The Gang That Couldn’t Think Strait

You can find evidence of alliances and cooperative behavior in the earliest history of man; in fact, it is likely a key reason that Homo sapiens flourished on this planet. Only someone deluded and narcissistic enough to believe that they need no help whatsoever in any situation would have to learn how to cooperate and work together on the fly.

Such is the situation we find ourselves in with Donald Trump, strategic genius, who waited until day 15 of a misbegotten war with Iran to suggest—OK, demand—that he may need some assistance ensuring safe passage in the Strait of Hormuz. He directed nominal U.S. allies to send warships into the strait to allow cargo to cross through, the same allies he has been imposing tariffs on for close to a year. And they collectively responded, approximately: Fuck off.

More from David Dayen

The German defense minister reacted with incredulity to the notion that “a handful or two handfuls of European frigates” could “accomplish in the Strait of Hormuz that the powerful U.S. Navy there cannot achieve on its own.” Britain and France didn’t want to get involved until fighting ended. Not a single country has volunteered their services. Their logic, that they didn’t start the war, weren’t consulted about the war, and have no real way to advance any goals of the war, is pretty airtight.

So after about 24 hours of this fruitless begging, Trump went back to saying, “We don’t need anybody.”

Usually, you do the coalition-building before going off to war and getting into an impossible military predicament. Of course, usually you would check to see if the country you’re about to bomb has operational control of any strategic passages.

Iranian oil shipments have increased since the war began, and select other ships are now making their way through, such as a liquefied petroleum gas shipment bound for India that will prevent a shortage in cooking fuel. Chinese ships may have bought their own passage as well. Iran is maximizing the damage to its enemies and rewarding its friends through this operational control.

As the crunch continues, the number of goods and micro-economies threatened seems to only expand. We knew about oil and natural gas and fertilizer. But about half of U.S. generic drugs originate in India, and the petrochemical components used in that process pass through the strait, as do chemicals that originate from China but for some obscure reason get consolidated in the Gulf region. Semiconductor production depends on Taiwan having enough liquefied natural gas and helium, both of which come heavily from Qatar. And merely having 100 ships and their containers stuck in the Persian Gulf and nearby ports full, and other ships that have to route around it, has caused supply chain snarls like we saw in 2022; I will humbly suggest that some of us anticipated that a global pandemic was not the only possible shock to a risky supply chain system.

The entire mess was provoked by someone who had to look up “coalition” in the dictionary two weeks after starting a war. Donald Trump is a good case study against evolution.

The post The Gang That Couldn’t Think Strait appeared first on The American Prospect.