“They really are a nation of terror and hate,” Donald Trump says of Iran. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) combined humanitarian relief with the promotion of privatisation and market access for US business. “The United States does not seek either political or economic domination over any other people,” Dwight Eisenhower insisted in 1957. That doesn’t mean Trump doesn’t have his own version of moral power. The catastrophe of the Iran war makes the point plainly: the Trump doctrine can deliver only bloody turmoil – and an accelerating erosion of US power.

Source: The Guardian March 20, 2026 08:22 UTC