End of the Amerikan Empire in Three Trump Actions

Three events in the past three days, taken together, signal the end of the Amerikan Empire. Trump is doing what he can to make my prediction come true: This war will end with the US thrown out of the Middle East. Israel will become, for Republicans, an even more important bastion of Amerikan “power” than it is today, but will not fare so well under Democratic leadership. 

Over the past few days, Trump has: 

1. Deployed the one remaining Aircraft Carrier group from the Pacific to replace the Lincoln in the Middle East. 

2. Told Hegseth to reduce US participation in military exercises in South Korea while praising North Korea. 

3. Threatened to bomb Oman if it “gets in the way” of Trump’s attempts to end the war by negotiating an agreement on joint management of the Strait of Hormuz, that Trump said would be US Territory after the war. 

Those three actions together, signal to the world that the Amerikan Empire is coming undone at the seams, that is indeed a “paper tiger”. The actions have also demonstrated the transactional nature of Trump, and through him the fact that the United States can no longer be trusted.

Couple the destruction of trust with the demonstration of military weakness, and the empire as we know it is finished.  

Considering each of these: 

Aircraft Carriers 

The US has eleven aircraft carrier battle groups, either deployed or in home ports for refit, maintenance, or as part of a strategic capability ready to deploy wherever needed.  

The Amerikan Aircraft Carrier fleet has been the preeminent example of power projection, enabling the US to ‘be anywhere, anytime’ to face adversaries, to deliver relief, or simply to ‘fly the flag’. Aircraft carriers allow the US to project power across Asia without needing forward bases in every country. The presumed ability of the US Navy to take control of the skies over any country meant that the US could, in effect, shut down almost any military engagement against an Amerikan ally. 

North Korea could be assured that American naval airpower would come to the aid of South Korea in an invasion and would sweep the skies of any North Korean air assets. With that mission accomplished, nowhere in North Korea would be safe from air attack by the US or South Korean forces. 

As the world sees that US aircraft carriers are under strain from deployment in support of the Iran war, the actual deterrent capacity of the force comes under question. Supporting a carrier battle group during peacetime is a huge logistical undertaking. Sure, they don’t have to be followed by coal ships to refuel like the British High Seas Fleet at the beginning of WWI. But not every ship in a carrier group is nuclear powered, and they do require refuelling. 

Then there is the problem of provisioning the ships, keeping the aviation fuel tanks full for the aircraft, and keeping the larders full for the sailors. And all ships, nuclear powered or not, require constant maintenance of all systems. An ocean going navy, by its very nature, is going to be subject to the damaging effects of seawater and salty air, 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. Every system will suffer corrosion and wear and tear. Every system will require maintenance. 

A new equation comes into play. 

Strike at the logistical support and the carriers become just like every other military asset, captive to resupply and bonded to fleets that must comply with the same limitations of fuel and fodder. 

Korea 

In two days, Trump instructed the Secretary of War (Defence) to reduce US participation in already scheduled military exercises with South Korea, and followed that with a sycophantic ‘Truth’ post extolling his wonderful relationship with Kim Jong Un, the great leader of North Korea. 

For many years Trump has flip-floped on his relationship with Kim, but keeps coming back to an adoration for Kim as an authoritarian leader with absolute power and dynastic credentials. Trump’s strange attraction to and deference to dictators serves as much as a warning to allies as it does a playbook for how to manipulate Trump and through him, US policy.

Kim is supplying arms and soldiers to Russia against Ukraine, and has been heavily sanctioned by the US for its nuclear weapons programme and development of long-range ballistic missiles.

Defense of South Korea has, for decades, been a cornerstone of US policy and has been a core element of the alliance system that the US has supported to ensure stability in Asia. The recognized major adversary has been China, and North Korea has been a Chinese surrogate.

Undermine  the alliance system and the stability of Asia, and in particular the ‘independence’ of Taiwan becomes all the more precarious. While China does not have a history of waging aggressive war (unlike the United States), the (re)unification of Taiwan is a core Chinese aspiration. Anything that normalises relations with North Korea and accepts their nuclear and ballistic missile programme undermines Asian stability.

Oman

The alliance system that the US has built in the Middle East mirrors the process and objectives of the Asian alliance system; ensure that Amerikan and regional interests are protected from disruption by providing a security framework upon which all participants can rely.

The Trump/Netanyahu war of  aggression against Iran was initiated without notifying allies whose territory and airspace would be used to wage that war. Aside from any diplomatic niceties, dragging allies into a war without the ability to prepare themselves was a betrayal. Each of those countries could be expected, reasonably, to attempt to manage their individual  exposure. They should also be expected to assess their own level of short and medium term risk.

As the Qatari Foreign Minister said early in the war, “The US is far away, while we have lived next to Iran for millennia, and will be living next to them for centuries to come. We must find a way to live together”.

Oman is attempting to do exactly that, find a way to live with Iran during this war and into the future. What the Iran/Oman negotiations demonstrate is that Amerika’s future in the Gulf has been assessed, and Oman knows that a weakened United States will be a bigger risk than a dominant but ‘trust worthy’ Iran.

The United States is, or soon will be, in retreat from the Gulf.

Summary

The Amerikan Empire, presumed to be the sole superpower after the fall of the Soviet Union, can no longer claim the mantle of global leadership, militarily, diplomatically, or economically (a topic for a different post, although without the first two it certainly cannot retain the third).

Furthermore, the destruction of trust will harm Amerika’s ability to influence global events and the global economy. Amerikan is in retreat, let's hope it is only a retreat and not a prelude to a Soviet Union style implosion and destruction of the country and institution itself.

Why Netanyahu Engineered a Trump Strategic Defeat against Iran

Who benefits from a US strategic defeat in Iran? There is only one winner: Israel.

Does Netanyahu seek a strategic defeat of the US in Iran?

Netanyahu knows that Israel cannot survive without the US and has done everything in his (as have other Israeli politicians) to ensure that the US is effectively a subsidiary of Israel in international affairs and the UN. But that sentiment has been under threat caused by the very well-publicised genocide in Gaza (I’m not discussing the use of that word, I’m calling it what it is). 

Netanyahu needs to cement American subservience to Israeli political needs, and with Iran he has found the way to do exactly that; handcuff the US to Israel.

In addition, Arab states, and the world for that matter, recognise the transactional, no real allies, all-about-the-money nature of Trump. They bribe him, they flatter him, and they use that influence to remind his minions that they can buy his opinions and policies. They know that when the time comes, they will determine Trump’s Israel policy, not the other way around.

Yes, last week Saudi Arabia and the US announced, and signed, a nuclear technology transfer agreement. Then within a day, Trump (at the urging of Netanyahu) declared that one of the conditions for fulfilment of that agreement would be Saudi Arabia joining the ‘Abrahan Accords’, Trump’s pseudo-peace plan for the Middle East. Saudi Arabia said, “That wasn’t part of the deal”. So nothing is solved, yet.

Given enough time and cunning, Saudi Arabia and other Arab/Muslim countries will find ways to weaken the Israeli hold on the American system, and with Trump they have just the tool to accomplish that, if Israel gives them the time to accomplish their goals. 

And here we come to the Israeli/American War with Iran.

Parity will never be Israel’s friend, and Israel has pursued policies to ensure that no Arab state or combination of Arab states will, in a coordinated way, gain a level of military parity last seen at the start of the Yom Kippur/October War in 1973. Thus, Israel developed their nuclear weapons and has non-subtly indicated their ‘red lines’ for the use of those weapons. Israel has also ensured that no ‘frontline’ Arab state could develop a nuclear program that could lead to a bomb.

But what if an Arab and/or Muslim ‘frontline’ state were to develop a nuclear program to the point of nuclear weapons ambiguity? A simple red line might not be adequate. And as Israel continues to push the residual Palestinians into smaller and smaller ghettos, further from anything that might be considered core-Israel, another deterrence will be required.

Netanyahu knew from the beginning that Trump could not win the war against Iran. The most he (Trump or Netanyahu) could hope for was the setting back of the Iranian nuclear programme by a few more years, and the continued isolation of Iran for the coming decade.

But I suspect that Netanyahu also knew that the US would suffer a strategic defeat against Iran, and that the entire balance of power in the Middle East would be under threat.

And here is how Israel could be the single biggest winner. Get the US thrown out of the GCC countries, and Washington will have no option but to find new places to base their forward assets in the Middle East: Israel.

Currently, there are in the hundreds to low thousands of US troops in Israel. That is not enough to create the tripwire required. Israel needs many thousands of US troops, stationed permanently in Israel, as the ultimate guarantors of Israeli safety from anyone’s bomb. Thousands of US troops stationed in Israel because there are no other countries in the Middle East who will host them will allow Israel to continue its genocide, knowing that the US will not abandon Israel, no matter how egregious the violations of human rights or war crimes committed by the IDF.

By the time this is done, there will be huge US military installations in Israel, probably in the Negev but also up north in southern Golan. Both places that will allow bases to be built, and create the biggest repository of American human shields to protect Israel.

Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania host US forces, in small numbers, specifically to act as tripwires. Netanyahu and those around him see exactly how that works, and the deterrence it places on Russia. How nice to have exactly that same deterrence against any Arab/Muslim state that wished Israel harm.

Iran Prepares to Attack the GCC, while Trump attempts to Distract

The scene is being set for Iran to attack GCC civilian infrastructure, just as they threatened to if the US attacked their civilian infrastructure (and which the US did overnight and over the past days). Of course, Iran will be the aggressor on paper and electronic ink. But the GCC government will know that the attacks are because the US and Israel attacked Iran, without any notice or agreement from them. 

But that is not what is being reported today. Trump gave his Election Fraud speech and didn’t declare that Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff were illegitimate Senators. That’s a relief. He did claim that China tried to interfere with the 2020 election and released declassified documents that show that Russia tried to help him in 2020.

Meanwhile, the US bombed civilian infrastructure in Iran, exactly what Iran said would result in their striking civilian infrastructure in the Gulf countries. 

This is from Al Jazeera this morning:

The United States military has launched hundreds of air attacks across Iran over the past week, killing at least 35 people and wounding 300, according to Iranian health officials.

The US, which has reimposed a naval blockade on Iran, said it targeted military sites along the country’s southern coast and near the Strait of Hormuz, despite a ceasefire agreement.

Iran, meanwhile, carried out attacks on US military facilities across the region, raising fears of a return to all-out war.

 

Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary-General Jasem al-Budaiwi on Wednesday condemned Iran’s “treacherous” attacks on Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan, including strikes on infrastructure and facilities that injured Kuwaiti military personnel, saying they risked dragging the region into “further chaos and instability”.

It is worth looking at some of the statements in there. “Hundreds of air attacks across Iran” - and yet, the following paragraph includes “despite a ceasefire agreement”. The third paragraph says, “attacks on US military site” and “fears of a return to all-out-war". 

The US attack “despite”, yet Iran’s response threatens a “return” to all-out-war. Subtle, but not subtle allocation of accountability to the attacks. 

But equally important is that Iran is reported, not by Iran but by Al Jazeera, as striking US military sites. Then in the final paragraph above, the GCC Secretary General condemns Iran’s “treacherous” attacks.

Even the GCC understands the contradiction in what they are saying, and they know that no matter how hard they attempt to paint Iran as the aggressor, they know that the US and Israel started this war. Allies inform allies when they are about to start a war, especially if they will need those allies’ airspace and ground facilities to carry out their attacks. 

They know that attacks on their civilian infrastructure, threatening millions of people, will happen because the US continues its war, because Trump has no way out of the war he started. They will be the ‘collateral damage’ resulting from Trump’s folly.

Up until now, the GCC has been willing to “go along” with the American/Israeli war because the cost to them has been financial (temporarily, they expect). The attacks on their territories have been, on the whole, attacks on American bases housed in their territories, with some direct attacks for optics (hotels in Dubai) or responses to attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure (the attack on the Ras Laffan natural gas facilities in Qatar). The GCC know that American attacks on Iranian civilian infrastructure could unleash Iranian responses against any of their own infrastructure, not just American bases. 

The frantic behind-the-scenes diplomacy right now is not about getting Iran and the US back to the negotiating table; they know there is zero trust left. The frantic diplomacy is about how to bring Trump and Hegseth to heel. How can they force Trump and Hegseth to stop their war, a war that could kill millions in the GCC (and Iran) and beyond?

But in Washington, attention is distracted by worn-out lies about the 2020 election in anticipation of declaring the 2026 midterm elections to be “rigged” and therefore void in some way or other.

Nothing is being done in Washington to reduce the impact of Trump’s war, a war that will continue to blow back on him, his administration, and his sycophants in Congress. In fact, they are doing everything they can to expand the war, to force otherwise sidelined (but under the gun) allies into the war.