Project Syndicate - Trump’s Next Coup Attempt - Apr 9, 2026 - Timothy Snyder

Project Syndicate 

Trump’s Next Coup Attempt

Apr 9, 2026

Timothy Snyder

While turning a foreign war into a domestic dictatorship is complicated and difficult, Donald Trump could try to do so in one of five ways. But even the most likely scenario—using an act of terror as a pretext to delay or discredit the midterms—will not work if Americans are vigilant and refuse to obey in advance.

TORONTO—The United States is seven months away from the most consequential midterm elections in its history. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump, together with Israel, has started a war against Iran. These are the ideal conditions for a head of state to seize power in a coup.

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Trump’s chief concern is preserving his own comfort and power, much of which will be lost if the Democrats retake control of the House of Representatives, as they look poised to do. Clearly, Trump has no qualms about election meddling: he already attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and has mused about canceling the midterms. More recently, he has tried to push through legislation that would severely restrict voting, making it a privilege.

When it comes to Iran, Trump and US Secretary of “War” (Defense) Pete Hegseth have been stuck in the logic of escalation, according to which the feeling of defeat today can be reversed by doing the first thing that comes to mind tomorrow. Each day that the conflict and uncertainty about it continue—including about whether the current two-week ceasefire with Iran will hold—people around the president will profit (through insider trading, political bets, or arms dealing). And the longer the situation lasts, the greater the chance that it will be exploited for a coup attempt.

Against this backdrop, Trump’s proposal to boost the defense budget by more than 40% should be understood as a payoff for the officers whose backing he hopes to secure. Hegseth, for his part, is frantically purging people of principle from the highest ranks.

Admittedly, turning a foreign war into a domestic dictatorship is inherently difficult, and Trump’s position is weak. But if he did attempt a coup, it would likely follow one of five scenarios.

Trump could argue that an ongoing war requires a steady hand. US President George W. Bush relied on this argument—which ignores whether the war was worth starting in the first place, and whether those in charge are qualified to wage one—to win the 2004 presidential election. By contrast, Trump would have to use it to cancel an election or to overturn the results.

Further complicating matters is that Trump would need allies who are willing to break the law. But most Americans oppose the war in Iran, and the conflict has exposed cracks in his MAGA movement. Moreover, some of the likely election riggers have been fired.

The second scenario is Bonapartism, in which the aspiring dictator fights for democracy abroad even as he dismantles it at home. As the name implies, this strategy was behind the Napoleonic Wars. Trump, however, has never pretended to care about democracy, instead preferring dictators like Russian President Vladimir Putin, and he campaigned against nation-building elsewhere, promising to spend the money on Americans.

Alternatively, Trump could pursue Bismarckian unification, in which the ruler seeks to bring the nation together. The Prussian leader Otto von Bismarck unified several German-speaking states by winning three wars (against Denmark, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and France) between 1864 and 1871. Because this was achieved by force rather than by revolution or elections, the new German Reich was a militaristic monarchy from the beginning, with an essentially symbolic parliament. Trump would no doubt like this model, but has the problem of being unable to win one war, let alone three.

The fourth approach would be that of the fascist leader who sacrifices enough of his own people in a major campaign to ensure that the survivors accept that everything is a struggle, enemies are everywhere, and the world is targeting them. Mass death becomes a source of meaning, uniting the Führer with his Volk. Putin’s war in Ukraine contains an element of this, but the classic example is the remarkably difficult Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, which, as Victor Klemperer’s diaries show, bolstered the fascist movement in Germany for more than three years.

Trump, however, is not a fascist in the traditional sense. He does not believe in struggle, as the Nazis did; he became a convert to war late in life, convinced that easy “wins” abroad would translate into success at home. Having boasted of winning in Iran dozens of times already, he is in a poor position to order a land invasion on a scale that would trigger huge US casualties, because he has not done any of the ideological spadework.

By comparison, Hitler had won quick wars in Poland and France before invading the Soviet Union, which created a sense among previously doubtful military commanders and civilians that he knew what he was doing. This paved the way for a second, more ideological, stage of the war.

Finally, and most concerning, is the exploitation of terror. This gambit relies on a foreign enemy carrying out an attack against American civilians during wartime, providing an aspiring dictator with a pretext to declare a state of emergency and suspend elections. Nothing exactly like this has occurred in the US. And it may not happen precisely because it is Trump’s best hope: Iranian leaders must be aware that Trump would seek to exploit an attack.

To be sure, Iranian propaganda involves threats against individual US leaders. But the regime has more to gain by mocking Hegseth than by assassinating him.

Another possibility is a false-flag operation. Self-terror can be a successful strategy. In 1999, the Russian secret services bombed apartment buildings in Moscow, triggering a chain of events that set in motion Putin’s march toward dictatorship. Chances are high that Trump, Putin’s client in the White House, has considered this approach.

But Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the US intelligence community, would likely botch such an operation. Even if Trump were able to execute a false-flag attack on the US homeland, there is no clear path to halt the elections. In any case, if a terrorist attack does occur in the next seven months, Americans should be skeptical of Trump, who will undoubtedly attempt to blame his domestic opponents and discredit the midterms.

In fact, if Americans are vigilant and forceful, none of these scenarios should work. Knowledge of history can change the future. The biggest barrier to Trump carrying out a coup is not his weakness, but the public’s refusal to obey in advance.

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Timothy Snyder

Timothy Snyder

Writing for PS since 2010

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Timothy Snyder, the inaugural Chair in Modern European History at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, is the author or editor of 20 books.