Rarely have the members of a fascist authoritarian regime been so blinded by their own hubris. And, boy, is that saying a lot. But here we are.
The pure insanity of the immoral and illegal invasion of Iran is really incredible, just the complete lack of any sense of reality. And a total abandonment of all of the rules of engagement that the United States spearheaded after WWII. If the MAGA regime even had a plan, what was it? Of the dozens or thousands of potential outcomes, only one could have possibly been favorable to them. And that would be if somehow they magically forced a quick regime change that resulted in a government that would comply with their demands—and that had a less than zero percent chance of happening. It’s one thing to think that the American public could not understand that, but it’s quite another to realize that the regime in control of the largest military on Earth, with over 5,000 nukes I might add, didn’t understand that. And they still don’t. Hegseth is quoting scripture at press conferences and asking god to bless the mission. Trump is bumbling around, talking about curtains and touting easily disproved nonsense as fact. Maybe he believes the nonsense coming out of his muddled brain, but the people around him should know better.
So if it’s not obvious, there is only one solution at this point that can prevent a wider war and the economic and ecological disaster that comes with it. And that is that the MAGA regime turns tail and runs. They call it some sort of victory and just cease. Of course, that will signal to all pertinent parties that they don’t have the stomach for the kind of world domination they seem to desire, which brings me back to how completely insane this is. Because the U.S. already had de facto world domination. The MAGA regime is actually compromising the global power it already had, and XI and Putin must be loving it.
We (I’m using ‘we’ to mean the country I live in, but is there a ‘we’ anymore? I’m still going to use it for now.) anyway, we designed the rule-based order to benefit ourselves. We could already pick and choose when and where we could break the rules, which we did with impunity. Even to the point where we decided to fund and give political cover to a genocide in Gaza, which betrayed the very cornerstone of the reasoning behind the whole system in the first place. The rules were meant to prevent repeating the horrific atrocities of the world wars of the 20th century, especially given that we live in an industrialized age with the mass production of the deadliest weapons ever known to mankind. They were also designed to promote a kind of global trade that would foster peace among the great powers in the north, but still allow for extracting wealth from the global south. What more could any power-hungry regime with designs on world domination possibly need? This system effectively gave the United States the cover of strategic alliances with other great powers, who were very willing to follow our lead, while also allowing us to be the only ones who were allowed to bypass the rules at will. Or act as a gatekeeper for who else would be allowed to do so. In a way, that’s why Team Bush spent 18 months trying to convince the world that we could just topple Iraq, so that the illusion that we followed the rules could be maintained. Without that, the rules-based order that allowed us to dominate the world would be jeopardized, as it has been under the MAGA regime. So now there’s nothing stopping China from taking Taiwan, or Putin invading Poland, and we’re back to a world where might makes right. As you probably can imagine, that’s not a great world, and we’re not nearly as mighty as the MAGA regime thinks we are.
As a quick side note, I’m not going to minimize the thousands of other ways we’ve compromised our own well-being over the past fifty years. We had already decimated our social safety net, our middle class, our manufacturing base, our education system, etc. What we had left was our standing on the global stage, which was propped up by our leadership role in the United Nations and our alliances much more than by how much we spend on our military.
Apparently, however, the maniacs surrounding Trump, the ones really running the show, don’t understand that. It’s obvious that Trump could never understand this, even before his dementia kicked in, he talked about world affairs the way a grade school kid on the playground might imagine it. And now that his narcissism has been gifted the ultimate affirmation, there’s no way he can be rational. The others are just power-hungry maniacs who didn’t realize how good they had it. And now they’re all walking around thinking that they can state the same delusions that Trump utters to his base as though it were somehow a reality that they can magically wish into existence. Hey, did I mention how many nukes we have?
So, here we are. The rules-based order that gave us world dominance and what was left of our economic security has been destroyed by a group of senseless maniacs who want, and this is the crazy making part, the world domination they already had. And in their muddled juvenile sense of manhood and patriarchy, they’re going to lose it, probably in the most violent way possible. It’s probably worth noting that the system was doomed to end in disaster at some point if it didn’t pivot to address its core flaws. It was inherently unsustainable given the structural power imbalance, the role of corporate greed in international politics and the types of weapons the world was constantly developing. The only sustainable system requires true global cooperation between equals, and that includes between the majority who inhabit the global south and the minority in the north. So the good news is that we have a roadmap of what could possibly work, but the question is, will we ever have the opportunity to implement it before we enter the next global conflict? Not surprisingly to anyone who reads my stuff, I’m not optimistic. I’m hopeful, but I’m a realist.
The new AI arms race has rapidly ushered out the global cooperation that we were building to address climate change. That was actually our ticket out of this mess, because within the framework of climate mitigation, we were talking about addressing the inequality that fuels so many of our problems. But instead, we now have an environment of fierce competition, with more money being thrown at developing energy and water-intensive Artificial Intelligence (sounds like an oxymoron in that context, doesn’t it?) than the world has probably ever invested in anything. If we would invest even half as much into equitable clean energy, we’d be off fossil fuels in no time and could guarantee future generations a much safer world.
And speaking of a safer world, it’s also important to remember that we developed the technology for nuclear warfare during the last world war, and afterwards, we implemented international standards to regulate it, and the rules-based system we just abandoned, because nuclear weapons have the potential to destroy the world. The next global war will deploy autonomous AI-powered weapons, some version of which are already being used in Gaza and likely in Iran. These weapons pose an even greater threat to the future of humanity than nukes, and now both could be used in the next world war. So while we have a roadmap for peace and stability, we may never have the chance to implement it, especially if we continue to let madmen run the world. Because only a madman can’t see what’s awaiting us if we continue down this path. Even if it’s so obviously apparent to the rest of us.
I wish I could end on a more positive note, but I can’t find one, other than to say that we do know what we need to do. We have all of the knowledge and the tools to secure peace and safeguard the environment. All that’s standing in our way is the political will, oh, and a bunch of power-hungry maniacs. We’re going to have to do something about them.