I would really like you to take a moment to watch the video above. It’s six minutes long, but I guarantee it’s worth a moment of your time over a coffee. Fareed Zakaria explains the geopolitical implications with the clarity needed in this moment.
Do you ever get the feeling that you are in a death spiral holding pattern of a regime out of ideas, who are being forced to revert to banana republic tactics in an attempt to hold on to power in November? It’s now widely accepted that the Iran war was a huge miscalculation, but Trump’s malignant narcissism will not allow him to be viewed as another president who lost a war.
As he prepares to double down on attacks on Iran, he seems oblivious to the assertion that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity. If it’s one thing we’ve learned from this failed war to date, the definition of what constitutes victory is very different depending on which regime you belong to.
It’s pretty clear the US has just been schooled in the limitations of conventional conflict. In my opinion, this is a war the US will long live to regret. Not because conventional strikes can’t do enormous damage, but because they have revealed their limitations, and China has had a front-row seat to America’s geopolitical humiliation.
It’s beyond me that after seeing what Russia has experienced in Ukraine, the U.S. would arrogantly assume that the same could never happen to them, yet here we are. Wars are no longer fought conventionally, and Iran has exposed a major weakness in the conventional thinking applied to countering an enemy schooled in the art of asymmetric warfare.
Trump’s abject failure at diplomacy is beyond embarrassing. He now has the Gulf states very unhappy about how their economies have been thrown under the bus to serve his ego, while his usual allies want no part of his failed oil extortion attempt.
China’s military planners have been gifted a treasure trove of data on how the U.S. operates against what would be considered a second or third-tier state. Despite claims to the contrary, the U.S. HAS expended vast amounts of munitions that WILL take years to replace, and they will walk away from this failure with nothing, having been forced to unfreeze billions of frozen Iranian assets. Not only that, Iran will be in a stronger position than before this imbecilic move by a president totally out of his depth.
By any measure, he can’t win this war. Yes, he can expend tens of billions of dollars more on destroying Iran’s oil production facilities and killing thousands of civilians, but all that will deliver is even higher inflation and gas prices as the markets respond. Iran will not concede defeat, and Trump will have to roll the dice on just how much of Iran’s offensive capabilities have been degraded.
At this stage, Iran has largely resisted the temptation to activate its proxies around the world, so we have not to date seen attacks on Western soil, but the harder Trump pushes, the bigger the risk of wider escalation into activities like suicide bombers and the targeting of Western soft targets that we have seen in the past. I’m afraid that the days when bombs win wars are over. Technology has advanced, making precision strikes against your adversary far less expensive. We’re more than aware that the US has attempted to hide the level of destruction when it comes to its regional assets, but we live in an age where this type of deception is very hard to pull off.
It’s always the case that it takes time for the public to see through a false narrative, but Trump can no longer hide the political and economic damage this is doing to the US and the Republican Party. There’s no question now that without Trump controlling the pool of voters in November, Republicans are facing electoral armageddon, especially given that his base is now really beginning to feel the economic pain. It’s very strange to me that this pain is barely registering in the mainstream media at the moment.
What is even stranger is that I can’t put my finger on a single win for Trump other than stuffing his pockets with taxpayer money. It seems he has corrupted the system to such an extent that he has normalised corruption in office. He is confident he will never be held accountable for his actions, and tragically, history tells us he’s right. The Republican Party has abandoned the bottom 90% at the behest of a madman. As we have seen, to make matters worse, they are all in on Trump’s attempts to control the voter pool for the midterms, no matter what the cost.
Excellent piece, thank you.
The USA is a has been!