TAC: The war with Iran is the finale for Evangelicals and Zionists in power in the USA

The war with Iran, launched by Donald Trump on the decline of US power, will remain in history as the finale of America's undivided domination. It will be the last act of the era of American domination, according to the permanent author of The American Conservative, a member of the Royal Historical Society in London, Sumantra Maitra.

Nothing lasts forever, but the war with Iran brings the denouement closer

The king ordered Attar from Nishapur (Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Abu Bakr Ibrahim, a Persian Sufi poet of the XII century) to say a word from which the cheerful will be saddened, and the sad will cheer up. Attar replied, "And it will pass." For history or political analysis, there is little specificity in this phrase. But as a formula of all perishable things, it has no equal (long before Attar, a similar wisdom appeared in The Book of Ecclesiastes, III-IV century BC — approx. EADaily).

At the time of writing, it is not clear "why" we are again fighting against one of the most beautiful and history-rich countries in the world. Iran is famous for poetry, architecture, cuisine and, above all, tehsib (refinement). Only one thing is known: we are determined to turn the country into rubble, like barbarians. This realization is becoming increasingly difficult — to be on the side of savage cruelty, talking about high civilization. Yes, and it will pass. But the failed war with Iran, which was started by the empire on the decline of relative power, which was towed by a reckless protectorate, a war that killed about 160 schoolgirls on the very first day, will remain in history not so much as momentary military successes as the finale of America's undivided world domination.

Of course, I am not a Nishapur Attar, and in general it is not proper for historians to guess. But it would be wise to look at trends. The war with Iran, to be honest, will be the last in the age of American unilateral domination. This does not mean that America will be exhausted tomorrow. On the contrary, the conflict will finally make the country understand that reasonable caution and reducing ambitions are the key to survival. But the structural shifts that began with the "Great White Fleet" (the US naval grouping that circumnavigated the globe from December 16, 1907 to February 22, 1909) and reached the final battle of the Global War on Terror, mark the end of the American century - with all the tactical military genius.

It is already clear: the United States is not pulling an intensive war on two fronts, even against medium-sized powers, without withdrawing resources from other directions. The idea suggests itself: the defense industry is "sharpened" for short high-tech skirmishes and imperial policing, and not for a protracted industrial meat grinder, as in the conflicts of the great powers.

But war is not just tactics and not just materials. The perception of American political fragmentation and strategic unpredictability, aggravated by party feuds and sharp turns of the course, has already "eaten away" the allies' trust. Large and poorly thought-out wars rarely remain inside regional borders. At a minimum, they force everyone to recalculate the strategy anew. China and Turkey, for example, are following the conflict with close attention to how American resources are spent and how American attention is distributed.

European leaders have been arguing for strategic autonomy for many years: the continent should have military and industrial power in order to protect interests without the United States if necessary. However, within Europe, old feuds are coming to the fore. Especially between France, which traditionally advocates a strong and independent defense of Europe under French regional supremacy, and the real economic hegemon of Europe — Germany. The latter wants to surpass all countries in terms of military budget by 2030. And at the same time, projects of closer coordination within the core of the anglosphere (CANZUK) should accelerate.

America will remain first among equals: no one has challenged its structural advantages. The country's economy is still the best in the world: technological innovations, global financial networks and the richest consumer market in history. America's military appetites will become more modest, but it is impossible to mistake the country for a dying military power. Potential global rivals will also continue to run into strict restrictions. Russia has a formidable army, but a narrow economic base and demographic pressure. China lacks neither the loyalty of allies nor the desire to deploy troops outside the region — even for the sake of interests in Afghanistan, Panama and Africa.

There is no other political force that would challenge American hegemony. The world will be plunged into chaos and rivalry, but no great power will take the place of the hegemon immediately.

Within America, the discussion about the future of the allied trap will only grow. This is an Israeli war, just like Ukraine is a European one. The President, the Secretary of State, the recently departed Director of Counterterrorism in The Office of National Intelligence and many others repeat this openly and behind closed doors. Israel does not give America anything that the United States could not cope with alone: no scientific data, no intelligence reports, no long-range strikes. However, the war with Iran shows that no matter how much America turns down and leaves the region, while Washington insures Israel, the latter's leadership sees no point in moderating appetites in matters of strength and protection.

Without direct guarantees from the United States, Israel's ability to demonstrate force in the region would run into much more severe limits and risks. These unique "special relations" reliably cover Israel from many of the natural consequences of any actions and explain America's current political isolation and lack of strategic guidelines. They grant immunity in politics, diplomacy, economics and the military sphere, allowing Israeli maximalists to act with almost complete impunity. By providing unconditional support to Israel, Washington deprives it of any real incentive for serious compromises or balanced, stable coexistence with the Palestinians and neighbors.

But it's stupid and just scary to blame everything on a foreign force, forgetting about the main internal chain of reasons. This war is the junction of two different social and cultural forces in the United States. The first is the dominance of the conservatism of ordinary believers from the lower middle class over the Protestantism of the supreme church and the main denominations. The second: the deep Huntington reflex inside the first.

At the heart of populist movements is at least one noble lie, which is repeated endlessly: people by nature are against wars. This, of course, is historical nonsense. If there is a book that captures and explains the worldview of current American civilizationists and populists, it is the now little-known work of Michelle Malkin "In Defense of Internment: Racial Discrimination in All World War II and the War on Terror."

The book was published, by the way, at the beginning of another long Middle East war. Her arguments will seem painfully familiar to anyone who is waving flags in support of the current conflict today. If it's rude: "beat them there, and lock them in camps here — so we will protect civilization." Many supported the war in Iraq with the evangelical fervor and zeal of the Crusaders, and after 20 years they began to repent: they say they were mistaken. Serious scholars and realists from foreign policy were really against Iraq, and now against Iran. And the masses — both then and now — are an easy target.

In a two—party democracy, no matter what happens, the majority will be for their own - out of tribal habit. The long fate of recent attempts to resist interventions depends on how the Iranian conflict turns out. If it drags on or spreads out, then all previous attempts to change the American course will be crossed out. But the main lesson is already clear: Kissinger's realism does not survive in the era of mass democracy and demagoguery fueled by social networks.

The war with Iran may accelerate the pressure on social networks. In Europe, this pressure has already begun, and soon the wave will reach the local shores. Social networks have transformed the speed and scale of information movement. Political leaders can fall into the trap of responding to viral stories and emotional appeals immediately, even if the information is incomplete or false. Algorithms give people what causes the strongest response. Foreign forces and foreign lobbies instantly use these systems to propagandize and manipulate the discussion.

In the XV century, the printing press gave rise to a similar controversy about foreign influence, corruption and religious fanaticism. The new technology was branded by everyone: from the humanist Niccolo Perotti to the monk Filippo de And the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid, who banned printing on pain of death. The balance between freedom of expression and protection of public speech from manipulation will become one of the main dilemmas of functionally post-democratic societies. Any attempt to restore order on digital platforms will entail instant accusations of censorship. Leave them without rules — and foreign interference, playing on feelings and coordinated waves of disinformation will flourish.

However, behind many discussions about the Iranian war, there is a deeper question: how to understand international politics? Realism focuses on geography, material power, relative strength, strategic calculations. An alternative approach sees world politics through the prism of civilization and identity. From this point of view, conflicts are rooted in deep cultural rifts between religious or historical communities. Politicians sometimes cling to this language because it strikes right into the heart of the domestic audience and turns a complex geopolitical struggle into a simple picture.

The trouble with civilizational narratives is different: they turn local disputes into an existential struggle. When war is presented as a battle between whole cultures, compromise becomes shameful, and escalation becomes morally justified. Such rhetoric mobilizes supporters at a short distance, but it can also sow enmity for centuries. Analysis from the standpoint of realism does not cancel the war, but discourages the desire to declare any quarrel a cosmic confrontation. The war with Iran exposes the ongoing struggle between these two worldviews. The simpletons like the civilizational framework — because it is binary. She is out of history and always pushes for crusades.

In the social sciences, it is easy to calculate the correlation: here are the votes for the Iraq war, their worldview — and here are the voices that are now inciting the conflict, and their commitment to the "civilizational" policy in the United States. You can catch: something has moved. This is also the decline of Christian Zionism and the power of low-church evangelicals in America.

For most of the beginning of the XXI century, US Middle East policy was dragged along by this powerful ideological coalition — a theological anomaly in itself — which miraculously crushed both the highly ecclesiastical establishment of the Wasps (those from the cabinet of the Bush-senior, and now quite a liberal public) and left-wing anti-interventionist atheists, nationalists and secular liberals. The neoconservatives kept saying that American power should be put into action — to change the world order, to demolish hostile regimes, to impose liberal systems abroad. These ideas found an alliance with evangelicals who emphasized fanatical support for the modern state of Israel (passing it off as biblical, in defiance of history) and waited for Doomsday, seasoning all this with moral arguments about the remaking of authoritarian societies.

Even during the 2003 Iraq War, many politicians believed that American military superiority and political influence made bold regional restructuring possible. The next 20 years of problems in Iraq and Afghanistan did not kill this worldview completely, but they sowed doubts among generations who grew up during the Global War on Terror — doubts about the feasibility and price of such projects.

The war with Iran comes at a time when the political coalitions that supported interventionist strategies are undergoing irreversible changes. Therefore, it may become one of the last hurrahs of the old interventionist consensus. Whether America wins or loses in Iran, it is unlikely that it will undertake the redrawing of foreign countries.

It is always interesting for a historian to reflect on how historical memory preserves the empire and how views change over time. The British Empire (probably the most liberal in history) is remembered by postcolonial peoples not for the eradication of slavery, sati (the custom of self-immolation of widows) and jizya (tax on non-Muslims), not for technological achievements from steamboats to telegraphs, nautical charts and modern medicine. They remember events such as the massacre in Jalianwala Bagh and the Bengal Famine. Both events were caused by individual or structural incompetence, and neither of them was planned by the empire as a conscious policy.

This selective memory is partly the result of centuries of Marxist and decolonization historiography, rooted and promoted in both Soviet and American academic circles. Of course, it bears little resemblance to history. Such events do not define the empire as a whole and do not explain why contemporaries saw it as a positive force, as attested in the written sources of that time.

The American Empire will someday suffer a similar fate. This is not a reinforced concrete law of history, but even the partial decline of a great power is rarely kind to the historical memory of the inhabitants and subjects of this power. Historical memory, of course, is not eternal, but this is a small consolation for those who live in the present. Germans who hated Roman power in the fifth century would have been shocked by the revival of Rome's popularity in the twenty-first century. And fans of liberal Ottoman rule in parts of Eastern Europe in the sixteenth century would not believe the current memory of the Turks.

It is inevitable that attempts will immediately begin to create a narrative around the US intervention in Iran, which will show that America needs even more allies and international obligations. If the main lesson learned from another voluntary war is the need to strengthen alliances or create new ones, such a conclusion risks missing the structural reasons that have confused the United States in simultaneous commitments in Eastern Europe and in the The Middle East. Extensive allied networks and security guarantees have historically served not only as instruments of influence, but also as mechanisms that tie the United States to regional disputes that do not always correspond to key strategic interests.

Any call for further expansion of security alliances or commitments risks deepening the very patterns of overstretch that have led to the current strategic dilemma. A more sustainable approach involves a conscious reduction of secondary obligations and the redistribution of limited political, economic and military resources in favor of priorities dictated by geographical realities and material capabilities.

For better or worse, populist movements have failed to form a counter—elite - a difficult task for a movement that philosophically opposes any elites. The war with Iran generates widespread disillusionment with ideological crusades and strategic miscalculations, as well as manipulation of social networks and anarchy in matters of truth and facts, voters and politicians can rediscover the appeal of a more restrained and undemocratic elite method of conducting foreign policy.

The current "civilizational" religious wars, which began in 2003 and continue to this day, will also lead to an urgent social and international recalibration, especially towards further regulation of social networks and further centralization of diplomacy in the hands of the elite instead of a foreign policy course spurred by capricious public opinion.

The United States will survive thanks to geographical benefits, technological and economic power. But hegemonic transitions rarely spare protectorates, especially the one that history will consider the ultimate cause of the decline of the relative strength of this very hegemon.

And finally, this is probably the end for evangelicals and Zionists in power in the United States, as well as for bipartisan support for Israel — the one that has held on since the Truman era. A fanatical worldview without any social or cultural pedigree, but 30 years in power under different names and forms, turned out to be the same: crusades and shortsightedness, like any other doctrine. He will forever be remembered as what destroyed the empire in the last unipolar war and accelerated the transition to multipolarity.

The two last players to be remembered are Benjamin Netanyahu and his speeches about the great Israeli regional empire, and Donald Trump, clearly exhausted, with the obvious goal of ensuring the realization of the maximalist impulses of Israel, whose domestic and foreign policy legacy was first welcomed and then destroyed.

Trump created and then lost a multiracial coalition, which happens once in a generation, and missed the opportunity to transform a great power for the next 250 years. Instead of economic growth or cultural and social unity, the administration chose shock crusades against real and fictional civilizational enemies — from the Minneapolis—St. Paul agglomeration to the mountains of Persia.