Trump’s Iran War Is a Familiar Middle Eastern Folly

With his rhetorical extremity and mad-king threats, Donald Trump makes every crisis seem like an end-of-empire moment, a breaking point for American power in the world. The war in Iran is the latest example, where the shadow of imperial apocalypse hangs over his flailing attempts to resolve the crisis created by his military gamble.

Maybe Trump’s America is Britain in the 1956 Suez crisis, discovering its own impotence, realizing that the sun has set on its empire. Maybe Trump himself is King Croesus of Lydia, invading Persia on an oracle’s encouragement and........

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