As old alliances crumble and new ones start to form, Donald Trump is still seething about his traditional allies’ reluctance to join the First Epstein Crusade. And who can blame him? If the likes of Britain and Canada continue to pussyfoot around for another 100-ish weeks, they’ll have taken almost as long to commit as it took the United States to join the allies in World War 2.
Of course, things might have changed by the time you read this.
On Saturday night, for example, two weeks after he declared victory, Trump warned Iran that if it didn’t stop resisting his attack on the world economy within 48 hours he would launch a much bigger attack on the world economy.
On Monday, however, almost 12 hours before the ultimatum expired, he backed down, explaining that he was pleased with how well the current, possibly imaginary discussions with Tehran were going, and that he would postpone his planned assault on civilian infrastructure for five days.
It was a relief, and the fibrillating oil price plunged all the way down from End Times to Penultimate Times. But for those who’d followed his social media posts on the weekend, things remained confusing and slightly alarming.
Consider one particular but representative example — “Now with the death of Iran, the greatest enemy America has is the Radical Left, Highly Incompetent, Democrat Party!” —and the questions it raised.
If Iran had been dead on Sunday, who was Trump talking to on Monday? And if the war was over, again, and the next target was the US opposition, should we expect a Reichstag Fire event this month or would he push it out to April or even May?
All of which is to say, I can understand the reluctance of the US’s traditional allies to climb over the fence into this particular pig-wrestling contest.
Here in South Africa, led by a coalition government whose senior member is still friendly towards the regime in Tehran— or is at least cordial with whichever understudies are still alive in Tehran — those questions are becoming increasingly urgent.
Not only are things still terribly confusing, but there’s also the matter of precedent. After all, if the new rule is that you drop everything and rush to the aid of the oligarchs running the US and Israel every time they unilaterally attack a sovereign country for profit or to stay out of prison, what happens when Jared Kushner inks a deal with Vladimir Putin to develop Trump Kiev, an exciting new mixed-used lifestyle gulag just a short rendition flight away from Trump Gaza?
If statecraft is now entirely indistinguishable from the personal lusts and whims of elected kings, which allies should one turn to?
Here in South Africa, led by a coalition government whose senior member is still friendly towards the regime in Tehran— or is at least cordial with whichever understudies are still alive in Tehran — those questions are becoming increasingly urgent.
The old maths was wonky enough: because the repressive, anti-democratic Shah had literally fuelled the repressive, anti-democratic apartheid regime in the 1970s, and because the repressive, anti-democratic mullahs had staged a revolution against him, the ANC’s algebra insisted that repression times repression divided by repression cancelled out two of the three repressions and left a smiley face next to Tehran.
Add an increasingly repressive, anti-democratic and erratic US into the equation, however, and you get, well, something that’s way too complex for the current ANC.
In the last three weeks I’ve seen many supporters of the US and Israel write with a certain amount of schadenfreude about the non-arrival of Iran’s largest allies, namely, China and Russia, suggesting that all that endless rhetoric about revolutionary solidarity was simply the rustling of paper tigers.
To be fair, Russia was never going to turn up: it’s taken four years and the loss of a million killed and injured to capture an area roughly the size of Mpumalanga. It is basically Italy if the Sicilian mafia had nuclear weapons.
But China’s relative silence has spoken volumes, as the Middle Kingdom has watched and waited, remembering Napoleon’s maxim never to interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. After all, what will be more profitable to China in the long run: confronting the mad king Trump over Iran, or waiting for him to make the world poorer and more chaotic, and then stepping in with money, infrastructure, cheap renewables, and above all, relative predictability and calm?
For South Africa, China remains the answer to all sorts of questions, for better and for worse, as it is for an increasing number of middle powers now looking east.
Trump might have won his war, or at least walked away from it, but he is losing the world.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.