Columns

For Asia, Africa and other corners of the globe that do not share the ‘sacred’ histories of ‘Western civilisation’ at which white supremacist shrine, US President Donald Trump and his bully-lieutenants, Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio worship, misapplying and misunderstanding the core underpinnings of current American strategy in the Middle East conflict is deadly.

Bleating of Sri Lankan politicians

For many of us, the war initiated by the US and Israel against Iran, aggravated (as if more aggravation was needed), by Friday’s US bombing of military facilities on Kharg Island, Iran’s primary oil export hub, is translated solely in terms of a potential energy crisis. Admittedly, that is a very real danger. More so as Sri Lankan politicians seem to be blissfully unaware as to the impending crisis. ‘We have enough fuel stocks till April’ they bleat.

What happens ‘after April’ is anybody’s guess, it appears. While other countries in Asia, including the Philippines, Pakistan, South Korea, Thailand and Bangladesh are adopting a raft of urgent measures including immediately adapting to four-day work weeks, rationing fuel and closing schools, this country’s Ministers helplessly blink in the glare of media questioning, saying only, ‘we do not think that the time has yet come to do anything.’

The public is urged to ‘remain calm’ and not to ‘panic’ much like how affected communities in the hill country were told ‘not to panic’ as the rising waters of breached dams in the face of Cyclone Ditwah’s fury last December, swirled and rushed around them resulting in thousands of lives lost and unprecedented damage to property. Justifications in retrospect as to why swift preemptive action was not taken and blaming public officials did not help the victims.

The NPP and Schrödinger’s cat

Even as the National Peoples Power (NPP) Government acknowledges that global supply chains and price hikes of oil/gas will drastically impact Sri Lanka, it affirms in the very same breath that, ‘agreements with suppliers are in place to secure fuel and LPG requirements.’ Both assertions cannot be true at the time, much like Schrödinger’s cat which speaks to a deliberately absurd quantum mechanics riddle that has long been a part of pop mythology.

That is premised on the unfortunate creature being put in a sealed box (accompanied by a Geiger counter, poison and a radioactive atom) which results in it being both dead and alive. In other words, its fate is tied to a random event which may or may not occur until the box is opened. But let us leave such appealing conundrums aside along with the mediocre meanderings of local politicians, to focus on the central thrust of this week’s column.

This is to emphasise that the theatrics of the assault on Iran, with US missile strikes sensationalized in the backdrop of video games played by the Trump White House as the President boasted of being told by his generals that it would be ‘more fun’ to sink Iranian ships than capture them, is misleading in the extreme. The ‘dehumanising’ of Iranians is explicit even as Israel and the US ‘dehumanized’ civilians of the Gaza Strip as they were bombed to oblivion.

Fiction of ‘international law’

Indeed, it has come to a point where the US does not bother any more with the niceties of ‘explanations. Mr Trump first brushed off the barbaric US strike by a Tomahawk missile on an Iranian school killing one hundred and sixty non-combatants including children and school teachers, by saying that this was a strike by Iran itself. That claim was scientifically debunked. When reporters questioned him, he then said that ‘I do not know much about it.’

The fact of the matter is that US military policy had systematically been stripped of earlier built in safeguards to prevent exactly these disasters. To be clear, this is not to defend the barbarities of the theocracy-dictatorship of Iran and the many cruelties that it had inflicted on Iranian women. This was bluntly articulated by the Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sanchez (the only European leader who refused to allow the US to use its military bases for the ‘operation’ despite classroom bullying by Mr Trump).

In a piece that he wrote on invitation to the ‘Economist’ titled ‘No to war’ (edition of March 14th-20th 2026) Mr Sanchez observed that his position was not to imply ‘sympathy for Iran’s brutal regime.’ Rather, our stand is that ‘this war is illegal, a major threat to the international rules based order and contrary to the interests of humanity’ he said. He added that ‘no one knows whether it will contribute to the fall of the hardline regime.

The Spanish ‘bull’ and his waffling English counterpart

But ‘what we do know is that its costs will be huge…Iranian civilians will suffer disproportionately and the rest of the world will suffer’ he warned. This was the pugnacious Spanish ‘bull’ standing his ground while the rest of Europe cringed in cowardly submission. Indeed, the waffling Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Sir Keir Starmer should have emulated his Spanish counterpart. That is when Mr Trump scornfully remarked that ‘Starmer was no Churchill.’

This comparison is both odious and ridiculous. Ideological similarity to Adolf Hitler against whom the Allies fought in the Second World War surfaces in regard to Mr Trump and none other. Mr Trump’s false nostalgia of “make America great again’ recalls how Hitler invoked the Prussian dominated German empire to propel himself to power. Blatant dictatorship styles of both leaders and the Trump-Rubio doctrine of white Western rule recalls the ‘pure blood Aryan’ theory.

But dire warnings of history appear to have been forgotten. Earlier, European President Ursula von der Leyen called upon Europe to stop acting like the custodian of an old world order’ and learn the ‘language of power.’  That was a few weeks after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told an applauding European audience at the Munich Security Conference on February 14th 2026 that Europe and the US shared the same heritage of a ‘Western Christian civilisation.’

The word ‘white’ need not have been spoken

His emphasis was on common languages, culture and ancestry which should be ‘fiercely defended’ he said. The only word missing from that address was ‘white.’ But that need not have been explicitly said; the meaning was far too clear implicitly.  ‘We in America do not want to be polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline’, Rubio said, denigrating the United Nations and emphasising ‘reform’ of ‘global institutions of the old order.’

The irony could not be more profound. Speaking in Munich, the very city that cheered in 1938 as Hitler ‘bloodlessly’ annexed the border regions of Czechoslovakia and Britain and France vacillated, intent on appeasing him, the US Secretary of State did not mention Nazi atrocities even once. Instead, he posited the struggle as being between Soviet communism and Western civilization. These arguments are, of course, wearily familiar.

That was the same basis on which the Third Reich ruthlessly demolished democratic opposition and justified the genocide of the Jewish populations of Europe; a further irony as Israel now practices genocide against Muslim populations. Meanwhile, a further question becomes pertinent. Why is the ‘liberal’ American polity silent in the face of such atrocities? ‘Opinions polls’ say that the war against Iran is ‘unpopular.’

Calamities of our time

That unpopularity may deepen when American soldiers are brought home in coffins or when Americans have to stand in line at the fuel pump. But opposition to the Wild West in the White House must be based on a greater constitutional principle. Or did it only require a Trump, a Hegseth and a Rubio with ‘Christian prayer breakfasts’ subverting Christian teaching, to bring global calamities about?

These are the perplexing questions of our time.