AA Edit | Putin, Trump: Two Leaders Now Fighting Endless Wars
An autocratic revanchist in Russia eyeing territorial revenge and a global policeman seeking to stop a country in the world’s most restive region from arming itself with nuclear weapons are holding the global economy to ransom
The world is weary of the two ‘forever wars’ but not the two men who started them and who do not seem to know how to end them. The first war has now passed the four-and-a-half-year mark while the second has been on, off and on for six months now but whose effects have spread so much that the world is feeling the pinch as major economies falter even as the cost-of-living and prices are rising universally.
An autocratic revanchist in Russia eyeing territorial revenge and a global policeman seeking to stop a country in the world’s most restive region from arming itself with nuclear weapons are holding the global economy to ransom. Apart from whispering about the need to stop the endless wars, leaders have been unable to bring any pressure on the two to stop the wars and leave the world in peace.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, to a forecast of a few days of military action before Donetsk was taken. The Russian army is still at it, bogged down in the battlefield and losing more men than can be replaced easily. A world just recovering from the economic downturn of the Covid-19 pandemic was breathing easier when Russia declared war on Ukraine.
US President Donald Trump who had promised his nation that he would not be dragging it to war like his predecessors and who went further in promising to end every war on the planet, including that of Israel over Gaza and India versus Pakistan, is still bombing Iran in fits and starts, whimsically switching to a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz to economic strangulation of Iran with sanctions and back to bombs and the more sophisticated missiles and drones of modern warfare.
Mr Trump went to war with the stated objectives of destroying Iran’s nuclear capabilities, extinguishing its missile production, obliterating its navy and air force and stopping its funding of proxies in the region like the Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis of Yemen. After a projected four weeks became six months, a minuscule portion of his objectives may have been met but he is unable to find an exit plan as in Vietnam or Afghanistan even if the US had to accept that its mighty army had been unable to win a war once again.
As America found a resilient country fighting an asymmetrical war smartly enough to bring the Strait of Hormuz into play and choking the passage of about a fifth of the world’s oil supplies and all goods in and out of the Gulf to make a bargaining chip that has forced Mr, Trump to take extraordinary action to try and seize back control while his forces escort reluctant oil tankers through the strait.
Mr Putin, who said he fears being hanged by his countrymen if Russia does not take the Donetsk from Ukraine, is not only threatening to expand the war by taking aim at civilian infrastructure but also helping arm Iran with missile capability to take on American battleships. Meanwhile, Israel stays on the offensive path, choosing to strike in Gaza occasionally and still killing civilians.
It seems to matter little to Messrs Putin and Trump that their own people are suffering and not only from body bags coming home. The Americans are paying more for gas at the pump and necessities at the supermarkets and the Russians are battling inflation even as youngsters fled the country in droves after the war broke out. And the world is still left wondering if there would be an end to these ‘forever wars’.