Consider the scene: a senior American diplomat, J.D. Vance, abandons a carefully planned visit to neutral Switzerland. The reason? US-Iran talks have collapsed in a spectacular heap of recrimination and intransigence. The immediate fear, whispered in corridors from Washington to Tehran, is a wider war. How delightfully Roman.
We have seen this play before. The great powers, entangled in a web of their own making, lurch from crisis to crisis, each step a little closer to the abyss. The collapse of these talks is not an aberration; it is a logical consequence of decades of intellectual and strategic decadence. The West, once the master of statecraft, now conducts diplomacy as a form of performance art: all gestures, no substance. The Iranians, for their part, play their own game of theatrical defiance. And the rest of us? We are left to contemplate the ruins.
Vance's hasty departure is a signal, and not a subtle one. It suggests that the administration anticipates a significant escalation. Perhaps a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. Perhaps a naval confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz. Perhaps something more cunning and dreadful. The Swiss, those perpetually unflappable observers, will note the sudden emptiness of the American delegation's chairs. They will understand what it means.
What is most striking is the sheer incompetence on display. The talks were supposed to be a last chance, a final effort to avoid the inferno. Instead, they have become a funeral pyre for diplomacy. The root cause is a profound failure of imagination. Our leaders cannot conceive of a world beyond sanctions and ultimatums. They have forgotten how to bargain, how to threaten credibly, how to offer face-saving compromises. They have forgotten, in short, how to be civilised.
The consequences will be dire. A war with Iran would dwarf the disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan. It would set the Middle East ablaze, send oil prices into the stratosphere, and invite terrorism to every corner of the globe. And for what? To maintain the fiction that American power is unchallenged? To distract from domestic decay? The parallels with the late Roman Empire are so precise as to be embarrassing.
One imagines the Iranian mullahs, too, are not entirely pleased. They understand that a war would threaten their grip on power. But they are trapped in their own rhetorical prison, unable to offer concessions without appearing weak. So they posture and threaten, and the world edges closer to the precipice.
As for Vance, he will return to Washington to brief a frantic President. He will use words like “unacceptable” and “provocation.” He will promise a strong response. And then, very probably, he will be party to a decision that leads to thousands of deaths—all because no one dared to be statesmanlike at the crucial moment.
This is the tragedy of our age: the failure of nerve, the triumph of ideology over prudence, the decline of genuine leadership. We are left with managers, not statesmen. And when the crisis comes, as it surely will, they will manage us all into the abyss.
So watch the skies. Listen for the news of explosions. And remember that it did not have to be this way. It never does.
