Newspaper Reader
Mar 24, 2026
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Trump could always walk away and leave others to clean up. As Richard Haass, a senior official in past Republican administrations, noted, that would amount to a “we broke it, you own it” inversion of Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn rule. But that would be a Pyrrhic exit. Iran could continue to hold global energy hostage until it is satisfied that Trump will not resume hostilities. Of course, he could promise not to start bombing again. But would Iran trust him?
It is too soon to capture the extent of the damage done to American power. But we can be sure that Gulf war III will intensify the global arms race, especially among America’s confidence-shaken allies. We are likewise at the start of an alternative energy boom. Nuclear power, solar panels and windmills do need critical minerals. But there is currently no Strait of Hormuz choking off green energy supplies.
What remains to be seen is how Trump will find a way out of this morass. He wanted to bring down Iran’s regime. Now he is lifting sanctions on Iran so that it can sell more oil. Amid the torrent of feints, hype, invention and bluster, Trump’s goal is now to set the clock back. With planning like this, who needs chaos?
https://www.ft.com/content/2656f791-c17c-4b44-8a1e-1892fef5374a?syn-25a6b1a6=1
Who can forget Mr. Luce’s ‘interview with Kissinger in 2018? My comment:
‘While babies in Vietnam are still being born with catastrophic birth defects from the effects of Agent Orange, decades after the end of the American Anti-Communists crusade or just call it mass slaughter, The Great Man is treated to lunch by a pundit who disingenuously call him consigliere, as the-in-order-too of not sounding too much like what he is, a sycophant to The Great Man. Did Luce even mention his book ‘The Retreat of Western Liberalism’ ? Isn’t there some kind of obligation, on the part of the guest to know something of your host’s latest accomplishment? Or is the aged Great Man above that kind of social obligation?
The essay unfolds in an almost comic mode with Luce planning to waylay The Great Man into ‘spilling the beans’ on the Know-Nothing Trump. The dramatic tension is non existent, as this 95 year old is more interested in having an audience who simply listens, in awe, to his estimation and opinions about the wider historical scope of his intelligence: his specialty is Foreign Policy Metaphysics. The Great Man doesn’t disappoint himself .
Mr. Luce knows the Party Line by heart, as he helped to construct it: Russian revanchism, the end of the ‘rules based order’ meaning the erosion of NATO, in sum the ‘decline of American Power’. Or rather, the fact that Europe is no longer in need of American tutelage. The burning question is TRUMP and his chaotic practice politics and his disturbing propinquity for another political monster Putin.
This little melodrama ends with Luce helping The Great Man to his car in the rain, and the ‘server’ speaks to Luce with some pertinent information: “Dr Kissinger has been looking forward to this lunch for days,”
Political Observer
Lunch with the FT: Henry Kissinger ‘We are in a very, very grave period’
https://www.henryakissinger.com/interviews/lunch-ft-henry-kissinger/
Edward Luce | Financial Times
July 20, 2018
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