“The US leadership is bankrupt.” The unexpected comparison between Trump's decision to attack Iran and Hitler's disaster
Donald Trump is dragging America into a disaster, believes the well-known political scientist John Mearsheimer. He compares the error of Trump, who thought he would defeat Iran in a short time, to the colossal mistake of Hitler, who attacked the USSR because he believed in a quick victory.
Donald Trump has led the US into a complicated situation. PHOTO: Profimedia
History sometimes repeats itself when world leaders ignore the past. So says John Mearsheimer, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, who warns that the United States is going in completely the wrong direction after Donald Trump bet on an escalation in Iran in the hope that the Iranians will be forced to negotiate. The reality on the ground is different, however, and it begins to look strikingly similar to another dark chapter of American diplomacy, the war in Vietnam, the well-known American expert believes. The war is only just beginning, but already after a little more than a month it threatens to send the global economy into a nightmare crisis.
In a podcast hosted by Daniel Davis, John Mearsheimer, a security policy expert and one of the most respected members of the neorealist school of international relations, warns that the situation will only get worse.
“There are articles in the papers saying that behind closed doors the administration is thinking about what will happen if the price of oil reaches $150 a barrel or even $200 a barrel. We have to understand that we are at the beginning of this war. The idea that it will be stopped in the next week or so and that we will live happily ever after … is an illusion. It is just beginning. And again, the Iranians have put us in difficulty“, said the expert.
What is Iran based on?
In his view, Tehran has realized that the hands of the United States of America and Israel are tied because of the energy crisis that is already affecting the whole world. Now, Iran is taking full advantage of this and is managing to speculate to the fullest on the problems of the global economy.
“And if we were to play Iran's hand and we were dealing with an adversary like the United States and an adversary like Israel and we had them in trouble, we wouldn't let them get off that barrel. We would increase the pressure on them. We would raise the stakes.”he pointed out.
As such, the American expects the Iranians to continue to play the same card and hold the entire world hostage in terms of the oil crisis.
“So I would argue that going forward, the Iranians will be less cooperative. Why would you cooperate with the United States and Israel? Again, they are an existential threat,” the expert believes.
Tehran, more determined than ever to produce nuclear weapons
Logically, the Iranians will now intensify all their efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. And their decision is now closely linked to the experiences of American attacks. Obviously, a nuclear-armed Iran could no longer be a target for any great power, not even the US.
“As an American, this situation makes me feel sick. But we're talking about what they're going to do. What's in their national interest? You know, that brings us back to the nuclear issue as well. Do I want to see Iran have nuclear weapons? Absolutely not. I think the consequences for proliferation would be dire. And the truth is, you don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons. The fewer countries around the world that have nuclear weapons, the better. And that's certainly true in the Middle East. But if I put myself in Iran's shoes after what happened and has been happening for decades, the incentives to get nuclear weapons would be enormous. And the same basic logic applies here.” Mearsheimer also said.
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He believes that the United States is on the verge of a real disaster. And with the US, a whole world risks ending up in a dire situation.
“And I think people around the world, when they listen to President Trump and the secretary of defense or the secretary of war, they understand very quickly that US leadership is basically bankrupt. And that's why we're in this desperate situation. That's why we're on the verge of collapsing the global economy. Because the United States is in charge, and the US leadership… I'm going further than to say it's not up to the task. It's actually making us pursue policies disastrous. And this is not only bad for the United States, but for the whole world.”
Comparison with Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam
Further, John Mearsheimer compares the failure of the Trump administration to those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, he does not hesitate to mention the fact that during the Second World War Hitler defeated France and England and expected to crush the former Soviet Union as quickly as Trump envisioned a quick victory in Iran.
“They thought they could get a quick, decisive victory. They thought that a quick campaign that included beheading in the first day or two or three days would bring Iran or bring the regime to its knees. And that would allow all the dissidents in the population, all the protesters, all the people who want to overthrow the regime in Tehran to take to the streets“, he explained.
And Hitler believed that he would quickly crush the USSR
America today, says the expert, is being dragged into a war of attrition, and the outlook is not rosy at all. Just as Hitler thought he would score an easy victory in the USSR, Trump was certain he would not stumble in Iran, is John Mearsheimer's comparison. That's even though, Mearsheimer points out, there were enough people to warn Trump of the huge risks.
“This often happens when countries go to war. Their leaders think they will achieve a quick and decisive victory, and two or three years later find themselves in a long war of attrition. You remember, when Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, he did not think he would end up killing himself in a bunker in Berlin in April 1945. That was not what he had in mind. He thought he would repeat what he had done in France in 1940. And it's a similar situation here, right? And by the way, do you remember Afghanistan? Well, I'm telling you that it's because I used the analogy of the 1941 invasion in France, that it was going to be easy easily in the USSR. On a smaller but decidedly similar scale, we thought that what happened in Venezuela would be replicated here. And I'm sure there are people in the administration who told President Trump that.” the expert pointed out.
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A new Vietnam
The situation would also resemble that of Vietnam, he believes. By escalating the situation, Donald Trump thought he would bring the Israelis to the negotiating table, broken. The same mistake, he believes, was once made in Vietnam.
“We are in a similar situation as we were in Vietnam. I mean, there's no question that there's a big difference in the fact that, in this case, we went into the war thinking we were going to get a quick and decisive victory, which was not the case in Vietnam. But if you look at where we are today and where we were in the Vietnam War from start to finish, there is a striking similarity. And we don't have a winning strategy,” John Mearsheimer also said.
