The US was once admired and envied. It considered itself a shining city on a hill in an almost messianic way, but those days are long gone. As Alistair Crooke says, the US has now come to see things as black and white, with themselves as the epitome of goodness and everyone who disagrees with them as inherently evil – manicheanism in other words. When others are seen as evil, negotiation is impossible, and deception and perfidiousness come to seem reasonsable, as the ends would be seen to justify the means. The use of weapons of mass destruction also becomes far more likely, adversaries are not see as being human, so their suffering and their lives don’t matter. The US also feels entitled to steal their territory and resources.
Trump is the worst person to be leading the US, as he’s a malignant narcissist with no understanding of any of the context or the outstanding issues. His dyslexia means he’s functionally illiterate, his inflated ego means he doesn’t listen to others, his rampant corruption is obvious, his mafia tactics of extortion and threats are damaging the w
hole world, and his rapidly progressing dementia has removed his filters, so he sounds more and more irrational and insane with each passing day. Nothing he says can be trusted, as he constantly changes his mind, sometimes in less than a day. His rhetoric makes wild swings from one extreme to the other, so no one knows what’s going on. This makes the situation far more dangerous. The Iranians have been working with a psychologist in their indirect communications with the US, as they’ve decided that Trump is clinically insane. Those communications have now ended, as they were obviously pointless. Diplomacy is now impossible.
The US pretends that it isn’t involved in the war in Ukraine, but it clearly is. It’s been supplying the weapons via the Europeans, and extorting the warmongering Europeans in the process. It also supplies the satellite targeting information and the communications technology via Starlink. It’s been encouraging the Ukrainians to destroy Russia’s energy infrastructure, and is niw destroying purely commercial targets, like Wildberries warehouses, which are Russia’s equivalent of Amazon. The goal is clearly to weaken Russia to the point of collapse, so it can be dismembered, taken over in pieces, given western puppet governance, and have its resources stolen. However, Russia is winning. Its advance has been slow, due to the nature of drone warfare, but its progress has been relentless. It’s closing in on the last fortified cities of the Donbass – Slavyansk and Kramatorsk – and there are no further fortifications between these and the Dnieper River. Ukraine is rapidly running out of manpower to press-gang, and this will remain the case even if Europe returns the Ukrainian refugees as it’s promised to do. It’s also out of air defence, and its energy infrastructure is being crippled.
The war with Iran is a joint American-Israeli endeavor, and they are clearly on the losing side there as well. The Iranians were drastically under-estimated, as the US does with all its adversaries. Trump’s attempts to force capitulation under threat of further bombing are doomed to fail. Iran is a natural defensive fortress, and it’s had decades to prepare for this war. It is going to end up controlling the Strait of Hormuz. The US appears to be preparing for some kind of ground war, but this will only end in a bloodbath for American troops. The Israelis are sitting on the sidelines, quite happy for Americans to die for their Greater Israel project, although their military leadership is warning that the IDF is close to collapse due to the casualties it’s taken in Gaza and is taking in Lebanon. They warn of civil war. The US has been bombing Iranian infrastructure for days since the war resumed, and Iran has been returning the favour by utterly destroying US bases in the region. The US fifth fleet is essentially hostage in Bahrain. It’s entirely possible that the US sill be driven out of the region entirely and that Israel will be destroyed. Iran is emerging as a much greater and more cohesive power than before the war, despite decades of sanctions and recent destruction of surface infrastructure. Critical facilities are out of reach of US bombs, in tunnels under hundreds of metres of granite.
Trump’s extreme narcissism will never let him admit to losing, even when it’s obviously inevitable to anyone paying attention. He always doubles down on a failing strategy, ignoring the price being paid by everyone else. His coterie of ‘advisors’ are profoundly incompetent and delusional, and are encouraging him on his disastrous path. The rest of the world is watching the previously formidable reputation of the US military collapse, which will have serious consequences, emboldening many potential adversaries. The US is now widely perceived as the new evil empire, and that is the reputation it increasingly deserves. Meanwhile the conflict is expanding into an unresolvable quagmire, now involving Lebanon, the Gulf monarchies, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen, and potentially Turkey. Pakistan is trying to mediate, but may be dragged into the mess due to its military pact with Saudi Arabia over the Saudi conflict with Yemen. Many countries are now thinking of developing nuclear weapons as the only means to deter imperial aggression, and Trump has aggravated this by promising the Saudis nuclear technology, despite the Saudis having been involved in terrorism and brutality while the Iranians have not.
Both Trump and Netanyahu are facing electoral defeat at home, and both are planning either to cancel elections or to cheat to win. Both plan to defy their supreme courts if necessary. Both face severe consequences if they lose. Netanyahu would probably be jailed for corruption, and Trump would likely be impeached and convicted by a Congress that’s absolutely sick of him and the horrendous damage he’s done to the country. The empire is failing. The US is drowning in debt and run as an oligarchic casino, with no regard for the plight of its people. Israel is tearing itself apart in a mass formation. The European vassal super-state is increasingly authoritarian and is on the verge of economic collapse due to the loss of its energy supply. The Asian vassals states of Japan and South Korea are sick of American domination. They’re ultimately likely to decide that their future lies with the Russia-China-Iran axis. The empire’s eventual collapse will lead to a very messy, and bloody, interregnem. Brace for impact.
