, to introduce thousands of ground troops to combat the group’s territorial gains across Syria and Iraq.
In each case, relying on airpower alone ultimately failed to meet their objectives.
The airpower trap in Yemen
There are reasons to believe that conditions in Yemen mean that Trump, too, could be falling into a similar trap.
Trump has adopted an airpower-only strategy to “completely annihilate” the Houthis, a powerful rebel movement that all but won the recent Yemeni civil war. The proximate cause of the air campaign, a policy inaugurated by the Biden administration and expanded dramatically by Trump, is to restore the free flow of shipping in the Red Sea that the Houthis have disrupted by force to protest Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.
The early signs are that this air campaign isn’t going well.
Despite the US burning through finite munitions supplies at a cost of US$1 billion to bomb at least 800 sites since March 15, the Houthis are undeterred and the volume of Red Sea shipping remains as depressed as ever. Houthi attacks on US ships and Israel continue. A Houthi missile narrowly missed Israel’s Ben-Gurion airport on May 4.
In fact, the direct attacks on the Houthis and the rapidly growing casualty count among Yemeni civilians from the Trump administration’s bombing campaign appear to be strengthening the Houthis’ political position in Yemen. In a particularly shocking case, US bombs reportedly hit an African migrant camp, killing and injuring dozens of people.
The humanitarian crisis from the brutal bombing campaign by the Saudi-led coalition against the Houthis in the late 2010s had a similar effect.
Airpower played a big part then, too. The Saudi coalition, supported by the U.S., engaged in some 25,000 air raids against the Houthis, killing or maiming approximately 19,000 civilians. Yet despite such overwhelming force, the Houthis kept seizing territory and eventually won the civil war, according to experts.
They have been the country’s de facto rulers ever since.
Now, Trump is exploring options to further escalate to defeat the Houthis. Reports indicate his administration is considering arming, training and enabling anti-Houthi resistance fighters who are loosely affiliated with Yemen’s government in exile to launch ground operations.
Between diplomacy and quagmire
Proxies are a common tool US leaders turn to when caught in the airpower trap. Sometimes those proxies fulfill American policy objectives, such as the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, which helped the US defeat the Islamic State caliphate in 2019.
Often, US proxies fail on both strategic and humanitarian terms, leading to further escalation, strategic quagmires for the US, and loss of life and political sovereignty for the people under attack. South Vietnam was an instructive example.
Riven by corruption, poor governance, weakness and political infighting, the South Vietnamese army and government proved so ineffective at fighting the North Vietnamese that Johnson decided to launch a ground war once US airpower failed.
Today, the anti-Houthi resistance in Yemen looks a lot more like the South Vietnamese government than the Kurdish YPG. According to a 2025 report from the Soufan Center, a security think tank, the anti-Houthi forces are poorly trained and considered incapable of pulling off victories over the Houthis without major US support.
Meanwhile, the anti-Houthi resistance consists of an estimated 85,000 fighters, compared with some 350,000 for the Houthis. Absent continuing the air war or escalating it into a more all-encompassing conflict, US officials can still pursue diplomacy in order to try to find a political solution to the Yemen conflict.
Despite the Trump administration’s public threats, the US is already negotiating with the Houthis’ main sponsor, Iran.
For their part, the Houthis continue to insist that they will stop attacking ships in the Red Sea if the US-backed Israeli war in Gaza halts, something that happened during the recent Gaza ceasefire.
The Trump administration might consider seeking alternatives, such as direct or indirect talks, if it wants to avoid getting stuck in a widening conflict in Yemen. History is full of examples of what happens when airpower takes on a logic of its own.
Charles Walldorf is professor of politics and international affairs, Wake Forest University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
