America: the empire that texted itself to death

The Trump administration, it seems, has discovered a novel way to declare war—by texting its plans to the Editor-in-Chief of The Atlantic. Of all the inboxes in all the world, it had to be Jeffrey Goldberg’s. That one of the administration’s most vocal media critics ended up with what appears to be a strategic playbook is almost too surreal to parody. It’s not just a security breach. It’s farce.

Texting war plans to a journalist sets a new bar in political stupidity. And that stupidity offers an insight into the very essence of the Trump administration. Because the content of those texts is more alarming than the leak itself. Beneath the chaos lies something darker: an administration that no longer understands—and therefore cannot uphold—the post-war order that has underpinned global peace, trade, and prosperity for nearly a century.

Take J.D. Vance’s glib complaint that the strike against the Houthi rebels was about “bailing out the Europeans”. It betrays a staggering ignorance of the system America built, and from which it has benefited more than any other nation on Earth. The strike was intended to protect the trade route from the Strait of Hormuz, through the Suez canal and into the Mediterranean. This isn’t merely a European lifeline—it’s one of the main arteries of the global economy along with shipping lanes such as the Malacca Strait and the Panama Canal. Block any of them, and the consequences will ripple from the price of petrol in Nebraska to the cost of cornflakes in Newark. This isn’t about subsidising the EU. It’s about keeping the global market flowing.

This is where history matters. The modern American order—often referred to as Pax Americana—was born not merely from idealism, but from the cold clarity of power, oil, and trade. In February 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt met King Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia aboard the USS Quincy, anchored in Egypt’s Great Bitter Lake. It was there that the “Deal of Bitter Lake” was struck: the United States would guarantee Saudi security in exchange for stable access to oil. Part of that stability in oil supply would be the protection of trade routes – in this context the trade artery in question was the one running from the Strait of Hormuz through to the Mediterranean through which all those barrels of Saudi oil would flow onto the global market.

And that was the Pax Americana blue print which was rehashed across the world. Oil would flow through U.S.-protected trade routes, be priced in U.S. dollars, and underpin global trade—however benevolently—by Washington.

But J.D. Vance doesn’t understand that. And that’s genuinely worrying.

Today, it is precisely this vital trade artery ruining from the Strait of Hormuz through to the Mediterranean that Iran — through its Houthi proxies in Yemen — seeks to disrupt. Yet what U.S. Senator J.D. Vance derides as a “European subsidy” is in fact the very lifeline of global commerce that Roosevelt championed as fundamental to American prosperity in the post-war era.

But J.D. Vance doesn’t understand that. And that’s genuinely worrying.

A decade later, the logic of this global artery—protected by America to the exclusion of all others—was reaffirmed during the Suez Crisis. When Britain, France, and Israel attempted to seize control of the canal, President Eisenhower pulled the plug. He forced Prime Minister Anthony Eden—Churchill’s anointed successor—to withdraw in humiliation. Eden resigned weeks later. His French counterpart, Guy Mollet, barely survived the fallout. Eisenhower’s message was unambiguous: the American defence of global trade routes trumped old alliances, national pride, and empire. The United States would uphold the order—even if it meant flattening its own allies to do so.

But J.D. Vance doesn’t understand that. And that’s genuinely worrying.

What bound it all together was a bargain: America would police the world’s sea lanes, provide a security umbrella, and—yes—reap the rewards. In return, global capitalism would flourish. And flourish it did. For seventy years, the system lifted billions out of poverty, spread democratic norms, and delivered the most sustained period of wealth creation and peace in human history.

It was not a perfect empire; far from it. From Vietnam to Iraq we can see it’s flaws. But it was an empire nonetheless—an empire built on rules, markets, U.S. dollars, and aircraft carriers. It outlasted Soviet communism and, so far, has outpaced China’s state-directed Belt and Road ambitions. The American system was not centrally planned, nor (when at its best) imposed by force. It was built on a radical simplicity: give people security and freedom, and prosperity would follow.

But J.D. Vance doesn’t understand that. And that’s genuinely worrying.

But now, that empire is under threat—not from revolutionaries or rival powers, but from within.

These messages do not herald a new ideology. They do not unveil a bold doctrine or competing worldview. What they reveal is far more banal, and far more dangerous: stupidity. Not Greta Thunberg challenging carbon economies. Not Beijing building an alternative infrastructure. Just rank, performative ignorance masquerading as the art of the deal.

Figures like J.D. Vance seem entirely oblivious to the brilliance of what Roosevelt sketched aboard the Quincy, what Eisenhower enforced at Suez, what Reagan championed, and what Clinton expanded. The Pax Americana they deride is the very system that made them wealthy, powerful, and relevant.

And this is why Ukraine matters.

This whole world order—the order of freedom, commerce, trade, and capitalism—on which America has not only fattened itself but grown strong through strategic protection, is now being tested in Ukraine. It is there, in that scarred soil, that a true clash of civilisations is unfolding: between the centrally planned and the liberally enriched, between subjects and citizens. It is not merely a border war. It is the fault line where the global order is being contested, fought over, and possibly remade.

That is why the clash in the Oval Office was not simply jaw-dropping political theatre—it was historic. It will echo for decades as the moment it became clear that the Trump administration had no understanding of its role in upholding the ”Made in the USA” global order—the ecosystem of rules and security so painstakingly constructed in the post-war world.

Instead, the Trump administration treated geopolitics—America’s stewardship of Pax Americana—as if it were a playground squabble over who gets the last of the mineral rights. Sweeties, tossed around. Ukraine, reduced to a bargaining chip. A transactional world of short-term “deals” replacing long-term strategy.

For a time, I wondered if I was missing something about the Trump administration—some grand economic manoeuvre unfolding behind the scenes. Was it merely sabre-rattling with Canada to mask a deeper realignment? A hardball bid to force Europe to shoulder more of the burden for Pax Americana? A calculated push to modernise the Western alliance to confront a rising China?

But there was nothing so intricate. This flurry of texts is the smoking gun of a digital nervous system in imperial collapse. It doesn’t point to external threat. It reveals something bleaker: a cadre of historically void, economically illiterate, tragically incurious individuals, accidentally seated at the helm of global power. So ignorant in their stupidity, they operate in bliss.

And it is precisely that bliss—their cheerful, unthinking ignorance—that allows them to attack their own judges, undermine their own courts, and dismantle the institutions of liberal democracy. Not because they are hideous, Nazi-esque authoritarians bent on crushing dissent—but because they are children in the midst of a tantrum, smashing the furniture with no concept of what it means.

I don’t think they understand what they are pulling down. Like a meathead enforcer on a sports field—not focused on victory, but determined to obliterate any trace of talent or intellect through sheer brute force, no matter the score.

As Martin Luther King Jr. warned: “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

But J.D. Vance wouldn’t understand that. And that’s genuinely worrying.

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