Defeated

How Trump is destroying the US as a world power

The Iran War isn’t over, but thanks to Trump it’s already become a dangerous, bloody and destructive joke.

To an imaginary laugh-track, Trump is in flailing, screeching retreat, wheedling and lying his way towards some kind of exit strategy where he can hang on to a semblance of dignity. His options are limited, with plenty of space for pratfalls and pies in the face.

The Iranians are already mocking him relentlessly online.

Across the world countries despairing at the economic harm being inflicted upon them are laughing behind their hands at the clown show that started with threats of death and destruction from above and ended with desperate pleas for help as the global economy spun off its axis.

Everyone likes to see a boastful bully taken down a few pegs. But for most countries the comfort came in the reassuring truths that have been revealed.

Hubris is real, certainly. But most notably that you can’t elect one of the stupidest leaders in your country’s history without there being terrible consequences.

And the biggest consequence is for America itself — it’s inadvertently become the punchline in Trump’s Benny Hill routine.

In a matter of months, Trump has dismantled the US’ global standing to a point where it can’t be repaired. People won’t forget. The history books won’t forget.

Now that he’s blundered into this Middle East conflagration he’s also destroying the US as a world power. Vietnam was an exercise in humiliation for a nation that thought it could simply flex its huge military muscles and win. This is by degrees worse.

That’s because we’re in a far more dangerous world now, one with multiple predators prowling around the perimeter waiting for their opportunity to take it all.

Through his incompetence and ignorance, Trump has:

• Taught Iran how to win.

• But not just Iran. He’s also taught China how to win, and any adversary the US has to face in the future.

Power is at its greatest when it’s not exercised. We saw that with Russia. It was once the second-most feared military in the world…until it invaded Ukraine and was brutally exposed as a crumbling, badly-commanded, corrupt operation that turned a three-day show of brute-force into a years-long battle for patches of mud. Seven thousand Russian soldiers became casualties in just five days this month.

With Iran, Trump exposed the US in a similar manner. Not in the same way as Russia. The US military remains formidable, the strongest in the world based on the vast resources available to it (ridiculously huge for a country that is never likely to be invaded.}

Trump threw everything at Iran — billions of dollars worth of military hardware, carrier groups, fighter jets, missiles…and lost.

No regime change which was one of the stated aims. Likely no stopping of Iran’s nuclear program. His deranged idea of a successful outcome as stated this week is keeping the Strait of Hormuz open to oil shipping. He was the one who forced it to be closed in the first place.

The huge flaw that has been revealed in US might is not in the military but lies at the very heart of the American system: with the President as Commander-in-Chief.

However great the military power, it means nothing if the weakest link is an idiot at the top (or idiots, if you include the so-called Secretary of “War”), a leader so mentally unfit that he thinks he knows better than any expert on any subject.

Something, presumably, that the founding fathers never envisaged. Because honestly, what voters would be stupid enough to elect a man like Trump.

But now the world has seen and America has been fundamentally weakened.

Iran has discovered that if it can survive the bombardments it merely needs to disrupt the global economy to win.

China now knows the same.

Trump was too stupid to realise, even though Iran trumpeted its strategy years ago. But Trump is the product of a damaged psychology, a child brutalised by his father who learned the wrong lesson from being bullied — that you only need to punch down hard to claim victory.

Other countries are far cleverer than that.

Iran’s military might has been thoroughly degraded, its leadership savaged. But a win for Iran is a low bar — it simply needs to survive. And unless Trump sends in the army to conquer the country (see Russia in Ukraine for the toll there), the regime will keep going.

More than that, it now knows it only needs to threaten to blow up a few tankers to deter any future attack. By failing so badly, Trump has taken that option off the table. That leaves Iran free to develop nukes, because like every other country in the world, it has learned from Trump that is the only way to frighten off bullies.

With Iran’s resilience, Israel too has lost. It can no longer count on an invasion force from a US ally and it will have to deal with a possibly nuclear-armed Iran nurturing even deeper hatreds.

For all his blather, Trump still seems likely to send in ground troops, whether that’s to secure the opening of the Strait of Hormuz — which will need a permanent presence because the moment they pull out Iran will step in again — or a suicide mission to try to capture Iran’s enriched uranium.

Maybe he’ll even try to take Tehran. You can’t put anything past someone who doesn’t seem capable of basic reason.

Whatever happens the US has still lost.

As with Russia, every adversary will now look at America and think, they’re beatable, if you’re smart enough.

Trump and the lickspittles who’ve allowed a dumb, deranged man to do whatever he wants have ensured the US is no longer feared as the greatest power in the world.

Alliances have been destroyed. Trump’s irrational and punishing tariff regime and his widespread contempt for every country that used to stand by America has seen to that. Canada, the UK, the EU, Korea and Japan are all moving away from the US. They won’t be coming back. They might currently be tied in to networks of defence, intelligence and trade, but they’re all looking for alternatives and will gradually put them in place.

Trump believed that allies weren’t important. That having the largest and most expensive military in the world was enough to be a superpower. The Iran War has given the lie to that.

Though Trump will find some way to extricate himself from the quagmire, the damage has already been done.

China is watching carefully and learning from his mistakes. They now know that in his attempt to be the biggest bully on the block, Trump has made America smaller and weaker. And the consequences of that could be huge.