TORONTO – The United States is spending billions of dollars to lose a war in Iran that is enriching its oligarchs, impoverishing its citizens, sabotaging its alliances and strengthening its enemies. The war is exposing a guiding principle of U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign policy: superpower suicide. Empires rise and fall, but to my knowledge no state has ever deliberately and systematically killed its own power — much less with such speed.
This strategic suicide can be difficult to admit: One still hopes that Trump’s misadventures are based on some understanding of the American national interest. They are not.
At a minimum, a superpower must be a modern state that includes, through the rule of law and other institutions, a substantial body of citizens committed to a common endeavor. But the Trump administration treats the U.S. not as a modern state but as a commercial opportunity for a select few.
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