It has been declared that there will be a ceasefire for two weeks, the Iranians will allow for shipping to pass through the Straits of Hormuz. All will be well… It is holding. The somewhat theocratic Sunni republic of Pakistan mediated negations with the Shiite republic of Iran and the USA. The same USA that had it’s reality television star president stand alongside an Easter Bunny as he blathered on about death and destruction while boasting about himself. There was promise of mass destruction to befall Iran, then the announcement there would be a ceasefire. Topsy turvy messaging, or madness some may think.
Richard Nixon employed a ‘madman theory’ while he negotiated with the North Vietnamese and Soviets. Nixon wanted the leaders of those countries to think that he was unpredictable, volatile and willing to risk nuclear destruction. In turn this caused the Vietnamese and Soviet leaders to tread with reason and use cool minded methods. It forced them to make concessions and placate the irrational leader of the ‘free world.’
The theory is based on the premise that an irrational leader is more dangerous than a rationale one. In the case of Nixon, it was a calculated bluff. With his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, the pair enjoyed the role play of using a form of diplomatic ‘good cop’ and ‘bad cop.’ One acting as the reasonable, and cool headed agent while the other hot headed and unpredictable.
It is unlikely the current US president has the calculation and awareness for such methods, let alone the understanding of history. Under the current US regime, it has been as dangerous for diplomats as it was for journalists under President Obama. Except, Trump’s regime has gone out of it’s way to assassinate foreign diplomats even mid negotiation or while his own envoys are in discussion with them. It is not a madman theory, it’s just a form of madness of the manifestation of the arrogance of American exceptionalism incarnate.
The Zionist in the room is how the Israeli government will behave, are they capable of restraint this far along. It’s not that Israel is ruled by secular and ideologically based human beings, rather a religious entitlement exists, even racialist among the government. Such traits are a caricature and slur thrown at their Iranian rivals. Not to mention a standard of evil by which certain historical pariah regimes are despised for. What guarantees and certainty exists when negotiating with the US government? It has a history of lying and betrayal. As for the Israeli government it has over the years gone from one of sympathetic survival imperialism to outright settler colonialism, in an unstoppable or unapologetic manner. Only zealots and those purchased make the case for their actions in Gaza and elsewhere.
The history of the United States is not one of restraint and regard for civilian life. In the past, a president and US officials would massage language with a sympathetic or regretful tone, collateral, unintended, calculation were words spoken with weight, Scholars and media pundits ensuring the murder and destruction was done with a wider self interest and even greater good. The Hitler of the hour had been defeated, or needed to be. Dominoes could no longer fall.
“We have to burn down the village in order to save it,” as one GI said while on a zippo raid in Vietnam. It is a mentality that does not suit the victims, or even make sense to observers, only to the killers and their enablers. There is no amount of destruction and death that is enough for the US government, only when it’s thier soldiers who are dying at such rates the public no longer is willing to tolerate is it considered enough.
This time it’s different. The language of the government official’s have no manipulative language, it’s not deceptive. It is brutally honest. Violent, vile and unapologetic. Death to them all, kill them all. Die! Die! It is base and impulsive, the tweets from an angry rival who should have his phone taken from him until his mind cools, simmers to reason. The Secretary of War, and other sycophantic officials repeat the violent language. They speak with the tongue of exceptionalism.
But the Iranian’s chant ‘Death to America’. And, countless American officials have boasted about turning some part of the world into glass, a car park or to be flattened. Iran supports terrorists, while the White House and Downing Street welcome a head chopping murderer in for handshake photo ops. The Iranians are religious die hard types. Yet, the nation of Israel is founded on the theological adherence to a political religious ideology. The current US administration is dog whistling to and embracing a cult of almost uniquely American political christian theatre. The sort of charlatans that belong in Fletch Lives, rather than the White House.
There is no Irwin Fletcher in this mad reality. And, it has taken the villainous compact of the current governments of Israel and the US to make North Korea, China, Russia and Iran itself appealing to many US and Western citizens. These tyrannies seem sympathetic in their rationality and desire for peace, even the Russians as they prosecute a war against Ukraine, seem like the peaceful type by contrast. Putin, for his faults has garnered a cult of personality among the terminally online because he is not a fat slob, and does not seem insecure in his body language posturing or need to wear expensive suits a certain way.
The other difference is the US military itself seems mostly reluctant and unwilling for another war. A war that has no lying narrative by which to fight for. No domino theory, no police action, no weapons of mass destruction. Those have all been played out. No one really believes in the conjuring pre-war publicity campaigns. This war had none. It was forgone. Instead the wars purpose now is to wage it over the very thing the war itself caused. Open up the Straits, or stop Iran from getting a nuke. Even though the US had asserted that such a capability was taken care of. It’s not just the US military that’s less inclined to fight another war, so too are it’s allies who have grown weary of the endless wars and bullying.
It turns out, the US government is a pretty malicious friend. It tends to bully and ensure things goes it’s way. The Australian government, for example has experienced this over time. While most Aussies have forgotten the 1975 coup, each Prime Minister has not. And, while the loyal ‘Ghurka’s of the Americans’, have committed some forces to the region in support. The Australian government is somewhat tethering on reluctance, it’s hard to gauge firmness from a man such as the present Prime Minister who has never worked for anything in his life and it’s unlikely his soft hands have ever made a fist outside of a bikini clad digital tantrum. Alas, in a peculiar set of timing the nations most decorated soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith has been arrested.
The war crime hero, had around twenty-one of his fellow soldiers testify against him, over murders he committed while deployed to Afghanistan. And a reservist was also recently arrested for serving in the Ukraine military as a drone operator, gaining experience that the Western military’s seem deficit in. And, this very reservist likely did his service with the Ukraine’s when Western governments were all about supporting that nation in it’s war against Russia. The Australian Federal Police have made the arrests and likely alienated some of the military, and certainly many in the nationalist political front. Was this timed randomly or, to deflate the energy for war. Such a conspiracy is for more interested minds than mine to delve into.
While Nixon’s administration over saw the death of millions, it’s ‘secret’ bombing of Laos and Cambodia was kept out of the minds of the American public. Though, it was no secret to the people of South East Asia who suffered beneath the mass death and destruction. Nixon acted with a calculation and language which was placated by some academics and critical media. Trump’s regime may have less deaths to it at this time, it kills with reckless inconsistencies. The madman theory is not apt for a man who is likely mad through his own egotistical self importance. One who trusts his own gut, has never read a book and listens to the last person that spoke.
What comes next for the world may be dire. As commentator and researcher Adam Fitzgerald suggested, this may lead to a wave of terrorist attacks, and the emergence of other types of extremists. Those inside the US and Israeli government included. Both have nationalists and religious types who see the world with a tainted vision of apocalyptic certainty that does not suit most of us. Though, for whatever reason there is an appeal for some when they see religious types express an otherwise obvious madness. It’s embraced with good faith.
It would be funny, absurd even if one was not to sit by and watch with sober nihilism the chaos that hierarchies of power bring to the planet. We should never forget that despite all the laws, and institutions of legalese filled with professionals and careerists, intellectuals and their essays, technocrats and bureaucrats, diplomats and international bodies, here we are. With mass murder and naked aggression occurring with no checks and balances. The smartest people in the room, those the mob elected to rule and any that ascended the ranks of power and politics all seem capable of one thing, campaigning on fixing their own and their like minded predecessors problems. And for the USA, war.
It has been said that war is the health of the state, Maybe, it’s the health of the world, at least for the civilised beasts of it. War is the mental health of power. The mad man was never a theory, it should be understood that bombing millions of innocent people is madness. Yet, somehow it’s rationale. Reasoned and in time, forgotten. Maybe, madness itself is the mental health of the state.
