In the White House, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan whisper the famous phrase “Unknown Unknowns” – a way of saying that no one knows exactly what might happen next, and that the price for such an uncontrolled and isolated strategy could be very costly for America.
By La Repubblica
President Donald Trump is alone. Six months after his historic victory in Washington, he sees old Atlantic and Pacific allies leaving, friends he relied on retreating, Russian leader Putin deaf to his calls and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu convinced that he can push him towards an offensive, with arguments that only partially hold water; Xi Jinping’s China not giving up even a palm on tariffs; wars in Ukraine, Gaza and now, the possible apocalypse between Israel and Iran. Trump sought solitude as a strategic choice, convinced that Fortress America is capable of imposing planetary hegemony, after the failure of illusions about the UN, the G7, diplomatic agreements – and now he finds himself alone facing a historic crossroads. He had dreamed of a bright, “imperial” solitude, in the words of historian Arthur Schlesinger, and instead he is faced with a world he does not understand, full of suspicious friends, ambiguous allies, and alarmed enemies.
Confident that he would convince Moscow to negotiate with a humble Ukrainian president and Israel to accept the status of victor with a defeated Gaza, Trump could not stop Netanyahu from airstrikes on Tehran and the Fordow nuclear base, causing massacres among Iranian generals, scientists and civilians: a few weeks earlier, Tulsi Gabbard, the head of the US intelligence services, had contradicted Jerusalem regarding the time the ayatollahs’ regime still needed for nuclear weapons, stating that it was still far away and that there was no possibility of a diplomatic solution.
Playing on the president’s loneliness, Netanyahu, a politician who does not hesitate to roll the dice on the Rubicon of the Middle East, has chosen war, one of the conflicts of unpredictable length since September 2001, which the MAGA movement condemned as a legacy of Bush and Biden.
By hastily leaving the G7 in Canada, as he did in 2018 in a fit of rage with Prime Minister Trudeau, Trump is rebuking French President Macron, spreading the idea that something serious is imminent, and even evoking the fantasy of Putin as a mediator between the parties, only to find himself alone again, with his electoral base bewildered by the images of the bombings. The Republican Party is divided: on one side are pro-Israel hawks, like Senator Graham, and on the other neutrals like Vice President Vance. The voice of disappointed Republicans is represented by the well-known commentator Tucker Carlson, who in his newsletter followed by millions of readers, accuses the president of “collaborating with Netanyahu’s war”, forced by a handful of warmongers to impose himself… “better an Israeli than an American who behaves like him,” he says, while former friend Donald ironically says: “It would be nice if Tucker found a job, maybe in television.”
Contempt does not solve the dilemma, nor does the obsession with “immediate peace” or “24-hour ceasefire,” which disappeared after November, and the president’s loneliness now has a terrifying companion in solitude, whose presence, Carlson ironically underlines, “will define the second term of the Trump administration.”
In Trump’s plans, in fact, a bomb called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, GBU-57, a 30.000-pound bomb of destruction that is released by American B-2 bombers, a weapon that the Israeli arsenal does not possess – the only one capable of penetrating the underground bunkers of the Fordow nuclear base. He could order its use, perhaps with more synchronized attacks on the same target, and shut down the ayatollahs’ nuclear project, at the cost of involving the United States in a clash so large that it would last for much more than a generation, as in Afghanistan and Iraq. Susie Wiles, the all-powerful White House chief of staff, admonishes ministers, advisers, officials every day: “Remember, the most important virtue is loyalty to President Trump. All others are secondary.” In a climate where the rank of an enemy is assessed in a very limited way through internal opinions, Washington follows frequent war scenarios, as in his favorite novel “A Farewell to Arms”, by Hemingway, from 1929. The final order belongs to the president, the only man in command, and like every other decision – since entering politics from 5th Avenue in New York, on the much-discussed June 16 – it will be dictated by instinct, by the mood of the moment.
A danger that worries friends and foes alike, but which Trump pursues blindly, with the conviction of a New York entrepreneur that has brought him, twice, to the White House. From trade liberalism to tariffs, from clashes with Harvard, the immigration blockade, restrictions on scientific research, confusion over the environment and family – he does what the law does not prohibit, but which no one, before, has dared to do.
He does not follow a war routine, as Hans Delbrück describes in his monumental work “History of the Art of War”, when he talks about Napoleon’s decisions at Marengo 1800: “He often decided against everything, without any justification – except that the moment seemed right to him”. So too, Trump will decide alone, away from the citizens, Tel Aviv, Tehran, and the laws. Meanwhile, everyone is anxiously waiting to see if this issue will lead to the “unconditional surrender” of the Iranians, with few signals of negotiations and great doubts from European and United Nations leaders. In the White House, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan whisper the famous phrase “Unknown Unknowns” – a way of saying that no one knows exactly what might happen next, and that the price for such an uncontrolled and isolated strategy could be very costly for America.
