Long before Donald Trump, way back in the 19th century, Theodoros Deligiannis already had the trick figured out. Acting the warmonger one moment, the pacifist the next, and sometimes both together, he played the public for fools.
It was the glorious era of “armed beggary” when the satirist Georgios Souris slapped the moniker “Mr Peace-War” on the then-Prime Minister.
Of course, for all its quaint absurdity, Deligiannis’s gambit only ever damaged his own country. While Trump has turned the entire globe on its head.
Is the war with Iran over? Every well-meaning person wants to believe so. But no serious person would swear to it.
The hurdles are many, primarily because neither side has achieved its objectives.
In Iran, the damage is undoubtedly extensive. But the regime has not been toppled, though we cannot know how badly it’s been shaken.
In the US, Trump is scrambling to convince people that he was neither defeated nor forced to retreat, contradicting even his most inconsistent boasts in the process.
And the outcome of the two-month negotiations now set to follow remains unknown and unpredictable, given the deep-seated suspicion between the two sides taking their seats at the table.
The only positive takeaway from this provisional agreement is that the energy market might stabilize, albeit with some cost or delay. Which certainly isn’t to be sneezed at.
The fundamental issue, however, is less the Gulf than the turmoil the erratic and chaotic US policy has inflicted on the international system as a whole.
Amidst an unprecedented muddle of strategic thinking and a rag bag of choices, Washington bounces from Venezuela to Greenland or Ukraine, and from Cuba to Gaza or Hormuz. Without rules, without a sense of proportion, without constants. And usually, without results.
If nothing else, the restraint and composure NATO nations have shown during the Persian Gulf crisis reveals that they now fully comprehend what has hit them with the American President, and that they are trying to avoid further entanglements.
This comes as no surprise. It is blatantly obvious, after all, that the “Euro-American axis” has seen far better days.
Theodoros Deligiannis’s visionary politics are worth re-evaluating in this new light. He was one of the first politicians to teach us, long before Trump, that the goal is ultimately neither peace nor war.
It’s how to pull the wool over the public’s eyes.
