With Trump in charge, the world must prepare for long wars
Trump thinks that the weighty economic power of America and the force of his huge personality will bend adversaries to his will
Why has the US under President Donald Trump failed to broker, 1. an end to the Russia-Ukraine war 2. an end to the Israel-Hamas War and the hostage crisis 3. an end to Houthi assaults on Israel 4. an end to the Iranian nuclear bomb program?
Because Trump and his team have the wrong paradigm in mind. US approach everything with a pragmatist, transactional perspective. US see everything through dispassionate business eyeglasses. And they think that America’s enemies do the same
Worse still, Trump thinks that the weighty economic power of America and the force of his huge personality will bend adversaries to his will. But —
what if America’s challengers are motivated by deeper, darker purposes?
What if Russia, Iran, Hamas and the Houthis (and even the Chinese) are driven by ideological ambitions that go far beyond the calculations of economic and other cold-neutral self-interest?
What if these actors are prepared for decades of war against the West and specifically against Israel, no matter what “great deals” Trump offers them?
The latest example of such American miscalculation is the reported proposal by the Trump administration to shoehorn Iran’s program for enrichment of uranium to atomic-bomb levels into some wacky offshore consortium of Middle East countries, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey, alongside the US
This would somehow dilute or restrict Iran’s near-bomb-ready nuclear colossus
