The weapons are fast and devastating, driven by big bucks and high tech. They’re being used in a war of religions that’s almost 14 centuries old. Both sides have recruited God. A man of war from Southeast Asia thinks he can bring reason to bear. He can’t.

It’s tough trying to imagine a politician more conceited than Donald Trump, but Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto comes close. He’s elbowing his way onto the world’s centre stage to harangue and holler. His brand is military and blokeish.

His attempts at peacemaking are superficially praiseworthy but impractical. They don’t show a smart strategic mind working to raise the status of the globe’s fourth most crowded nation through peacemaking, but an unrehearsed actor fumbling with the script.

His latest bid for international admiration has been to offer his mediation services to solve the US-Israel war on Iran, a day after it started. The fighters hadn’t called for a referee and most likely never will, but the gesture looked grand domestically.

Wow, say the Indonesian voters, our guy is the world’s top cop, and the mighty want his solution services.

Then we learned that the attackers had already killed President Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. No boss, no deal-making.

Since then, there’s been a significant crash in support for Prabowo backing US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace.

Earlier, and without consultation with the public, the former general sacked for subordination in 1998 dobbed in his Republic to join the BOP. Officially, it’s “a global collaboration platform to support the stabilisation of conflict areas and post-conflict recovery, especially in Gaza.”

Western nations like Australia, NZ, the UK and Canada have been........

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