Who would have imagined that just over 100 days could so change the world? The US-Israeli “war of choice” on Iran has fundamentally – perhaps, permanently – shifted the global balances of economic, military and political power, and not in America’s favour.
Mix the direct impact of this gratuitous
military conflict with the broader effects on global security, efforts to mitigate climate change, contain soaring public debt and “de-risk” after America’s unilateral efforts to unravel globally agreed trade, and we face nothing less than an upheaval.
“Trump’s war in Iran was supposed to project American power. It projected the opposite,” wrote Eurasia Group founder Ian Bremmer in a newsletter. “American reliability can no longer be assumed, and reducing dependence on the US has gone from luxury to necessity.”
The damage to the US has been heavy. Pollsters record a dramatic collapse in America’s standing worldwide. Even among Americans, according to the Brookings Institution, 56 per cent believe the war has had a net negative effect on US interests – and this included a third of Republicans.
When Pew Research
asked respondents if they were confident US President Donald Trump would “do the right thing regarding world affairs”, 88 per cent of Mexicans said they weren’t, alongside 79 per cent of Canadians and, across Europe, over 80 per cent in Sweden, Germany and Turkey. The European Council found that only 11 per cent of Europeans still consider America an ally.
China’s standing has risen sharply without it having to lift a finger. More people now believe China will have a positive impact on global affairs in the coming decade than the US will, according to an Ipsos poll. A European Council poll showed that about half of respondents in Europe and the US now see China as an ally or necessary partner.
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Trump’s behaviour has alienated even the closest and longest-standing US allies. Threats against Canada and Greenland, and the
badmouthing of EU leaders, have soured links with virtually every European power and rattled the foundations of the transatlantic
Nato alliance. While most Europeans are rapidly boosting defence spending, they are also seeking ways of reducing reliance on America.
Gulf economies that have for decades been among the biggest purchasers of US defence equipment and provided secure bases for American troops across the Middle East on the assumption that, in return, they were under the US security umbrella, now feel
catastrophically betrayed.
The US military has failed to rid them of decades of threats from Iran and its
axis of resistance. Worse, it has failed to protect them from Iranian drone and missile attacks that destroyed around 80 energy facilities, which will cost some US$60 billion and take up to five years to repair. “They paid the price of Iranian retaliation,” as Bremmer put it. “With no say in the decisions that put them in the crosshairs.”
The military failure has painfully illustrated how the rules of war have changed. Million-dollar Patriot missiles have been
outmanoeuvred by US$30,000 Shahed drones. The US may have spent US$890 billion a day on the military campaign against Iran, but that does not deliver dominance in a war waged by kamikaze drones and artificial intelligence-enabled communications.
The harm to the Gulf economies has been amplified by the global disruption of supplies of oil, gas, fertilisers, helium and other fossil-based products. Iran may have triggered the disruption by choking the Strait of Hormuz, but surveys show the US is being blamed for an unnecessary war and the fuel and fertiliser shortages.
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America’s war aims appear to have backfired in ways never expected or intended. The defence department wants to raise the Pentagon’s budget to a
record US$1.5 trillion when national debt, now over US$39 trillion, is squeezing all areas of the government budget, and when conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine and Iran have depleted munitions to levels that will take years to replenish.
The war has scored other “own goals”. The attack on Iran, which some believed would make Beijing think twice before considering an armed assault on Taiwan, has
clearly backfired. The evidence of the Iran war is that the US could not prevail if such an attack did occur. Those anxious about national security who have in the past found comfort in a US security umbrella have over the past three months been taught a brutal lesson.
America’s inability to protect global oil and gas supplies through the Strait of Hormuz has given the global green economy a powerful shot in the arm – not helpful to Trump’s ambitions for the US fossil fuel economy, but for China, as the champion of green technologies from electric vehicles and batteries to solar and wind power, a welcome and unexpected gift.
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Since the turn of the century, the US and its closest Western allies have reluctantly conceded to the rising economic power of the Global South. Advanced economies’ share of the global gross domestic product has tumbled from 58 per cent in 2000 to 39 per cent today, with developing economies’ share rising 20 percentage points to 61 per cent. But they have found comfort in continued military dominance.
So the past 100 days have come as an unwelcome surprise. Adjustment will be painful for many. This shocking asymmetric shift in the way wars are fought means a similarly shocking shift in the global balances of power. The US remains influential, but after the Iran war, some of the swagger has gone.