Iliyasu Gadu ilgad2009@gmail.com 08035355706 (Texts only)
In the late 1980s and early 1990s when the Soviet Union was collapsing like nine pins, western political thinkers were competing with themselves to analyse the significance of the momentous events happening from Moscow the capital city of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, USSR, and coursing right across Europe and beyond.
The city of London, capital of the United Kingdom served as the hub of the rapidly unfolding events in the western world with conferences, talk shows and workshops with leading personalities in attendance.
The vast American Embassy located then at Grosvernor place was abuzz with more than its normal share of activities and as a Nigerian foreign service officer based in the United Kingdom, I had the privilege of monitoring and attending a good number of some of the events taking place to mark the end of the Communist Soviet order which for over 40 years since the end of the second world war had been the ideological foe of the western capitalist liberal order.
Although there were different perspectives
coming from analysts on the significance of the dramatic wounding up of the Communist order in Europe, there was one unmistakeable conclusion however that ran through all the discussions; that the American led liberal democratic order had outlasted the totalitarian communist order led by Russia in the context of the Hegelian perspective of human social struggle and evolution being essentially a case of thesis and anti-thesis. The conclusion of western analyst at the time was that the collapse of the Soviet Union signified the victory of western liberal system over the rigid communist system in the long socio political struggle of human kind for the evolution and eventual establishment of a fit for purpose model for human development.
One prominent analyst Francis Fukuyama whose publications on the collapse of the Communist based Soviet system featured as the star comment of the historical event. He called it ”the end of history” in which he ventured to say that the triumph of the western liberal order had decisively closed all ideological struggles as there can be no more forseable opposing ideologies to compete and succesfully upstage the western order. In his conclusion what he saw was that from the point of the collapse of the Soviet order the only challenge if it came to that would be how to apply the liberal western model to societies that still remained outside but not necessarily
opposed to it. In other words what remained following the collapse of the Soviet order was how to bring the rest of world to accept and adopt the liberal western standard model for all countries and societies in the world.
Fast foward 36 years later since the collapse of the Soviet order and the exultant proclamation of a world order led ad infinitum by the United States of America, what can we make of President Donald J.Trump, the leader of the western liberal democratic order found bound up in a catering truck apparently avoiding the reported cross hairs of an Iranian assasination team sent to bring him or his plane down?
It is even more poignant when we consider that the leader of the country that is regarded as the bastion of the western liberal democratic order is compelled to take this unprecedented desperate and dramatic evasive action against a country that it could not defeat decisively in nearly six months of an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink war.
In the context of the Iran war, objective analysts have tried to look beyond the unflattering image of the leader of the the strongest country in the world cowering in a catering truck in the tarmac of the Ankara airport in Turkey. They have drilled down to the fact that the war on Iran as with other policies of President Trump since he
assumed office has had the opposite effect of diminishing the economic, moral and strategic dominance and influence of the US in global affairs. The tarrif wars even against close geographic and strategic partners like Canada, the miltary threats against Greenland, the constant haranguing of the European Union and NATO allies over matters like membership contributions and tarrifs on goods hardly demonstrate the leadership the world expects and concedes to the United States. On the contrary it shows a country lagging seriously in moral standing and increasingly abdicating its leadership of the western liberal democratic order is supposed to be its role in the post Soviet order.
It is in the context of Iran war that this deep seated weaknesses of the US under President Trump had been ruthlessly exposed. Here not only had the formidable military might of the US been rendered largely ineffective, the Iran war has resulted in a fundamental degradation if not total derailment of US strategic superstructure in the Middle East.
In its counter measures against massive US strikes, Iran has destroyed virtually all the vital American strategic assets in the region. With this Iran has forced the US to inadvertently roll off the ”shield” of strategic security cover of protection to its allies in the region along with the deterence factor against all potential interlopers
hoping to the challenge the Middle East order it had painstakingly constructed there over the decades. Now in a major strategic shift resulting from the Iran war, the US has not only been deterred spectacularly from achievings its military goals, it is in danger of losing its strategic relevance in the region. The fact that the Gulf states, long term partners of the US in the region are now working towards constructing new strategic partnerships with Iran and even with nuclear Pakistan which are outside the region is instructive. This clearly indicates that in the foreseable years, the US stands likely to lose the unchallenged role and influence it had enjoyed in the region. Apart from Iran, Turkiye and Pakistan, China to a
large extent and Russia to a lesser degree are keenly watching and waiting for an opportunity to join in any new strategic game evolving as a result of the vacuum created by the forced roll back on the US in the region.
Aside all this, what must be of fundamental concern to the US is the fact that the loss of its strategic position in the Middle East will inevitably come with the possible loss of the
50 year global petrodollar arrangement with Saudi Arabia andthe gulf Arab states. Since 1974, America had relied on an arrangement with Saudi Arabia to designate all sales of petroleum products globally in US dollars saving the US from using its gold reserves to support the dollar. In 1971 the US was forced to take the extrordinary measure of yanking its reserves to support the dollar as a reserve currency following increasing deficits against other industrial economies.
The petrollar arrangent of 1974 with Saudi Arabia came as a saving grace enabling the US to literarily print dollars and transfer its deficits to the world.
The closure of the Hormuz straits by Iran which is the main passage for oil exports by Saudi Arabia and the gulf states, and the inability of the US to forcibly open it means that the gulf oil states are not able to freely export petroleum products to global oil markets. And if the straits remain closed,the gulf states may be forced to pay for passage of their oil exports in currencies other than the US dollars as demanded by Iran. If this continues, the possibility of the demise of the petrodollar becomes real in the foreseable future. And with it the eventual decline of American global power and influence.
Wherever they may be now, the analysts who predicted that America will prevail for years ad infinitum as the leader and enforcer of western liberal democratic values, looking at the image of President Trump holed up tragi-comically in a catering truck may wonder whether they were hasty in their postulations following the collapse of the Soviet order back in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
