Photo by Pau Casals on Unsplash
By Mark Kenny
A version of this article was originally published by The Canberra Times.
Fractured internally and debased internationally, it is hard to imagine that the US will again wield the unique mix of strategic threat, intellectual prestige and democratic purpose it commanded at its zenith last century.
Expressly elected on a pledge to end wars, not start them, Donald Trump simply flipped, adding an illegal - and ill-conceived - full-scale bombardment of Iran to America's litany of failed foreign entanglements.
And like Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, the Iran war has demonstrated once more the physical limits of American military might - particularly in asymmetric campaigns when the "simple" objective of regime change turns out to be complex and unachievable.
That this was not a new mistake only makes it worse.
Despite some 13,000 strikes over 40 days, Trump is nowhere, unable to credibly claim victory, nor find a viable off-ramp.
His weaponry depleted for use in other theatres, Trump is left scrambling for miscellaneous gains such as an after-the-fact ceasefire demand that Iran release six Americans currently held.
Trump's naivete drove Iran to choke-off a globally crucial trade corridor - something Benjamin Netanyahu had breezily dismissed as impossible.
This is a colossal fail by an American president who has not only misspent his country's latent strategic potential but degraded its global function from reliable backstop to bringer of mayhem.
Even Foreign Minister Penny Wong says so, using uncommonly direct language to decry a "much more unpredictable United States".
Wong could have added intemperate, unprincipled, unprofessional. Trump's public conduct has been so adolescent that even circumspect international relations experts are describing the 80-year-old president as "unhinged".
Horrified by profaning demands to "open the fxxxxx strait", and his clearly stated intent to annihilate the entire Persian civilisation, Democrats urged the use of the US constitution's 25th amendment which provides for the removal of a president on grounds of unfitness.
Several Trump loyalists in the right-wing pod-o-sphere suggested he should be replaced.
The Taylor-led Coalition, though, still has faith and is apparently oblivious to Australian public opinion.
Less so, Matt Canavan: "The post from the president overnight went way too far and beyond the realms of acceptability," the new Nationals leader said.
With still another 33 months to come, Trump's removal should be seriously pursued.
Remember, too, that in the vindictive president's sights after this humiliation will not be America's enemies, but its longstanding friends.
Decades of trust and relationship-building have already been flushed in childish midnight rants and unscripted presidential meanderings.
Lost on Trump is that the super power's carefully husbanded web of alliances is its single greatest advantage over an ascendent and soon to be technologically equivalent China.
Here though, there are positive lessons also. Trump's slurs against a disobedient Keir Starmer for being "not Winston Churchill" has actually helped to arrest the British PM's tattered public image. Other world leaders are also finding their spines.
Emmanuel Macron has, like Australia, insisted that Lebanon be included in the ceasefire.
Still, the Strait of Hormuz remains functionally closed and is likely to remain restricted and subject to exorbitant Iranian tolls - payable in Crypto apparently.
It will also be vulnerable to closure at any time Tehran deems advantageous. This is Trump's dismal scorecard: a vital sea lane surrendered and the Mullahs still in charge.
Neither has America secured Iran's buried stockpile of 440 kilograms of 60 per cent-enriched uranium. Experts warn that, if anything, Tehran will now be more determined to acquire a nuclear weapon.
In fact, Tehran is now in a stronger negotiating position as it heads into its first direct talks with the US in years.
It knows the world's greatest deal-maker is desperate to escape, so expect progress to be glacially slow.
Along with America's shocked allies in the Gulf, Tehran can see that Trump has lost control of the situation and cannot even contain Netanyahu.
Literally within hours of agreeing to the ceasefire, Netanyahu - the chief advocate for the commencement of hostilities in February - launched the most intense bombing campaign of its war with Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon. More than 300 people dead. Overwhelmingly, civilians.
The Israeli PM could not have made his contempt for peace talks any clearer. Nor his view that now is the time to go for broke.
How do we know? Because Netanyahu attended the White House on February 11 and gave a special video presentation to a small group of top administration figures including Trump in the Situation Room.
This we learned from some outstanding investigative journalism by my former bureau colleague, Jonathan Swan, and his fellow White House correspondent, Maggie Haberman.
So detailed is their fly-on-the-wall account of that, and subsequent top-secret meetings involving Trump's most senior intelligence, military and political officials, that we know who sat where around the table, and what was said by most of the key players. Many remained highly sceptical of Israel's enthusiasm.
The unmistakable outcome from those fateful deliberations, and the carnage which followed within weeks, is that Trump was always more receptive to Netanyahu than his own more balanced advisers.
Mark Kenny is the Director of the ANU Australian Studies Institute and host of the Democracy Sausage podcast.