'Where's The Adult In The Room?'
Former UK diplomat Alexandra Hall Hall tells Adrian Goldberg for the Byline Times podcast that White House war rhetoric is 'stomach churning' and the US can no longer be seen as a reliable ally
“We’ve been hoping for 18 months that eventually, somebody – an adult in the room – will restrain Trump. Somebody will say, ‘this is clearly inappropriate’ – but hope is not a strategy”.
As former UK diplomat, Alex Hall Hall surveys the temporary ceasefire holding back the US and Iran from conflict (whilst allowing their respective allies Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon to continue to wage war with each other) she despairs of any positive change in global affairs so long as Donald Trump is in the Oval office. In an interview with the Byline Times Podcast, the one-time ambassador to Georgia and former UK Brexit advisor in Washington says the time has come for the United States’ European partners to accept that that post-war world order is broken, and to seek new partnerships.
Reflecting on Trump’s threat to erase Iran’s “entire civilisation” – which followed previous threats to annexe Greenland – she said: “Every single norm has been broken. I feel it is impossible to rebuild the amount of damage that has been done. We are in a new world now. Even if the US doesn’t formally withdraw from NATO, the confidence in the alliance has basically gone. It’s been shattered. European countries must do what they can to rearm and can no longer rely upon the US.”
Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric has been echoed by his Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who has cited Old Testament verses to justify the United States’ unprovoked attack on Tehran’s Islamist Government, pitting Jews and Christians against Muslims and raising the spectre of a holy war in the Middle East.
Hall Hall describes the overtly religious overtones of Hegseth’s language as “stomach churning and nauseating” and decries the “sanctimonious bigots who claim to be Christians, laying hands on Donald Trump and praying with him; a man who is a serial adulterer, has had multiple divorces, whose family is corruptly amassing huge riches, and who has broken sort of every norm of America’s democratic traditions. There they are, praying for him; this sort of ghastly religious zealotry is precisely what they decry when they see it in Iran or Afghanistan with the Taliban.”
It should be pointed out that the former diplomat is no enthusiast for Tehran’s theocratic regime, but she questions claims by the White House that the war, launched in late February, has been a success.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei may have been assassinated and its military capability downgraded, but the Islamic Republic has nevertheless cut off traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit through which around 20% of the world’s oil passes, inflicting huge pain on Western economies. Hall Hall, now a US citizen, has been astonished at the outrage this retaliation has provoked among many American commentators and acquaintances.
“It’s like, what were you expecting when you attacked Iran? Did you not anticipate that they might fight back? Yes, they might fight back in a dirty way [but] they’re a smaller country. They’re less powerful. We may not like their tactics. We certainly don’t like their regime, but somehow to expect that Iran would reply with conventional methods, because, ‘hey, we’re all gentlemen here…’
“What world are they living in? There is an air of unreality about the debate here. I feel those that are drunk on MAGA [and] drunk on Trump really don’t understand the damage that has been done, and are blaming everybody except themselves for the situation they’re in.”
She argues that the UK and other European partners should now block US military flights from their airbases – even when these are launched in a ‘defensive’ capacity – and says it’s time to accept that the old world order has permanently disappeared.
“We’ve allowed ourselves to be too dependent on the US for our security. We never imagined a President as erratic as this, and we trusted the checks and balances in the US system to work, so we’ve got ourselves into a very vulnerable situation. Our ‘Plan A’, in an ideal world, would be to try and put things on track, but you simply cannot rely upon this administration. It is too erratic, so we have no option but to look for alternative allies [and] invest in our own defence, because we should no longer count on the US.”
Listen to Adrian Goldberg’s full interview with Alexandr Hall Hall here