Donald Trump has urged everyone in Tehran to evacuate “before it is too late,” reports USA Today. Too late for what? Is this like the Usual Suspects, where only at the end do we know what the movie was about?
WASHINGTON − President Donald Trump urged residents of Tehran evacuate immediately after telling the country it should have signed a nuclear deal with the United States when talks were on the table.
The president abruptly left the Group of Seven summit in Alberta, Canada, where he and other world leaders were discussing the now five-day-old shooting war between Israel and Iran..
We may be watching a showdown between two vast post-Cold War geopolitical strategies. An attempt by the Chinese-Russian-MENA axis to subvert the West through open borders and de-energization versus an attempt to destroy the Chinese-Russian-MENA axis itself by exploiting the contradictions within it. It’s still ongoing, but only now do we realize for how long the rival strategies have been at odds..
For both sides the domains of conflict are identity politics and energy, but in different ways. For the West the identity lines are those that divide the ME, Central Asia and Eurasia. For the anti-American coalition the identities are the newly created multicultural divisions. One is almost the shadow of the other. Somehow the issues of open borders and unlimited immigration in the West are the distorted reflection of the centuries-old conflicts between Arabs, Jews and Christians, and even the ancient rivalries of Eurasia. The Balkanization of the West is the image of the Balkans.
In the energy domain the goals of the rivals are opposite. The anti-American coalition wants to make energy expensive, thereby destroying the West. The pro-American coalition wants to make energy cheap, thereby shattering the China-Russia-MENA coalition. Net Zero in Western Europe was always mysteriously linked to Russian and Iranian gas exports and unconstrained coal usage of China.
They were all of a piece but under the surface. We sensed it, but couldn’t express it. To a significant extent politicians on both sides pursued strategies and counterstrategies unconsciously, their ideologies serving as a multifaceted prism that determined how they lined up on immigration, net zero, support for Israel, reindustrialization and support for Israel. In the West the old labels of Tory and Labour, Republican and Democrat began to be redefined by powerful gravitational forces reshaping things from afar. It was almost a case of subconscious Grand Strategies organizing the coalitions rather than the coalitions consciously organizing the strategies. Publics began taking sides by intuition. The pundits tried to explain it with a label: Trump. But it was bigger than Donald.
Only now that we can look back at our tracks over the landscape can we understand the logic of our past steps. The terrain contours which determined our route now make everything clear. But the summit is still hidden from us. What awaits on the height remains a mystery.Suddenly we feel like federal agent Dave Kujan after letting Verbal Kint – or was it Keyser Soze? – go. Only now do we understand, though we still don’t know how the story ends. Leave Tehran before it’s too late? Too late for what?
