A know-nothing president in Washington, a flattering schemer in Jerusalem, repeated “decapitations” in Teheran and an entirely foreseeable shipping crisis have wrecked strategic alliances and left the global economy in free-fall.
We are dealing daily with the economic fallout of Donald Trump’s illegal war of aggression. Less obvious is the massively greater threat of dangerous climate instability and collapsing natural systems, easy to overlook in the din of war, especially when the know-nothing president wants us to believe climate change is a fantasy.
Pressed on the world by Trump and his Israeli co-conspirator Benjamin Netanyahu, this war is underlining the world’s enduring reliance on oil and gas energy. With Iran’s blocking of ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, it has descended into chaos.
Trump threatened at the weekend to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if the country does not open the strait by today Australian time. In response, Iran’s military warned such an attack would mean that all US energy infrastructure in the region will be targeted. That’s how wars get out of hand.
Among many mixed messages from the US president was his weekend hint that he might “wind down” the war without addressing the global supply crisis it has set off. “The Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed, as necessary, by other Nations who use it – The United States does not,” he wrote on his “Truth Social” site on Friday.
Japan and South Korea rely heavily on Gulf crude oil; China and Australia somewhat less so. Europe is also very dependent on the trade, and it was Europe that Trump had in mind when he called NATO allies “cowards” for not helping the US enforce the re-opening of Hormuz. Which is rich considering he began the conflict without consulting those allies.
All that served to reinforce something he’s always ignored in his MAGA messaging. Building power is a two-way street. American greatness was founded from the start on something that old adversaries – first Germany and Japan, then Russia – along with current rival China lacked: an extensive network of strategic alliances that amplified US power and reach.
Failing to acknowledge any such alliances last year in slapping trade-crippling tariffs on friend and foe alike began the erosion of goodwill that had underpinned American greatness. In the wake of his recalcitrance over Ukraine and his push to annex Greenland, that goodwill is now greatly diminished.
The top-down management of the war by Trump and his “war secretary” Pete Hegseth led to the false assumption that the death of top officials including supreme leader Ali Khamenei would throw Iran’s government into a tailspin.
Instead, Khamenei’s Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) distributed its authority to 31 autonomous provincial commands. With no single point of failure (and no single authority to strike a deal with), the “decapitation” assault led to a system that could not in turn be decapitated.
Then, while apparently aware of Iran’s ability to close the critical Strait of Hormuz, they failed to factor it into their war plans, allowing Iran to stop all shipping except oil tankers serving favoured countries.
They overlooked the likelihood that insurers would withdraw coverage for Persian Gulf shipping under agreed international procedures, or that tanker crews would refuse to traverse a war zone. So 300-odd oil tankers and double that number of other commercial vessels have been stranded in the Gulf, with tens of thousands of crew members.
Finally, there’s asymmetrical warfare. Half a century ago Richard Nixon’s secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, pointed out that in a war between a conventional military power and a guerilla opponent, if the former doesn’t win, it loses, and if the guerillas don’t lose, they win.
As many have pointed out, regime change imposed on a country from outside has always required boots on the ground. So does seizing control of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump may now understand a need for troops but he’ll have no idea how many, and in any case a decentralised enemy will prove impossible to defeat.
The US is already paying a heavy price for American abuse of the international rules and alliances that underpinned its hegemony. Now this is shaping as one of Donald Trump’s “forever wars” that he always associates with political enemies.
The financial cost is currently incalculable – that’s according to a top official recently testifying to Congress. If it goes into months the military action alone would be enough to break America. And remember, if the IRGC hasn’t lost, it’s won.
But that would be the least of the world’s woes. All the while, as this catastrophe drags us all down, the warming goes on…