On the prospects of human misadventure

   With the bets off over which side will reach for its heaviest weapon yet, it is a question of time before something gives. The strange odour of civilization destruction hangs heavily in the air. Those that are down and those who have had their civilizations already destroyed by superior firepower need fear no further fall. This is where the law of unintended consequences kicks in. A disturbed American leadership, traumatised by its increasing loss of global face and inability to swat the Iranian fly with prompt exactitude, may be tempted to reach for the final solution. Unless the civilized world and right thinking Americans who are still in their millions brace up for this possibility and find a way to nip it in the bud, the entire world may be sitting up a vast bottomless pit. 

   Iran has no nukes, but as events in the Strait of Hormuz and elsewhere are proving, the Iranians are masters of asymmetrical hostilities which they seem to have practiced for decades. They aim to disrupt and not to prevail militarily. Stung by loss of imperial pride and prestige, with their cities, critical infrastructure and vital leadership laid waste by saturation bombardment, these proud and hardy people have their back to the wall and may go for broke  at very short notice. An Iranian spokesperson monitored on television on Wednesday hinted at the price of oil reaching two hundred dollars per barrel before the world goes economically kaput. That is when it will be apocalypse now with many nations descending into chaos and anarchy.

   It is curious that it has not occurred to the American leadership there may be a few rogue states helping Iran along in its bid to put American nose out of joints by covertly supplying it with drone parts and unconventional war-heads which can be put to devastating use. As the struggle intensifies, there may also be solitary saboteurs, lone non-native actors, suicide squads who may evade international surveillance to wreck global havoc in solidarity with a nation regarded as the holy shrine of the Shitte commune. This is why nations with significant Shitte communities like Nigeria will have to watch their back and be circumspect in their official interventions. 

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   For years and even decades, experts have been warning that the hunt and consumption of rare   resources was bound to lead to a head on collision among global powers and contending civilizations, if care and moderation are not taken. In Africa, the struggle for rare minerals and fossilized fuels has led to civil wars, military coups, civil insurrections aided by global powers and driven by their local enablers. In their aftermath, they have led to hollowed out nations without any functioning institutions with state capacity reduced to emptied shells of pseudo-modernity.

To be sure, the power of Homo sapiens lies in his transformative genius and capacity to use his native curiosity, ingenuity, resilience and sheer grit. Through these endowments, humankind has been able to transform his environment from its primitive moorings to a modern society. The irony and obverse of the coin is that these gifts when not properly reined in by superior social constructs and legalistic restrains can also force humanity to regress into a state of nature or cause him to self-destruct by recourse to weapons with a capacity to annihilate civilization. This quest for resources led the Germans to annex other nations and eventuated in the Second World War. 

  Twice before they finally occupied France for four years beginning from 1940, the Germans had steamrolled the French in 1870 and 1914 when German troops arrived in Paris. The Germans were latecomers to modern nation-formation. But their traumatized bid for lebensraum or living space, which is another euphemism for resource-hunting, made the Germans the most dangerous elephant in the living room of civilization for almost a century before the world figured out how to deal with the threat they represented, thanks to visionary American and European statesmen.

   It was a passing phase of human civilization which cannot be reduced to the genocidal antics of an ascendant ruling class of one nation.    The Germans were not alone. There were many other nations involved. Between 1870 and 1914 when global conflagration among the leading powers erupted, over two dozen wars among nations were recorded as a result of untamed and untrammelled nationalism and aggressive expansionism. Not even the carnage of the First World War and the formation of the League of Nations and its successor organization, the United Nations, could stop the rot. America invaded several Latin American countries.

 As recently as 1982, Britain expelled the Argentines from the Falkland Islands, known locally as the Malvinas. Things could extend to football. When he was asked which of his famous two goals in the 1986 World Cup Tournament gave him more pleasure, Diego Amanda Maradona plumped for the first one rather than the second which was an act of pure footballing genius and magic. When he was asked the reason for this, the former pickpocket from the slums of Buenos Aires, retorted that it was akin to picking the pocket of the English. Old wounds of fierce nationalism never heal completely.

  The difference between the current conjecture and the old one is that this time around, it is a play of giants with big nations attempting to gobble up the smaller and weaker ones without caring a hoot about global outrage or the much storied respect for sovereignty and the right of each nation however small or miniscule to territorial integrity, the inviolability of borders and the right to national self-determination. It is the final assault on the founding and fundamental charter of the Westphalia nation-state paradigm and as we have seen, it has been brewing for a long time.

   In an attempt to reinvent the old notion of empire and re-engineer or rework the nation-state paradigm, Vladimir Putin has let it be known that he considers the breakup of the old Soviet Empire as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe to have befallen the Russian people in modern times. For four years, the Russian ruler has been trying to decimate Ukraine and reduce it in size or return it to its old status as a Russian vassal state. With the patience and cunning of a master predator, China is eyeing its old province of Taiwan.  Given its virtual decimation of whatever remained of Palestine and the ancient notion of dual state, its obliteration of Gaza and current campaigns of pacification in both Iran and Lebanon, it is obvious that Israel, the undisputed masters of the Middle East, wants to turn the entire place into a Greater Hebrew Corridor.

  That still leaves the America of Donald Trump as the mightiest elephant in the living room. At the onset of the war on Gaza, this column wondered aloud whether the Israeli tail was not beginning to wag the American dog. That seems to be the case. In a startling moment of political indiscretion, Marco Rubio, the American Secretary of State, had let it be known that America was forced to launch an attack on Iran in order to forestall Iranian reprisals after an Israeli aerial blitz which was about to commence. Despite the clumsy attempts at a pushback, there is no evidence of American remonstration with Israel or a disobliging frown.

   It may well be that America had too much on its own plate. Trump has been moving from one nation-zapping project to another and from one massive psych-op intimidation of innocent nations to actual invasion and regime-change in others. Having clumsily backed off a rather fanciful attempt to annex Canada, Trump turned his attention to Greenland which he insisted on forcibly colonizing for its humongous natural resources. This cack-handed attempt at brazen nation-grab was met with such international hostility and global disapproval that Trump was forced to eat the humble pie. Thereafter, Trump invaded Venezuela and captured its leader. Not done, he followed Israel to wage a brutal and vicious war against Iran.

   It was supposed to be a walk-over; a brisk decapitation followed by regime collapse or nation-dissolution whichever came first. But after some initial success and the obliteration of its political and military leadership, the destruction of vital institutions and the saturation bombardment of its cities, this has not happened. Iran and its theocratic camarilla are still standing. In fact as the war drags on to its second week, it is the Iranians who are beginning to taunt and torment America.

    In all this, the irony that seems to be lost on Donald Trump and his bellicose cohorts, descendants of a later wave of European immigration and ascendant American political dominion, is that unlike Israel which was conceived as a warrior nation in which perpetual struggle and domination of its environment is a permanent survival strategy, America was founded as a land of freedom, of intellectual hegemons and unceasing quest for a more equal society. America won the admiration of the world as a transformative beacon of political, economic and spiritual modernity. In all its history, each time America has tried to project itself as a warrior nation, a colonizing leviathan, it has always ended in dismal failure: in Vietnam, Cuba, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Iran. As political unease is compounded by an economic meltdown, something may also give among America's increasingly restive populace.

 So, what can the world do to help America out of its latest quagmire before it sucks in everybody into its molten chasm? It is not as if Mr Trump is entirely wrong about his apprehensions. But his methods are appalling and his approach quite prohibitive of human civilization. Let the remaining global statesmen put on their thinking cap. It is when Trump has his back to the wall that he is most dangerous and can do something seriously threatening. As they say in this clime, sometimes it is better to allow a disturbed person to imagine that he is the unchallenged groom of a voluptuous bride in order to secure a safe passage for everybody.

  Let Trump be helped and cajoled into declaring a unilateral victory over the Iranians and let the Iranians be sweet-talked into accepting this so that they can live to fight another day. In all probability, the Iranians are going to use the respite to proceed posthaste to develop a nuclear weapon. Let the world deal with that eventuality when it happens. The current attempt is completely bungled. The reality on ground is too dire to contemplate. The civilized world needs a fundamental reset. If the advent of Donald Trump helps the world to achieve that, some good would have come out of nasty belligerence.