Week signals: The Manichaean candidate
Plus: watch points for the UK, monetary policy, China, the US, and Iran.
Hello,
In this edition of Week Signals:
IN REVIEW. Political points of fracture, regime change in America, Mani and the few.
UP AHEAD. King Charles’s visit, Jerome out of the wilderness, China and the US, war powers.
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The Week in Review: Midterms in the garden of good and evil
The week began with peace talks in Islamabad, subsequently cancelled before they began. It ended with peace talks in Islamabad, albeit of a “preliminary” and indirect variety. In both cases, JD Vance, like a shag on a rock, was left waiting at Andrews Air Force Base, in the worst of all positions - neither a mediator, like the mercurial duo of Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, nor a fighter, like Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth, sending out social media non sequiturs in an effort to look manly and tough.
The war in Iran is fast becoming the defining event of the second Trump administration, in the way that Covid was for the first. As then, Trump might blame others for the debacle, but his inability to lead calmly and consistently in a crisis is once again on manifest display.
It’s a war that few want to perpetuate, but, as should now be obvious, there’s no easy way out. We’ve discussed several scenarios before, but each exit strategy carries risks for both Washington and Tehran, making an unhappy drift more likely. As oil futures begin to converge with physical prices, a recession-inducing long-term supply shock thus looks more probable.
The last time we had such a moment was in the 1970s. The OPEC crisis lasted only six months, but its impact was felt for decades. Forcing him to take ever more extreme political and economic measures to stay in power contributed to Richard Nixon’s downfall. Long after fuel rationing and lower speed limits were forgotten, the legacy of stagflation and OPEC’s chokehold would range from a revived USSR to the end of the post-war consensus, the rise of neoliberalism, and more polarised US politics.
It’s no surprise that many are looking for a Nixonian solution – the president’s resignation. And while the current crisis may be more seen as a repeat of the Carter administration, insofar as the Iranians have again taken an American presidency hostage, there was never a sense then that Jimmy Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, would make much difference.
Today, on the other hand, many are looking to JD Vance to play the role of Nixon’s Gerald Ford, though potentially with a twist, if he needs to replace him via a 25th Amendment palace coup. Being the only member of the cabinet who can’t be fired by the president, it’s no wonder that Trump appears to be doing what he can to make Vance a political neuter. From the humiliations of Iran, to plumping an endorsement of Viktor Orban, defending #JesusGate, or lecturing the Pope, Vance’s unpopularity is now as deep as Trump’s.
Yet rumours of Vancian plotting have been rife ever since he suddenly appeared on the national political scene, at the behest of tech oligarchs like Peter Thiel and David Sacks. They accelerated when Sacks left the White House as AI czar last month (less noticed in the press as it was sandwiched between Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi). And as others leave a sinking ship, the rumours will likely grow some more.
It may seem speculative, but with so many other Iran war offramps foreclosed, it is worth investigating whether the fracture point will be in domestic US politics. Regime change in Washington, rather than regime change in Tehran. Like the release of hostages the day of Regan’s inauguration, it could certainly give the Iranians a face-saving way to relinquish control of Hormuz and get serious about nuclear negotiations, without the alternative of war or a humiliating (to America) Suez-style Beijing mediation.
It would also suit the many in the Republican Party worried about the president’s mental acuity and competence, let alone the likelihood of a midterm wipeout, facilitated by recent Democrat gerrymandering wins, that could then almost certainly see an ugly Epstein-flavoured impeachment process. And at the extreme end, it would get in front of fears that Trump is planning an authoritarian October surprise: a state of emergency, perhaps built on escalating claims of deep state citizenship and voter fraud, which would cancel the elections and bring with it the biggest political crisis since the 1860s.
Deposing a leader is hard, and even the most incapable ruler can be followed by something worse. Claudius may have followed Caligula, but anarchy followed Nero.
Presidential vacuums, even of the constitutional lame-duck variety, are geopolitically destabilising. Beyond Iran, how would Russia respond? How would China?
Domestically, the MAGA faithful would hardly tolerate Trump’s ousting (then again, they didn’t tolerate Joe Biden’s free and fair election either). And would Trump willingly step down without pardon or a redoubt in Argentina, Israel or Russia to flee to?
The post-presidential saga of Evo Morales shows how tricky it can be for a ruling party to get rid of a cult-like leader with idiosyncratic predilections out of office. And while the US is not Bolivia, it’s not exactly Denmark either.
Like many others, we’ve been thinking a lot about Iranian history over the last few weeks. One chapter that’s largely been forgotten is the cult of Mani, a third-century Iranian prophet who established a world religion that at one point spread from the Roman Empire to China before being eclipsed by Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. Today, the term Manichaean is largely remembered idiomatically as a dualist worldview of good versus evil (Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, once told Jon Stewart that George W Bush had a “Manichaean paranoia”). But Manichaeanism was not just about binaries but men trapped in a cosmic drama, in a material and darkened world. A world like the Trump administration. Could Vance, hence, be the Manichaean candidate?