Extract One always has to hope, of course. One always has to believe that tomorrow will be better than today, but, gosh, the global leadership stakes really don’t give one much hope. Even our optimistic president, Cyril Ramaphosa, who dreams of futuristic cities and bullet trains, would find it hard to indulge his sunny disposition given the quality of leaders we have in the world right now.
Take the US this past week. President Donald Trump and his administration have been talking up a war with Iran for months. Then on Thursday evening, after Iran shot a $130m US surveillance drone out of the sky, Trump decided to attack. Ten minutes from dropping the bombs, he pulled back.
Why? Is it because he suddenly became a peace lover? Not at all. It’s because he followed the advice of a television host, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, over that of his advisers.
In a series of tweets, Trump claimed that he opted to stay his hand because he felt the response would not be “proportionate” to the Iranian action. He said he learnt just 10 minutes before the strike that 150 Iranians would die, and decided to call off the mission.
Trump tweeted: “We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.”
Firstly, isn’t that the first question he should have asked? Only asking about casualties 10 minutes from dropping bombs seems to me – or a toddler – a bit daft. Or irresponsible. Or, basically, is this the man who should be in charge of the world’s most deadly arsenal?
He probably would have pressed the trigger if the polls had showed it would increase his chances of a win in 2020. It was all about winning the election, not doing what is right.
What is even more astonishing is that this is a man who has thousands of analysts, diplomats, generals, advisers and all sorts of other incredibly brainy people – but on many occasions it is to the television station Fox News that he turns to for advice. In the case of this Iranian strike he turned to Carlson (who, by the way, believes hoary old tales such as the myth that there is a white genocide in SA). The problem is that Trump often makes crucial decisions based on what is being said on the channel.
As Carlson said on Friday: “Bombing Iran would have ended his [Trump’s] political career in a minute. There’d be no chance of re-election after that.”
So now we know. He probably would have pressed the trigger if the polls had showed it would increase his chances of a win in 2020. It was all about winning the election, not doing what is right.
Scandal is Trump’s second name. On Friday the advice columnist Elizabeth Jean Carroll accused him of sexually assaulting her in the mid-1990s. The story was in the news for just a few hours before another one of his scandals pushed it off the news agenda.
Trump denied the incident, saying: “I’ve never met this person in my life.”
Unfortunately, the rape allegation, made in an excerpt from Carroll’s new book carried by a New York magazine, was accompanied by a photograph that showed the two together at a 1987 party. One would have expected him to check first that there was no evidence of their being together before he responded – in a statement! Or at least to have read the magazine or website and seen the picture.
Meanwhile, the UK seems all set to welcome Boris Johnson as its prime minister. The man is a buffoon. He was a disaster as foreign secretary, where members of the foreign office described him as “agenda-less”. His tenure as London mayor is memorable only for his numerous gaffes.
“He does not seek to attain impossibly high standards, nor does he impose them on others,” a biographer once said of him.
Meanwhile, over in Russia, President Vladimir Putin held the 17th of his annual marathon, televised call-in programmes in which he answers citizens’ questions. He received more than 2.6-million questions this year and answered 75. The fun was in the text questions that Russians sent in.
“You have been in power for longer than Brezhnev,” read one, according to the New York Times. It was a reference to Leonid Brezhnev, who was in power for 18 years. Putin has effectively been in power since 1999. The message continued: “But we continue to live in poverty as we used to live.”
Do questions like this one matter to Putin? I think he is more concerned with how to stay in power beyond 2024.
It’s a funny old political world, isn’t it? Sadly, the world hasn’t needed innovative, principled leadership as much as it does now. And this is what we are saddled with.
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