May 22, 2018

If President Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Deal –otherwise known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action- on May 9, 2018 appears to be misguided, arrogant, and self-destructive, rest assured, nothing is at it seems. With a stroke of his pen he managed at once to alienate and humiliate the leaders of linchpin NATO members Germany, France and Britain, and all but convince allies, quasi-adversaries and neutrals –including Russia, China, and India, who deplored and criticized the President’s decision- that America’s non-treaty international agreements aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.

Twelve days later, on the 21st, Secretary of State Pompeo essentially demanded, on pain of ominous but unspecified consequences, that Iran disarm and render itself prostrate in perpetuity, something that no Iranian government would likely accept.

This brings to mind Austria-Hungary’s 1914 ultimatum to Serbia following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. On that occasion the former intended to ingest the latter just as it had done with Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1909, but it didn’t quite happen that way. Instead, after fighting the “war to end all wars,” the Austro-Hungarian Empire ceased to exist. This time it’s all about oil, pipelines, and the all-important petrodollar; and Iran is in the way.

The President’s actions are understandable only if one sees that his intent is to preserve the status quo, i.e. perpetual addiction to fossil fuels and its conjoined twin –continued denial of climate change. He is wrong, on several counts. There is no such thing as status quo; change, at varying speeds, is the law of the universe. A corollary of that of course is that nothing in this world lasts forever, and that includes America’s military hegemony. Accordingly, by attempting to preserve the indefensible, the President is pursuing a Pyrrhic victory. Instead, he should strive to prepare the nation for the massive unemployment and low wages we’ll face from the advent of artificial intelligence and robots, depleted aquifers, and unheard of diseases caused by climate change. And the way to do so is by switching from fossil fuels and nuclear fission to hydrogen and redistributing future profits from its sale in an egalitarian manner. The technology exists; all that’s required is enlightened leadership.