M Santhananaban
Twenty-eight days into the disastrous Iran debacle and the US-Israeli axis is unable to show a spectacular success in war or strategy.
It is not a stalemate but something more troubling: a war launched with theatrical confidence and prosecuted without strategic coherence.
And now a White House that is not winning anywhere faces a stark choice. An admission of failure and a ceasefire may be the most plausible outcome. It is also, for now, the least acceptable one to US President Donald Trump.
The ball is in Trump’s court and the rest of the world – led by China and Russia – is watching closely.
The fog of an unwinnable war
- Sign up for Aliran's free daily email updates or weekly newsletters or both
- Make a one-off donation to Persatuan Aliran Kesedaran Negara (ALIRAN), Maybank a/c 507246118995 or CIMB a/c 8004240948
- Make a pledge or schedule an auto donation to Aliran every month or every quarter
- Become an Aliran member
A president far more accustomed to the spectacle of TV showmanship than to the realities of warfare has delivered a brutal campaign of aerial bombardment against an ancient nation.
That nation – now led by a successor leadership that remains no less rigid or unyielding – has shown a tenacious capacity to absorb punishment and hit back.
Trump is no rugged Crocodile Dundee figure, routinely surviving in the boondocks of the countryside or the city.
Beijing and Moscow have watched the conflict unfold and escalate with a careful wariness. Neither has a bilateral defence obligation to come to Iran’s aid, and neither has a strategic interest in widening the war into a global conflagration or even a third world war.
The US had moved swiftly to pre-empt action at the UN Security Council. China and Russia decided that discretion was far more valuable that vicious valour.
Iran appears to have been assisted masterfully with a different kind of support – intelligence guidance, important inputs of inventory, and silent but solid support.
The Gulf Cooperation Council countries, which host US assets, have been targeted by Iranian missiles. Some of them are being forced into rethinking the cost of their security alliance with the US.
The price being paid
In the meantime, the campaign will play out.
What is being destroyed is not just Iranian infrastructure. It is the international architecture – the “rules-based order” crafted by President Harry S Truman – that kept the US at the centre of world affairs.
Truman designed – with help from Dean Acheson, who co-designed the Marshall Plan and shaped US post-war foreign policy, and George Marshall, the architect of the European Recovery Programme – the foundation of an international system that enabled the US to remain the world’s number one power for eight decades.
Now, the obstinate, unpredictable Trump has introduced variables that have gutted that arrangement. He has created a situation that will diminish, displace and dethrone the US from its perch as the world’s pre-eminent power.
By now, Trump and his cohort must realise that the GCC countries and Iran are an integral part of West Asia while the US is not. To have acted against Iran at Israel’s behest was a betrayal of the best interests of the US.
Trump may well go down in history as the president who squandered American hegemony, undoing in a short space of time, what took decades to entrench.
The world’s pre-eminent power has spent nearly a month bombing a country it cannot occupy, cannot pacify and cannot afford to keep fighting indefinitely. That is not a position of strength but the beginning of decline.
Dato’ M Santhananaban is a former Malaysian ambassador with 45 years of public sector experience.
AGENDA RAKYAT - Lima perkara utama
- Tegakkan maruah serta kualiti kehidupan rakyat
- Galakkan pembangunan saksama, lestari serta tangani krisis alam sekitar
- Raikan kerencaman dan keterangkuman
- Selamatkan demokrasi dan angkatkan keluhuran undang-undang
- Lawan rasuah dan kronisme
