President Donald Trump began his second term with an unprecedented confrontation with Europe.
On the menu were threats against the EU, insults and punitive measures (tariffs, or nominal sanctions, such as those against former commissioner Thierry Breton and not only).
The formalization of the anti-European direction appeared in a key document – the National Security Strategy.
A land where opposition and freedom of expression is suppressed, culture is destructured, identity is erased and there is an imminent risk of the extinction of civilization – this is the Trump diktat.
At the same time, the American president moved the US compass from the old, obsolete and exhausted continent to the “new world” – the Gulf region, with its thoroughbred stallions ridden by lofty, brilliant and courteous sheikhs.
The gulf (which today burns more and more like a torch, lit up by the US-Israeli war in Iran) has become a passion for Donald Trump since his first term.
At the time, the American leader wanted to show how America’s center of gravity had changed by choosing Saudi Arabia for his first foreign visit.
It seemed that the region was only milk and honey – and from then until now, it really was.
In Trump’s first term, the US increased its arms exports in the region, widened trade contracts, and the extended Trump family (his brother-in-law and son-in-law Kushner) have strongly cultivated personal business contacts.
In his second term, the ground having been generously prepared, Donald Trump made an even greater show of force, leaving the impression that the petro-dollars of the Gulf kingdoms will flow to the US, and the Gulf’s petro-dollars will be able to easily replace potential losses derived from Trump’s undermining of US relations with Europe.
In the first year of Trump’s second term, the milk and honey to the US economy from the accounts of the Gulf sheikhs look increasingly obscene.
The Saudi leader promised Trump 600 billion investments. Then, he upped it to 1,000– yes, a trillion from the godfather!
Qatar has announced it is offering the Greed-in-Chief a super plane as good as the super Air Force One and super expensive, close to half a billion dollars.
Even part of the money for the exorbitant bargain related to the purchase of Warner Bros. can be traced back to sovereign wealth funds in the same Gulf, the son-in-law-tycoon, Jared Kushner being the magnet to attract them.
Of course, the business with licenses and real estate developments is now carried out by Donald Trump’s sons, their father’s position an irresistible attraction for the financial and political elites in the region.
In a broad sense, the American economy has an asset and a great vulnerability: it is disproportionately fueled by the advance of the tech industry. It’s a vulnerability, because the moment there are setbacks, you don’t see anything else compensating for it.
The American tech industry has also put its eggs in a single basket – the gold-plated basket of the Gulf monarchies. It is no coincidence that, for example, data centers are now proliferating in the region, this new gold mine of the present and the future.
But the milk and honey promised by the Gulf have been drying up of late, more precisely starting Feb. 28.
That was the day, Donald Trump gave the order to go to war which he will regret for the rest of his life and for which America will pay for a long time after President Trump leaves the scene.
Trump’s order to bomb Iran in partnership with Bibi Netanyahu also resulted in the burning of the Gulf kingdoms, not just the targets within the criminal regime in Tehran.
For 10 days, the towers that boast the “new world” have been hit by drones and missiles. Luxury hotels and residential complexes (many of them luxurious) are burning or being disfigured, and the threat persists with each new day that Trump hesitates to give the order to end the conflict.
Energy infrastructures have been targeted, also vital infrastructures, such as water desalination plants – because the Gulf kingdoms, as much as they bathe in oil and gas, lack drinking water.
And the data centers of the American tech giants have also fallen under Iranian fire, Amazon for example.
The airports in the Gulf today operate almost like those in Ukraine, which has been under Russian invasion for over four years, and the pain is all the greater as some are an essential link in the global chain of intercontinental air transport, providing stopovers for destinations to and from the most visited tourist spots on the globe.
Finally, the critical maritime routes in the region through which oil and gas leave to customers on all continents, have been under the threat of Iranian strikes, and are almost entirely blocked.
Of course, this picture naturally makes you calculate the material damage already suffered by the economies of the Gulf monarchies, economies which Trump expected to milk forever.
The damage is undoubtedly huge, but even that is no longer the big problem. Not the immediate, but the future perspective is truly becoming the chief terrorist for the Gulf states and Trump’s plans to expand America.
For the war in Iran, already in its first 10 days, has revealed two strategic realities:
- The vulnerability of the Gulf
- Europe’s solid foundation
Even if the war in Iran ends quickly (increasingly difficult to believe, other than if Trump in a panic decides to end it), point 1 – vulnerability –the development model of the Gulf economies risks becoming a big question mark.
Based on cutting-edge tourism, luxury real estate, intensive marketing, data centers and fuel exports, this business model showed its limits in the first large regional crisis.
And the potential for such a crisis will persist even after the war in Iran ends, because no one (not even Trump) and nothing (not even massive investment) can change either the geography or the geopolitics of the region overnight.
The war in Iran has the ‘gift’ of making everyone aware of the fragility of the area. For Gulf monarchies, the costs will be felt on all sides.
Fear and mistrust will persist long enough to challenge industries for which trust and safety are a capital in themselves – from tourism, to real estate, to aggressive marketing that presents these countries as sanctuaries for visitors and investors.
Kinetic threats will require colossal investments in missile and anti-drone defense to protect industrial infrastructures of all kinds – from energy to water to data centers. It’s useless to have them if you can’t use them. These countries will then probably have to put in place systems to protect maritime routes, which means a colossal effort politically and financially.
In other words, due to a war unleashed by Trump, the states he hoped would be a source of investment for America and his family businesses will have to redirect significant amounts to something completely other than creating jobs in the American economy.
Of course, there may also be the problem that, after the Trump-Iran moment, the questioning of the Gulf development model may translate into an inability of the Gulf states to do business as much as before the war.
Therefore, we can see a prospect in which the Gulf monarchies will make less money and at the same time they will have to spend more money domestically.
None of these dimensions put Trump at an advantage, because his calculations depend on the surplus in the Gulf, not lack.
Ass for point 2 – the solidity of Europe – one thing I think is becoming more obvious day by day after February 28: Europe is far from being the dying model described by the Trump administration in his statements and in the National Security Strategy.
On the contrary, the war started by Trump highlights the vitality of Europe and the dependence on it of America and the Gulf monarchies.
Trump found out from the start that he could not carry out strikes without Europe’s support – by using specific bases and other infrastructure; by outsourcing to Europe a significant part of the need for anti-drone and anti-missile protection for the US allies in the Gulf (even Ukraine, bent by the burden of war on its own territory, has become essential, through direct support, for America, in the Iranian theater).
Europe will also matter if the issue of liberating the Strait of Hormuz is raised, and it will matter both diplomatically and militarily.
In fact, the navies of several European states, with France as the soloist who quickly mobilized an armada led by an aircraft carrier, occupied positions for defensive operations.
And NATO, composed mainly of European countries, has been intercepting Iranian missiles flying towards Turkey for several days.
Donald Trump started the war in Iran and ended up learning that he can do nothing on a large scale without Europe and at the same time he can do little of what he dreamed of with the Gulf states.
A hard lesson, which a clear head could have understood without triggering a stupid, painful and extremely costly conflict.
Those who are deep in the Trump-MAGA ditch, both in the US and abroad, now have an opportunity to make the necessary corrections.
Reality, the eternal competitor of Donald Trump’s imagination, is downright overwhelming.
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