Marshalling The Troops

Even Michael Gove must be close to seeing the light, since he has published Peter Hitchens:

This is how I became a Canadian nationalist. I did it on the rebound. I never wanted to, and it is a strange experience to find myself pounding the arm of my chair when Mark Carney, of all people, defies the Almighty Trump. But it is so. Once, like that poor man who speaks the first lines in The Godfather, I believed in America, arsenal of liberty, land of the free, inheritor of Magna Carta and so on. Then, after a couple of years in Moscow I went to live in Washington, D.C. And it was there that I was gently wooed and eventually seduced by the land of maple syrup.

To begin with, it was the discovery that soppy British sentiment about the USA was not in practice returned. It wasn’t so much that they didn’t like us as that they had barely heard of us. Legally, Britain didn’t seem to exist. I had no credit history in the USA, so could not get US credit cards. I had no American driving record, so had to write begging letters to get insurance. I heard alarming tales of other British correspondents or their wives being thrown into the cells by Highway Patrol for driving with UK documents. And when Mrs Hitchens and I set out to obtain Maryland driver’s licences, we faced an extra hurdle. We could not even take the test until we had attended a four-week series of unsubtle evening classes about the perils of drinking and driving. We were at this time in our early forties, and had done a fair share of driving (and drinking, though not at the same time) in Moscow, where breaking the zero alcohol law could put you in an actual labour camp. Maryland’s logic was that, having not attended one of their superb high schools, we had never benefited from the stern anti-drinking education provided there. Why, we might even have tasted the dreaded devil’s buttermilk before we turned 21.

The lectures were conducted by a female sheep farmer from the Catoctin Mountains, who cheerfully admitted to an alcoholic past. So far, so funny. As was the day when I tried to persuade passers-by in D.C. to change a dollar bill into four quarters for a parking meter. I received nothing but blank looks until I grasped that many Americans could not really hear or understand the English version of their own language, much as I might struggle with a Glasgow accent. As soon as I asked for ‘korders’, they smiled and obliged.

But then came the Clinton White House’s decision to fall in love with Sinn Fein’s uncuddly leader, Gerry Adams. This was not funny. I let my scorn show at a White House briefing, and some days later received a phone call from a senior West Wing official. She cluelessly explained to me that America had a duty to prevent conflict in the world. For example, did I not think they were right to intervene in Yugoslavia, as they were then doing? I asked coldly if she was actually equating America’s oldest ally etc etc with, er, Serbia. A silence fell. I realised this was exactly what she was doing, and she realised at the same time that diplomacy wasn’t for her. We said goodbye. And I was out of love. Not long afterwards, by coincidence, I took the train north from New York to Montreal for the first time, braving the cold Canadian air mass, which is about the only Canadian thing US broadcasters seem to care about.

This was true foreign travel, far more so than I had expected. The line wanders through glorious lake and forest country and passes Ticonderoga, that wonderfully named battlefield where France and Britain long ago tangled for control of North America, a continent I still love, in spite of everything. Then suddenly all the signs were in French.

I was instantly captivated by Canada, even by the coffee-and-doughnut chain called Tim Hortons, unknown in the Great Neighbour to the South. There, I found myself sitting next to a Canadian cop, who to begin with looked much like his US counterpart. But then I noticed the St Edward’s Crown on his badge, and my heart turned over. I have never been much of a Thatcherite or Reaganite, and always felt in the USA that there really is no top and no bottom, that if you fall, you will fall forever.

For me, this has always been the dark implication of all that liberty: Wall Street billionaires at one end, chain gangs at the other. The sight of that Crown, and of the Queen’s face on the blue and purple money, brought home to me that I was now in a monarchy with a parliament, northern and stern but with limits. I was especially captivated by the French bit, full of glorious anomalies, especially in delightful Quebec City, perhaps the only place in North America where streets curve sensibly uphill instead of wasting their breath going straight at the gradient.

It was a dream of France before the Revolution, with a grand bust of Louis XIV on a cobbled square next to a superb wine merchant. And despite years of ferocious metrication, the heights of arches were given in pieds and pouces and I was able to order a steak in onces. In Ontario next door, the motorways were marked by tasteful black and white metal shields proclaiming that this was ‘the King’s Highway’, rather than Interstate 95 or whatever the Americans would have called it.

Then there was the baseball. The Toronto Blue Jays were playing a major game in Atlanta, Georgia and a Marine Corps band marched out into the stadium carrying the Canadian flag upside down. All over Canada there was laughter. For months afterwards, they displayed pictures of their national standard, stalk down, helpfully bearing the words: ‘THIS WAY UP.’ Who could not love a country which responded in this way to America’s inability to grasp that there are other nations with pride and history?

And Madeline Grant:

Imagine, if you will, King Charles in the Deep South. The aesthetics are easy enough: it doesn’t take much to picture His Majesty in crumpled linen, Her Majesty the right side of a large mint julep. But imagine if, in Richmond, Virginia, Charleston or New Orleans, His Majesty makes an off-the-cuff comment about how good it would be if the territories he was speaking in seceded from the United States and that it would be ‘a very great thing’ if claims of the Confederacy were honoured. His Majesty, in a show of tact, acknowledges that Washington D.C. might be a little miffed, but does so with a chuckle. After all, everyone knows that the aspirations of the US are old hat anyway.

Except of course the King didn’t do that. He went to Washington and was the epitome of grace and charm. He sought to honour America’s traditions and history and steered clear of any controversies. He certainly at no point questioned its territorial integrity, even as it threatened the position of one of his realms to its immediate north.

Contrast the King’s behaviour with that of Donald Trump this week in Dublin, where he claimed that the annexation of British territory in Northern Ireland by the Republic would be ‘a great thing’. His comment comes off the back of months of joint sabre-rattling with Israel about the Falkland Islands.

The long, zombified existence of the Monroe Doctrine means that many of the claims to territory now held by the US, at least as valid as republican claims to Northern Ireland, have been brushed under the carpet. If America thinks it’s open season on pulling apart the territorial integrity of its supposed allies, why shouldn’t the Foreign Office or the Quai d’Orsay start endorsing Russian claims to Alaska? Surely now is the time to restore the Hawaiian monarchy, which, after all, the US snuffed out illegally and unfairly, in part because they feared that Queen Liliʻuokalani was too keen on us? I jest, but this is no less deranged than the President’s outburst.

True, Trump’s dyspraxic bull-in-the-china-shop attitude to foreign policy can easily be blamed on his demonstrably flawed personality. It is also true that he says many things which don’t always come to pass. Such is his unpopularity over here that his Northern Ireland intervention may actually help the cause of Unionism. Leftists are already dancing an elaborate polka around this issue as they unexpectedly find themselves on the same side as ‘bad orange man’. Yet the grim reality is that Trump’s comments aren’t so far removed from what might be expressed behind closed doors by the most sensible old-school Republican or the most progressive Democrat. Contempt for allies – especially Britain – is a feature, not a bug, of American foreign policy.

That asymmetry works on a micro and a macro level. Indeed, America’s micro-aggressions are if anything more egregious. This week it was reported that a diplomat based in London had been secretly flown to America with the help of US Marines while under investigation for child sex offences. British police were reportedly informed only after he was already airborne and beyond the reach of extradition requests.

There are echoes here with the case of Anne Sacoolas, the CIA officer’s wife who in 2019 mowed down 19-year-old Harry Dunn while driving on the wrong side of the road. Sacoolas invoked diplomatic immunity and scuttled off to America before Dunn’s family had even learnt the name of their son’s killer. In the event, Sacoolas received a suspended sentence in absentia for taking the life of the British teenager, having been advised by US authorities not to return to face justice. That’ll learn her, as our friends across the pond might say.

Both cases lay bare a striking truth: America doesn’t care about Britain. Ignoring the rule of law in other countries, airlifting alleged paedos at great cost, making mad promises about other people’s territory and being unable to remember any historical event that happened more than about five minutes ago are characteristics not of a global hegemon deserving of respect, but of a third-world dictator. Indeed, the tit-for-tat punishment mode of America’s foreign policy is even more third-world than it first seems. The current undermining of Britain seems a kneejerk reaction to our immediate refusal to join a foreign conflict which came at the instigation of Benjamin Netanyahu. The arguments of the US and Israel for publicly undermining British territorial integrity rely on the acceptance of a deranged and false equivalence. Are we meant to believe that Falkland Islanders are habitually going around beating up the people who used to live there or crushing the homes of long-established penguins beneath bulldozers?

Of course, the specifics of what sparked America’s ire can seem almost irrelevant. Here, revenge for settlement sanctions involves supporting the territorial claims of Ireland, one of the most anti-Semitic countries in Europe. Trump recently made clear his view that the Falklands conflict was a long time ago. (He was, he says, ‘a very young boy’ at the time. He was 35.) Since then, in his eyes, we’ve been less pliant, so essentially deserve our comeuppance, ignoring the immense solidarity shown after 9/11, the sacrifices Britain made in Iraq and Afghanistan. This looks more like an expectation of vassalage than alliance; a demand that your ‘ally’ obeys at all times or their basic sovereignty will no longer be respected. The punishment of erstwhile friends runs in tandem with the indulgence of enemies: as Britain is threatened, Vladimir Putin’s Russia is offered concessions while Iran may soon be given a freer hand in the Strait of Hormuz.

All this should serve as a wake-up call. Right-wing parties around the world have been punished at the ballot box for their pro-Americanism. Given US threats to Northern Ireland, the integrity of which first built the Conservative and Unionist party, and the Falklands, which shored up its power in the 1980s, this is an opportunity for the British right to rediscover a more sceptical realism. The President’s outbursts make conservatives still willing to go out to bat for him look ludicrous. They make Andy Burnham’s vow not to prioritise defence at the expense of welfare appear even more spineless, and the Chagos giveaway even more pathologically stupid. As that essential guide to US statecraft Henry Kissinger once quipped: ‘To be an enemy of America is dangerous but to be her friend is fatal.’ It’s time we listened.

And Paul Wood:

To lose one Middle East sea lane vital for the global economy may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. As every armchair strategist knows, Donald Trump has lost free passage through one strait: Hormuz. Last week he let another slip from his grasp, Bab al-Mandeb, taken by Tehran’s allies, the Houthis. More than a quarter of the global oil supply could now fall under Iranian control – and Trump’s war is more doomed than ever.

For those confused about Middle Eastern waterways, a look at the map. The Strait of Hormuz, conduit for a fifth of the world’s oil, is east of Saudi Arabia and south of Iran. All the way over on the other side of Saudi Arabia, on its western coast, is the Red Sea leading down to the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. This shipping lane is overlooked by Yemen, home to Ansar Allah, the helpers of God, also known as the Houthis. It has assumed increasing importance ever since President Trump got into such expensive trouble in Hormuz.

Last week, hordes of Houthi fighters, wearing flip-flops and carrying Kalashnikovs, streamed down from the mountains onto the plains of the Yemeni coast. They took the town of Mocha (from where the coffee gets its name). The upshot is that a single militiaman armed with a rocket-propelled grenade can sit in a deckchair and threaten tankers carrying up to a tenth of the world’s oil. As CNN reported, quoting a ‘regional source’, this was ‘a Saudi-American fuck-up of epic proportions’.

The Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, called Trump twice to beg for American airstrikes. Trump refused, perhaps remembering the last time he waged an air campaign against the Houthis, to very little effect. (The US reportedly spent more than a billion dollars on bombs and missiles targeting the Houthis in 2025. It could have paid them $50,000 each to go home and would still have saved money.) The Saudis’ own very sophisticated air force was hardly to be seen, either. They may have carried out a few airstrikes, but not enough to make a difference.

The Houthis were supposed to be stopped by the official Yemeni government forces, which had been carefully built up by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. But with no air cover to protect them, the government forces collapsed, their soldiers fleeing in disarray across a stony desert.

There were several reasons for the rout. One is that the Emiratis pulled out their ground forces and advisers in January, following a row with the Saudis. Another is that the Yemeni army is a ragbag coalition of different groups at odds with one another. The Houthis – backed by Iranian knowhow – also put out an AI-generated fake recording of the coastal commander ordering his men to withdraw.

But the most important factor was corruption. According to one estimate, only 20 per cent of the official Yemeni strength was real: most of the troops were said to be ghost soldiers, on the payroll but not actually present. There was one perfect detail: the fleeing Yemeni soldiers did not drop their weapons when they ran; instead, they were seen selling them by the side of the road. Perhaps they even sold them to the Houthis.

Government forces were expensively kitted out with American weapons and vehicles by the Saudis and the Emiratis. The Houthis posted a video on X showing row after row of armoured troop carriers and Humvees that now belong to them. One of their commanders was filmed gleefully driving through rush-hour traffic in an MRAP – or Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle – a towering troop carrier that can protect seven infantry soldiers, but which was being used as his personal runabout.

On Monday, the US vice president, JD Vance, said he was in touch with the Houthis to negotiate. That seems desperate. The Houthis are armed and funded by Iran. There’s little reason to think that Vance would get any further in talking to them than he has in talking to Tehran directly about the wider war. On his visit to Dublin, Trump himself said: ‘The Houthis called, and they don’t want to fight with us.’ A Houthi official denied there were any such contacts.

To pile on the bad news, the main east-west pipeline carrying oil in Saudi Arabia was also hit by drones over the past week. That attack was blamed on Shia militias in Iraq – which are controlled by Iran – but could have been the Houthis. Either way, even if the Iranians didn’t precisely orchestrate all this, they benefit.

The 1,200km east-west pipeline carries as much as seven million barrels a day heading to the Red Sea and then up to the Suez Canal or down to the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. As a result, the wire services reported that portside stores of Saudi oil available for export were days from running out, while repairing the pipeline will take weeks. An acute energy crisis beckons. Brent crude is back above $100 a barrel. Prices for consumers are rising.

Trump used to campaign on lower gas prices. Now he tells audiences at his rallies that paying a little more at the pumps is worth it to stop Iran getting the bomb. ‘I don’t think they’re demoralised,’ he said of his supporters. ‘I think they’re very proud of the fact that I’m not letting Iran have a nuclear weapon.’ The chances of accomplishing that are fading. From Iran’s point of view, it makes sense to race to achieve a usable nuclear weapon as quickly as possible.

Trump’s MAGA base thought they had elected a president who would keep them out of foreign wars. The opinion polls say that only about three in ten voters back his handling of the Iran war – it’s amazing his support is that high. The Republicans are now expected to lose not just the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections, but perhaps the Senate as well. Trump faces two years as a lame-duck president, under constant investigation. He will probably be impeached as well.

President Trump has shown he’s prepared to start fires, but not to put them out. The MAGA commentator Tucker Carlson said the Iran war marked the end of the American empire. More modestly, it may be the end of Pax Americana in the Middle East. The Saudis have made a new alliance with Pakistan and Turkey, though so far their new friends have not shown up to help with the Houthis.

Meanwhile, President Xi of China will have noticed that the US is running low on missiles. A former CIA director, William Burns, once said Xi had instructed China’s military to be ‘ready’ to conduct a successful invasion of Taiwan by 2027 (the 100th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army).

That doesn’t mean Xi will actually send an amphibious army across the Taiwan Strait. But intent often follows capability, and the US has been weakened as well as humbled. The trouble with losing two straits is that someone else may be tempted to try for a third.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the empire of Sir Paul Marshall, Sohrab Ahmari writes:

Well, it was nice while it lasted. Beginning in 2016, Donald Trump won over large shares of working- and lower-middle-class Americans to the GOP. Eight years later, majorities of non-college voters and those earning between $30,000 and $100,000 a year voted for him, and the quintile of counties with the highest poverty rate shifted most sharply to the Right. Counties in which residents are most reliant on welfare payments were also more likely to pick Trump. 

But now a re-realignment may be afoot. This week’s New York Times/Siena poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans earning less than $50,000 a year intend to vote for a Democratic nominee in the upcoming midterm election, while only about a third support a GOP nominee.

If these numbers hold once voters actually head to the polls, they could spell serious trouble for the President and his party. Already, the smart money is on Democrats easily clinching the House of Representatives. As for the Senate, these are the sorts of polling numbers that could see Abdul El-Sayed winning in Michigan or even James Talarico winning in historically deep-red Texas (notwithstanding Talarico’s now-renounced vegetarianism and belief in a non-binary deity).

Progressive strategists are already planning to reverse the so-called dealignment of working-class voters from the Left — a bond that used to be taken for granted but was disrupted by the rise of Right-wing populism. To be sure, working-class mistrust of the Democrats is deep and will not easily heal. Beginning with Bill Clinton, the party abandoned its New Deal traditions and came to serve as a vehicle for the professional classes and the progressive wing of capital: haughty, censorious, committed to corporate globalisation and exotic cultural causes.

Working-class disillusionment with Trump may not translate into durable support for the Democrats, so much as voters simply staying home. But that itself would be devastating enough for the GOP.

The reasons aren’t hard to divine. Trump won on a platform of lowering costs and avoiding foreign entanglements. Now diesel prices are hovering above $6 a gallon because of a war that predictably squeezed Middle Eastern energy supplies. Fuel prices ripple through the material economy, putting upward pressure on the cost of food, housing, transport, manufacturing, leisure, and much else besides.

This is what war opponents warned about when “Operation Epic Fury” appeared popular with self-identified “MAGA Republicans”, even as it proved unpopular with other groups from the beginning. The Trump coalition, the opponents argued, was much larger than MAGA Republicans: die-hard fans of the President who would cheer if he converted to Shi’ite Islam tomorrow.

Beyond the MAGA die-hards, the Trump coalition included lots of working-class people — including voters of colour — who only supported the President conditionally. Trump’s border crackdown and economic nationalism were popular with downscale America, as was his pushback against DEI and wokeness, which working-class people experience as HR henpecking.

But they didn’t vote for another Middle Eastern war, and they were explicitly assured that they wouldn’t get one if they pulled for Trump. The President himself had described the Iraq War as a “disaster”, and he’d repeatedly railed against the “trillions” wasted in the post-9/11 regime-change wars — funds that, he said, could’ve been spent on hospitals and roads in the homeland.

That message was echoed in the 2024 Republican platform, which included “PEACE IN EUROPE AND THE MIDDLE EAST” among its all-caps planks. For their part, key Trump surrogates such as Stephen Miller had warned about “Kamala [Harris] leaning all in on starting many new bloody wars in the Middle East.”

Promises made, promises not kept — working-class support lost.