When Autocrats Go to War: Where Delusions of Grandeur Can Lead

Delusional self-image, opportunism, and age contribute to risky behavior. Trump fits the model.

“I am very happy to report that I have arranged, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a wonderful Treaty between the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Republic of Rwanda, in their War, which was known for violent bloodshed and death, more so even than most other Wars, and has gone on for decades,” wrote President Donald Trump on Truth Social on June 20, 2025.

This is a Great Day for Africa and, quite frankly, a Great Day for the World! I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for this, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the War between India and Pakistan, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the War between Serbia and Kosovo, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for keeping Peace between Egypt and Ethiopia…I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for doing the Abraham Accords in the Middle East… No, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do, including Russia/Ukraine, and Israel/Iran, whatever those outcomes may be, but the people know, and that’s all that matters to me!

Two days after this extended whine, Trump ordered military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, inserting the United States into the war between Israel and Iran. As nuclear and intelligence experts assessed the degree of actual damage to Iran’s nuclear program, Trump’s questionable claim that Iran’s “key nuclear sites have been completely and totally obliterated,” was echoed by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

In an authoritarian state, truth is what the leader says it is. A main job of the strongman’s cabinet and officials is to give his delusions and personal obsessions the stamp of state policy and official dogma, as Hegseth does here.

Personality cult canons present the leader as a unique being who can guide the nation to a better future based on his superior instincts and wisdom: he can see this new reality and the nation’s potential long before others do. This visionary quality means that everything they do must be received as beautiful and perfect and totally successful.

The doctrine of TINA (There Is No Alternative) applies both to the person of the leader –there can be no rivals or successors— and to the actions he takes. They are the only actions possible to take at that moment in history, even if their logic and greatness eludes those with less vision. The unenlightened apparently include Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who, in Trump’s opinion, should be saying “THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP!” despite the strikes on his country, because the president decided to save him from “A VERY UGLY AND IGNOMINIOUS DEATH.”

Trump is no different than other authoritarians who have insulated themselves from criticism by surrounding themselves with loyalists who repeat their lies, religious collaborators who tell them they are in office by divine will, and sycophantic party functionaries who encourage their megalomania.

The strongman as special and infallible being. Faith leaders praying over Trump at the White House, March 20, 2025. Photo source: Presidential Prayer Team.

It is unsurprising, then, that two days after the strikes, the GOP and the White House began a campaign to make Trump’s long-held wish to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize a reality. Calling Trump “the ultimate peace president,” White House communications director Steven Cheung stated his boss deserved “his rightful recognition of bringing harmony across the world,” while Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) nominated Trump for his efforts in brokering the ceasefire agreement between Iran and Israel.

When Strongmen Get into the Danger Zone

For months before the Iran strike, I was concerned that the extraordinary capitulations to Trump by law firms, universities, media companies, and other elite sectors would increase his sense of omnipotence, leading him into a dangerous state of mind that autocrats normally reach only after years in power, where they “have ideas of grandeur, think that they have the answer to complicated problems and in a sense lose touch with reality,” in the words of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s personal physician, Dr. David Barkham.

It is then that autocrats may engage in risky behavior, including starting wars or deepening their involvement in volatile ongoing situations, because they want to make their mark and they feel that anything they do will succeed (and if it doesn’t, they feel they have the power to spin the truth in their favor).

As those who study authoritarians have documented, what guides such leaders in their actions is not the welfare of the country they govern, nor peace and harmony in the world, but rather “staying in office and personal survival.” Self-interest influences whether and when they take military action, and how deeply they become involved in a situation or invest in a partner, the way Trump is now doing with embattled despot Benjamin Netanyahu.

As the late psychiatrist and CIA profiler of tyrants, Jerrold Post, concluded, when authoritarians they take any action, their foremost thought is not national security or collective safety but “[h]ow can I use this situation to enhance or protect my own reputation?”

Along with “delusional self-image” and opportunism, the leader’s age can also contribute to risky behaviors. Older leaders who want to secure their legacy may be more willing to take chances to “make history,” including by engaging in military actions abroad. Aging can be difficult for leaders whose “entire sense of self is bound up in being revered,” in Post’s words.

We can consider the obsession of 79 year-old Trump with getting the Nobel Peace Prize in this light, and his strike against Iran just days after his rant that he was being unjustly excluded from this glory. We can also see his need for constant admiration and praise as symptomatic, along with his Amin-like belief that he and he alone has all the answers. When Trump was asked on MSNBC in March 2016 who he consults with on foreign policy, he gave a telling answer: “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things."

I give the last word on the risks Trump’s delusions of grandeur present for America and the world to Mary Trump, his niece, who is also a clinical psychologist. “It is long past time that we stop imputing some deeper or reasonable motives to Donald Trump,”she writes. “Despite being depraved and cruel, much like his cohort Benjamin Netanyahu, he is driven by the most primitive impulses that center almost solely around protecting his fragile ego from humiliation (about which he has a pathological terror) and himself from the reality that he is a complete fraud.”