Friday, April 03, 2026

3: United States

America Is Now a Rogue Superpower Washington’s conduct in the Iran war is accelerating global chaos and deepening America’s dangerous isolation. ......... Whenever and however America’s war with Iran ends, it has both exposed and exacerbated the dangers of our new, fractured, multipolar reality—driving deeper wedges between the United States and former friends and allies; strengthening the hands of the expansionist great powers, Russia and China; accelerating global political and economic chaos; and leaving the United States weaker and more isolated than at any time since the 1930s. Even success against Iran will be hollow if it hastens the collapse of the alliance system that for eight decades has been the true source of America’s power, influence, and security. ................. For America’s friends and allies in Europe, the Iran war has been a significant strategic setback. As Russia and Ukraine wage a grinding war that will be “won” by whoever can hold on the longest, the Iran war has materially and psychologically helped Russia and hurt Ukraine. Even before Donald Trump lifted oil sanctions on Russia, oil prices were skyrocketing—and filling Vladimir Putin’s war chest with billions of dollars, just as Russia’s wartime deficits were starting to cause significant pain. The unexpected windfall gives Putin more time and capacity to continue destroying Ukraine’s economic infrastructure and energy grid. Meanwhile, the Persian Gulf states are burning through U.S.-provided stocks of air-defense interceptors, drawing on the same limited supply that Ukraine depends on to defend its largest cities from Russian missile strikes. ..................... More worrying for European allies has been the evident indifference of the United States to the consequences of its actions. For Europeans, the existential threat today comes not from a weakened and impoverished Iran but from a nuclear-armed Russia that invaded Ukraine in the most brazen act of cross-border territorial aggression in Europe since World War II. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told the Europeans last year to be ready by 2027 to defend themselves without American help, and so they have been desperately reorienting their economies and military strategies to take on the Russian threat without the United States. They have also taken on the bulk of military and economic support for Ukraine because they fear, as many American analysts do, that Putin’s territorial ambitions are extensive, and other European states may be next. Trump’s decision to lift sanctions on Russian oil, over the opposition of Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, and the European Union, showed just how little regard the United States has for Europe’s security. The message to Europe, as the scholar Ivan Krastev has noted, is that “the trans-Atlantic relationship no longer matters.”

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