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View all search resultsWhen fools go to war: How miscalculation drives conflict and chaos
Both Trump and Putin miscalculated how the conflict would play out, and each is now struggling to devise some face-saving way to escape the hole he has dug for himself.
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United States President Donald Trump speaks on Wednesday during a televised address on the conflict in the Middle East from the Cross Hall of the White House in Washington, DC. (AFP/Alex Brandon)
A
lthough one might be hard-pressed to find similarities between the wars in Ukraine and Iran, United States President Donald Trump’s April Fools’ Day speech from the White House has brought the parallel into sharper focus.
To be sure, Ukraine is a democracy (however imperfect) aspiring to European integration, and posing no threat to its neighbors, whereas Iran is ruled by a murderous regime that has oppressed its population, fostered terrorism and destabilized the Middle East for decades.
Ukraine and Iran also stand on opposite fronts globally. Iran’s government has supplied drone technology to Russia’s autocratic regime and receives intelligence support in return, and receives funding by selling sanctioned oil to China. Ukraine, by contrast, receives intelligence support from the US as well as money and weapons from Europe and other democracies.
But look past these moral and strategic dimensions, and striking parallels begin to emerge. Chief among them is the character of the leaders who started the wars. Both Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin miscalculated how the conflict would play out, and each is now struggling to devise some face-saving way to escape the hole he has dug for himself.
Hence, Trump’s recent 15-point American plan for “peace” in the Gulf reads very much like the Kremlin’s 28-point Ukraine “peace” plan concocted last year for Trump’s amateur diplomats, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. Both documents, as well as Trump’s gibbering April Fools’ Day address, should be taken seriously but not literally. What they signal is an attempt to find a dignified exit.
Of course, each overture was swiftly dismissed by the other side. Iran will not renounce its uranium enrichment and ballistic-missile programs, and it remains determined to extract a pound of flesh from Trump by deciding who may and may not transit the Strait of Hormuz, and at what price.
And Ukraine, for understandable reasons, will not simply cede the Donbas region to Putin as a reward for his territorial aggression. Instead, the Ukrainians remain determined to stand their ground and deter Russia by imposing an extraordinary death toll (now at least four times higher than US losses in Vietnam) on its army.
