Donald Trump, Wrecker of American Empire
Donald Trump is setting records. His war on Iran is certainly the stupidest war in American history—and that’s saying something—and Trump has now lost it more quickly than any previous war. It took 20 years to lose in Afghanistan, about ten years to lose in Vietnam, and two and a half years to lose the War of 1812, but Trump managed to get utterly dog-walked in a mere six weeks.
That’s the only possible conclusion from Trump’s announcement on Tuesday evening—after threatening to obliterate Iran’s entire civilization—that he had reached a deal with Iran based on an Iranian proposal. The ten-point plan includes acceptance of Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz and the country’s continued uranium enrichment, an end to all primary and secondary sanctions, war reparations, withdrawal of all American forces from the region, and an end to the Israeli bombing of Lebanon. (The last one is already being violated right now with a huge barrage by the Israelis, leading Iran to close the strait again, so the durability of this cease-fire is in deep question.)
Even if the Iranians come down somewhat, every one of these conditions is worse for American interests, at least as Trump would characterize them, than what existed before he started the war. Allowing Iranian control of the strait, complete with million-dollar tolls per ship, is particularly staggering; naturally, Trump said it was a “beautiful thing” when he thought of being able to get a slice of the tolling proceeds for himself.
It’s an immense strategic defeat—and one that knocks the legs out from under the entire American system of power projection and global predominance.
Perhaps the most obvious, necessary-but-not-sufficient requirement for a global hegemon is keeping critical sea lanes open. Yes, we have air travel and the internet in our modern age, but floating key goods on water is still critically important to a global economy with long supply chains, and ensuring safe passage is one of those sets of modestly burdensome tasks for a global power.
It’s an immense strategic defeat that knocks the legs out from under the entire American system of power projection and global predominance.
There is arguably no sea passage more critical than the Strait of Hormuz. Only the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal rival it in importance, but with those at least it is theoretically possible to reach the same destination by going around the southern tip of Africa or South America, respectively. With Hormuz, there is no other means of escape for about half the Persian Gulf oil production, not to mention all of the liquefied natural gas, fertilizer, aluminum, potash, and so on—which all adds up to about a quarter of global ocean shipping.
Historically, freedom of navigation has been a key priority for the sum of the existence of the United States. The nation did not secure this globally until after the Second World War, of course, but America’s first major act of foreign policy after winning independence, way back in 1801, was to attack the Barbary pirates to force them to stop raiding American shipping.
Trump’s war on Iran has reversed 250 years of American policy on navigation overnight. This has been compared to the Suez Crisis of 1956, but it’s dumber by an order of magnitude at least. In that case, when Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal (which had been built by a French company a century earlier) France and Britain attempted to assert their prior mantle of global imperial power by invading Egypt, with Israeli help. That led America and the Soviet Union—the actual global powers of the day, who did not want to be associated with 19th-century European imperialism in Africa—to force them to back down. French and British forces slunk back home with their tails between their legs, and it was obvious to everyone that they were now second-rank powers.
This time, there is no obvious candidate to replace American hegemony. Only China or the European Union would be even capable of it, and neither appears at all interested. What’s more, Iran did not seize the strait, as Nasser had done; rather America forced them to seize it. It has been obvious to scholars of Iranian history, Pentagon war planners, and anyone who has looked at a topographical map of the Persian Gulf region for five seconds that it would be exceptionally risky to start a war with Iran because they could easily retaliate by blocking the strait, and it would be extremely difficult, expensive, and bloody to force them to stop. (That’s why a relatively sensible statesman like Barack Obama sought détente with Iran, and achieved it with the nuclear deal—the one that Trump tore up in his first term.)
So when Trump attacked out of the blue, Iran indeed closed the strait—but that was just the start of a cascading series of disasters. The Pentagon, led by Pete “three 10 a.m. gin and tonics” Hegseth, did not anticipate the most obvious retaliatory move in the history of warfare, and so made no preparation or arguments to the public about what would be necessary. As a consequence, Iran quickly understood it could take permanent control of the strait and charge tolls for passage much like the Barbary corsairs of old, thus gaining potentially tens of billions of dollars in revenue and enormous diplomatic leverage.
Not only that, the tolls are reportedly being paid in Chinese yuan—thus undermining the petrodollar system that underpins the dominance of the U.S. dollar—or in cryptocurrency, which Trump himself welcomed into the American financial system so that he could profit from it personally. Either option undermines America’s control over financial pipelines and the ability to sanction others. With the major exception of Russia, this sanction capacity has rarely been used for good, to be fair; but providing a reserve currency was a global public good that came with significant burdens.
More to the point, it’s yet another example of Trump’s bone-deep corruption undermining American—and therefore his own—power. It is no surprise that Trump later boasted that the Hormuz toll might be done as a “joint venture,” presumably with himself, though I would guess that is wishful thinking.
Meanwhile, American military bases in the region have been shot to pieces, several American soldiers are dead and hundreds more injured, tens of billions of dollars’ worth of complicated, hard-to-produce ordnance has been squandered, and the alliance system with the Gulf states is in tatters. Everything in the world will be more expensive for years as the damage to the Gulf’s infrastructure is repaired. Thousands of civilians are dead in Iran, and thousands more in Lebanon, as our great Israeli ally, which pushed for this war, is still conducting one of its patented psychotic murder frenzies.
Oh, and Iran is almost certainly going to make a break for a nuclear weapon, for the obvious reason that it is the only deterrent to guard against domination, and everyone in the world will be paying for it through tolls. Meanwhile, Putin’s Russia is profiting handsomely from more expensive oil and gas. (As are U.S. producers in what should and maybe will be a dying industry.)
It’s anybody’s guess whether the cease-fire will hold, or whether Trump will randomly order more bombing. But it is clear that he doesn’t have the political backing to do what it would actually take to reopen the strait; if he does lash out again, then he’ll be right back in the same trap as before.
It might seem satisfying to see the American empire be taken down a peg, and certainly nobody has ever deserved to suffer humiliating defeat more than Trump and Hegseth. But a return to 18th-century dog-eat-dog piracy and robber barons is not likely to be much of an upgrade. Others around the world might be eyeing nearby strategic waterways and sharpening their cutlasses. If so, we’ll have Trump to thank.
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