The White House has launched a war with little thought, strategy or rationale.

What do America’s air strikes against the Islamic Republic of Iran tell us about the disposition of this aged global power? Overriding everything else, the war confirms that America retains an extremely powerful military machine, but has a political class that doesn’t know how to act in its country’s interests.

The anxieties of its insular Beltway elite are worsened because it can’t brush off how much its economy’s apparent buoyancy is dependent on foreigners continuing to lend to it. Washington’s under-discussed debt trap is a persistent risk, including for funding its military. America’s objective position in the world, its unprecedented – I employ that overused word with thought – its unprecedented combination of military superiority alongside a hollowed-out industrial and productive base, makes it an erratic and dangerous force in international affairs.

This represents a perilous situation for Americans, as well as for the rest of the world’s population. Another lesson of the war is that in opposing unexplained and arbitrary actions overseas, many voters for Trump show a shrewder grasp of geopolitics and of US national interests than do Trump and his team.

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