Prophets of Doom

by John Hinderaker in Foreign Policy, Iran, Liberals, Trump Foreign Policy

  

Foreign Policy magazine is a mouthpiece of the foreign policy establishment that has been wrong about nearly everything for many years. It emails its content daily; today’s featured article is “The Iran War Is Jeopardizing the Entire Global Economy.”

Spoiler alert: the global economy is going to survive.

So why does taking out the mullahs jeopardize the entire global economy? It is easy to see why it might help the global economy; freeing Iran’s 92 million people and allowing them to join the modern world would unquestionably give the global economy a shot in the arm. So why say that the world’s economy is threatened with destruction?

Because Iran has fired missiles at the Gulf States–the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain. A jaundiced observer might say, so what? Well, those countries now play a not de minimis role in world trade and finance. But Iran’s missiles are doing virtually no damage, and the Gulf states will be fine.

This is how the Foreign Policy piece ends:

Reflecting on the rise of international trade and finance, former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson once stated that the “effects of war can no longer be confined to the areas of battle” and insisted that “whatever is done to disturb the whole world’s life must first be tested in the court of the whole world’s opinion before it is attempted.” The markets and networks that underpinned globalization were developed in a postwar environment in which military conflict always took place far away from major hubs. U.S. wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan did not jeopardize the global economy.

“U.S. wars.”

Today’s U.S. policymakers seem to have forgotten Wilson’s admonishment. When Trump embarked on this war, he exposed his Gulf partners to unprecedented attacks, and in turn, he disturbed the flows that are the lifeblood of the global economy.

This is, in my opinion, profoundly stupid. Any time someone begins by quoting Woodrow Wilson, you know he is on the wrong track. But what is mostly going on here is the unshakable conviction, in polite society, that anything America does on the world stage–other than sending money to other countries, of course–can only do harm, never good. We should never interfere with the world’s evils, no matter how profound they may be, as in the case of Iran’s demonic theocracy. Because no matter what we do, it can only make things worse.

That is an article of faith, not a considered analysis of history or of the current geopolitical situation. I am virtually certain that our devastation of the mullahs will make the world a better place, and, in any event, I am 100% sure that the global economy will survive whatever minor inconvenience the mullahs manage to inflict on the Emirates and the other Gulf States.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2026/03/prophets-of-doom.php