First the US kidnaps the president of a sovereign state after killing more than a score of civilians on the open seas without warrant or evidence of wrongdoing. Now it kills the head of state and supreme religious leader of another sovereign country, teaming up with a regime credibly accused of committing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank in order to do so. Whatever one may think of the individuals and regimes targeted (I happen to not be a fan of either) or the narrative spin given by Western governments and media, the selective unilateral application of force without international approval in the absence of imminent threat from either country demonstrates two things: 1) the US and Israel have gone rogue; and 2) in doing so they have set a dangerous precedent for others to follow suit (think China with regard to Taiwan). That this act of belligerence is taken in part as a “wag the dog” diversion from Trump’s Epstein and domestic policy problems as well as Netanyahu’s legal troubles only makes the matter worse.
It also reinforces a core notion of nuclear deterrence theory: having nuclear weapons deters attacks. North Korea, China and Russia are all despotic but nuclear armed. They are not attacked by other nuclear states (and for those who might raise the issue, Ukrainian strikes on Russia are retaliatory and limited). Pakistan and India are nuclear armed but limit their military encounters vis a vis each other to conventional weapons. Same with Pakistan and Afghanistan–their conflict is limited to guerilla and conventional exchanges. Israel has nukes so is not subject to full scale attacks, again, just limited and often unconventional sporadic strikes by missiles and guerrillas/terrorists.
But Venezuela and Iran are not nuclear armed (even if the latter is trying to develop that capability for the reasons described here), so they are attacked with impunity. This confirms the deterrent value of even a small number of deliverable nuclear weapons, including so-called “dirty” bombs. Even just having one any day will keep full scale aggressors away.
Whatever the outcome of the US/Israeli attacks on Iran both short- and long-term, and in spite of the Western media fascination with war and weapons porn, things seem poised to get worse as a result. Iran has limited experience with democracy (and the CIA helped orchestrate a coup against its last democratically-elected president in the early 1950s), so even if Mossad and the CIA are organizing post-conflict political forces to replace the theocratic regime, there is no guarantee that what follows will be democratic (and if people think that the Shah Reza Pahlavi’s son living in LA is the answer, they are sorely mistaken). Plus, Iran’s scattershot military response against Gulf States is designed to inflame the Sunni/Shiite divisions within them as well as anti-US and anti-Israel sentiment. That could spell trouble for the Western-backed sultanistic dictatorships that control them (none of the Arab Gulf States are democratic, which makes the hypocrisy of US rhetoric justifying its aggression against Iran and Venezuela more obvious. Especially when Trump honors and does business with Saudi prince Mohammed bin-Salman, who ordered the murder of US citizen and Washington Post columnist Jamal Kashoggi in 2018 ). Moreover, Iran and its proxies have cells in many foreign countries, including the US, which will now be likely activated because of the egregious nature of the preventative and/or regime change-focused war of opportunity (as opposed to a war of necessity) unleashed upon it.
As for the response inside Iran, it is difficult to ascertain. Even with Mossad/CIA agitators in place, Persian nationalism and anti-interventionist sentiment against “the Great Satan” and “Zionist Entity” may prove a significant obstacle to installing a pro-Western regime. The Revolutionary Guards can clearly see that they have nothing left to lose by doubling down on their hardline response to the US and Israeli calls for an uprising and coup, and relying on airpower alone will not allow the US and Israel to impose their political will on Iranian society (which besides the usual rural-urban divides also includes religious hardline and moderate divisions, modern secular elements versus cultural traditionalists, educated versus uneducated sectors, gender divisions, etc.). In other words, while prudent from a US/Israeli perspective, the “no boots on the ground” approach may be insufficient to enforce regime change on Iranian society even if the new regime is autocratic as well. That leaves the field for other actors to get involved, even if in surreptitious ways.
In the previous KP post, I spoke of the death knell of liberal internationalism exemplified by the Epstein client list. Now, with the US and Israel having gone rogue, we witness the demise of Westphalian principles like respect for sovereignty amongst nation-states, to say nothing of concepts like jus ad bellum (reasons for war). On top of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Israel’s scorched earth approach to its fight against Palestinians and unlawful aggression at home and abroad by a number of other regimes around the world, the package of precedents being opened up is ominous for world peace and international order.
Time to button up and batten down.
The U.S. and Israel’s war against Iran might end up as the air power version of the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
Didn’t the U.S.-NATO-led intervention in Bosnia to stop genocide put the first dent in the Westphalian system?
It is also interesting to note how Trump has disregarded the U.S. traditional allies, Australia and the United Kingdom.
Luke – The UK has agreed to allow the US to use its bases in the region for attack – latest news this morn.
Whether that is a ‘disregard’ I’m not sure.
I like the last pithy statement. ‘Batten down’. But why ‘button up’ ?
Though our (esteemed) PM seemed a bit buttoned up on RNZ this morn lol
Many thanks for the intel.
Barbara:
In case you aren’t familiar with the term, beyond its original use with regard to clothing, “button up” is an old English slang phrase that means to “tightly fasten,” which I use along with “batten down” to indicate that it is time to get our collective affairs in order for what could be stormy times ahead. It seems that among other things the era of soft power is over and a return to hard power politics is now in play. That spells trouble for NZ as a small state and for things such as climate change mitigation policy, which has now been subordinated to Great Power dynamics. Not good, IMO.
@Barbara That is a valid point, made public after I posted my comment above.
As far as I know, Trump never tried to assemble a coalition, beyond Israel, for his war against Iran. I wonder about the implications of that approach for wars in other parts of the world.
I am happy to be corrected about either of my above points.
Yes I know the slang around button up – like, keep quiet, too. I couldn’t quite see its application here though the semantics work well :-)
And Luke – could you ever imagine Trump assembling a coalition … lol
Yes, the setting of the example internationally is a worry.
But I am optimistic. Apart from Russia (floundering), I expect other nations (we all think of China) to still operate with some modicum of restraint and diplomacy. As the headline says, it is the US that has gone rogue.
Trump has neither restraint nor diplomacy. No manners. Abominable man.
Setting fire after fire and expecting not to get burned. It’s sick-making. We human beings will have to live through the devils’ dance, doing what we can to stop it. No guarantees. Thank you, Paul, for contributing this distilled analysis.
Much thanks Kate.
Welcome to KP. I am particularly pleased and flattered to read your comment. TBH, I try to offer whatever insight that I can into current political events given my experiences but have major concerns for the future that my younger son and grandchildren will inherit. We can only try to do our own bit to resist evil and promote goodness, which I very much know that you do. Un abrazo.
Helen Clark and Chris Luxton seem to add nothing but confusion to the issue. Anything led by Trump, whose ignorance knows no bounds is doomed to end in disaster. The gradual erosion of the global order is scary .
Barbara:
I would lean toward’s Helen’s point of view rather than Luxon’s, The attacks are a violation of international law and jus ad vellum (reasons for war) and allies like the Arab host states for US troops in the ME were not even informed of the operation until after it began. We have here a double “wage the dog” scenario: Netanyahu wags the US into a war of opportunity and Trump uses the war as a distraction from Epstein and his domestic policy failures in an election year. Luxon appears to not understand this and/or is too cowardly to state the obvious given NZ’s status as a small vulnerable democratic state that needs the protection of laws, rules and norms to ward off the depredations of larger players.
‘Jus ad bellum’.
I did Latin at school, for my sins. The word ‘bellum’ came up all the time, from the earliest lessons – of course the Roman empire was built on war and many of the texts we used came from writings on all the different wars.
Interestingly ‘vellum’ refers to (originally) very fine skin, used for covering books.
Thin-skinned, you might say. Might be a metaphor there, for a certain person :-)
I wasn’t very good at Latin, but I am pleased now I persevered with it. It has many applications …. An amazing language.
Barbara,
Since I am of Roman Catholic heritage and of a certain age, I was religiously socialised in Latin Masses until after Vatican Two and then once I decided that religion was just another ideology used for social control. My reference here was to both the reasons for war as well as the means by which war is waged (following just war theory). On neither front can we say that the US and Israel have behaved honourably in recent times.
And yes, Latin is a beautiful foundational language.
I’m another of Catholic heritage and education, Latin and French to NZ School Cert level. That education is one from which I am profoundly grateful , also the music, poetry, psalms and ritual of Catholicism. The rest I have long since dismissed as folklore.
Donald Trump is without subtlety. He concedes moral and actual authority to the wrong people. How he arose to global power is one of the great mysteries of our age. Is it indicative of fear, inertia or intimidation? Certainly inordinate amounts of lucre in a few hands.
The “free world” is up against not one, but two Axis forces.
Trump and Bibi are clearly spearheads of the “West is best & might makes right” axis provisionally known as the Alliance of Sovereign Nations, aka the Mar-a-Lago Pact. While it’s not quite the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis of WW2, it does have faint rhymes.
On the other extreme, the Islamic Republic of Iran is the “I” in CRINK, aka the Axis of Upheaval. It’s not as formal as the Warsaw Pact, but it still claims to be the biggest counterweight to the West.
Putin is the go-between for both camps.
KR:
Good points. It will be interesting to see if and what Iran’s security partners do. Or will they prove to be fair weather friends? Time will tell.
KR clear analysis, very helpful tying it all together.