Donald Trump lost the 2020 US presidential election by the enormous margin of 7 million votes. The fact that he continues to claim that he won tells you all you need to know about his respect for the truth.
When it came to the 2024 election, he won by convincing enough ordinary Americans that he was going to focus on their cost of living and stop wasting money on endless foreign wars that brought them no tangible benefits.
The reality is proving to be very different both for many of those who voted for him and for millions of other people across the planet. He may well have launched one of the most reckless, costly and ill-thought-out wars of all time. At best the consequence is going to be a nasty spike in gas prices for a few weeks. At worst, the disruption, the deaths and the costs are going to drag on for years.
America’s wars: easy come … hard to go
For a country that possesses the enormous firepower of the United States, it is relatively easy to win the first phase of any conflict. The initial conquests of Iraq in 2003 and 2011 were quick and relatively painless for the American government and its allies. The chaos left is yet to be sorted. The complete military defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan was announced with astonishing rapidity. The humiliating withdrawal leaving an even more insecure and unpleasant regime in place came 13 years later after 2,461 Americans and 457 British soldiers has died. Ghaddafi’s horrible Libyan regime was bombed into defeat with real rapidity. The country remains a dangerous mess and a prime route for desperate refugees entering Europe.
The Libyan experience – a guide to Iran’s future?
That Libyan experience is a far better guide to the probable future of Iran than any other comparison. The US chose not to put significant numbers of boots on the ground in Libya, but focused instead on destroying any weapons that might have the capability of threatening its allies, in particular Israel. Nothing meaningful was done to construct an alternative system of governance and none of the well-meaning opposition groups that outsiders hoped could offer the country a more positive future got anywhere near power. The groups that rule Libya now are the ones that can deploy the most weapons and are prepared to threaten and intimidate opposition with the most ruthlessness within a particular geographical area.
Chaos and ‘collateral damage’
The early phase of attacks in an air campaign tends to be well targeted and to take out genuine military targets. That doesn’t prevent horrible ‘collateral’ damage like the murder of over 100 school girls in Minab, whose only crime was to try and get an education next door to a building on the list of ‘legitimate’ US targets.
As the war goes on the US generals are going to find it harder and harder to locate targets that will make a meaningful difference. They will come under increased pressure to get the job done by politicians who will insist that they carry on firing missiles. That is likely to result in more stupidly cruel targeting like the hitting of desalination plants. It is not likely to result in the complete destruction of the capability of Iranian military units. Isolated groups of armed forces may have lost their command-and-control contacts but won’t have completely lost the ability to, for example, fire drones at the Straits of Hormuz.
In such circumstances a wise and measured leader would stop the bulk bombing as quickly as possible and try to focus solely on getting oil tankers moving again. Unfortunately, Trump is not exactly well known for displaying those attributes.
The domestic cost of foreign wars
It is impossible for him to avoid the consequences of the actions he has already taken and those consequences will mount up with every day the conflict continues. The costs are going to hit home in ways that many of his small-town, low-income supporters will really feel. All those good ole boys and girls aren’t going to like the price of the gas going into their pickup trucks rising in price, though the ultra-rich owners of licences to extract US oil and gas will do very nicely thank you and there will be plenty of profiteering all the way up the supply chain. But not every Trump voter is so mindlessly loyal that they won’t notice their fuel and grocery bills going through the roof as the promise to keep the US out of costly foreign adventures with no clear end date goes up in smoke.
All of which means that Trump is on target to become the least popular US President in history. He promised to fix the cost of living crisis but his war will make it much worse. He told the country he would make it great again, but his war has pushed its strongest alliances to breaking point. Should the midterm elections go ahead he is likely to become the worst loser at that stage of a presidency in US history. The big danger is that he will manipulate, cheat and alter those election results and become known as the President who put an end to any genuine democracy in the States. This is not a man who accepts defeat in a quiet and dignified manner. This is a man who is quite capable of declaring a state of emergency because there is ‘a war on’ so that he can cancel elections.
The risk of UK involvement
In such circumstances it was a relief when Keir Starmer announced the UK wouldn’t be participating in the offensive action and would be staying out of the ill-judged adventure. It is much less reassuring to see B52 bombers taking off from UK soil, freshly loaded with weaponry and guided to their targets by information sourced from RAF Menwith Hill, in Yorkshire. This stretches the definition of ‘defensive action’ to breaking point. It creates a real risk of Britain being slowly dragged into gradually increasing participation in a conflict controlled by a malign and ill-intentioned president. There is a near certainty of this government’s economic hopes being dashed by rising costs. It remains to be seen whether British voters will form a positive or a negative view of the way their government is claiming to keep them out of this war and protect them from the impact.
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