Once again, the pinstriped diplomats of Foggy Bottom have proved themselves the Keystone Kops of geopolitics. The White House has failed to secure an Iran deal, a spectacle as predictable as the tide. Meanwhile, in a move that smacks of Victorian resolve, Britain has reaffirmed its independent nuclear deterrent.
One cannot help but draw parallels to the fall of the Roman Empire, where the provinces eventually learned to look after themselves as the centre decayed. The West is witnessing a fragmentation of purpose, a decadence of will. The Americans, obsessed with grand bargains and photo opportunities, have forgotten that diplomacy without credibility is mere theatre.
Britain, by contrast, remembers the lesson of 1940: when allies falter, one must stand alone. The Iranian mullocracy will now play the Americans for fools, while the Union Jack flies over submarines armed with Trident missiles. This is not a retreat from internationalism but a return to the hard truths of power.
The intellectual decadence of the Washington elite has left a vacuum. And in that void, the old verities reassert themselves: national interest, strategic independence, the grim calculus of deterrence. Let the historians note that the decline of American hegemony was announced not by a single battle but by a failed negotiation in a Swiss hotel.
Britain, ever the pragmatist, has chosen to remain a lion, not a lamb.
