Trump’s call for help met with silence

Thanks, but no.

That’s the overwhelming response to U.S. President Donald Trump who, over the weekend, started telling other countries that they have to get involved in the war that the United States and Israel started with Iran.

Sunday night, it was “I’m demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory because it is their own territory.”

What he meant, in his own convoluted way, is that other countries should send warships to break the Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and escort tankers through the area, because those same countries need Middle Eastern oil that currently can’t be delivered.

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius perhaps put the response to Trump best: “What does Trump expect a handful of European frigates to do that the powerful U.S. navy cannot? This is not our war, and we did not start it.”

The U.S. navy certainly does not seem to want to take part in the escort plan on its own: it seems to have pulled much of its resources out of the range of Iranian weapons in the Strait of Hormuz, because the war in the strait could end up being very much like the maritime war in which Ukraine has basically bottled up or sunk Russian vessels with air drone attacks, missiles, and marine drones. The simple fact is the changes to maritime warfare mean big expensive ships can get sunk or badly damaged by small, cheap, remotely directed weapons.

The Ukrainian experience apparently hasn’t sunk in with Trump yet, who seems to want foreign nations that he has threatened, derided, tariffed, abused and insulted for the last year to send vessels to become marine cannon fodder.

On Monday, it was “We strongly encourage the other nations to get involved with us and get involved quickly and with great enthusiasm.”

Also Monday: “We don’t need anybody. We’re the strongest nation in the world. We don’t need them.”

And yet, Trump very much needs someone else to take the fall so he doesn’t look bad to the American people because of a war he started without very much in the way of long-term strategic planning. Yes, American and Israeli weapons have taken an extreme toll on Iranian military and civilian targets — how great a toll is probably hugely underestimated right now, although Trump has argued the war was essentially won in the first week.

The problem is that there is little appetite in the United States for a drawn-out war of attrition, American soldiers on the ground, or, more particularly, American casualties. So Trump has to make it more than a U.S. war alongside Israel, and more of an international conflict with nations joining an America cast as the global good guy — while press-ganged American “allies” on the front lines share in the casualties.

“It would be nice to have other countries police (the Strait of Hormuz) with us, and we’ll help. We’ll work with them,” Trump said.

So far, no one has taken Trump up on his plan to create a coalition of the hardly willing, which leaves the plan essentially dead in the water — even though Trump has threatened a “very bad” future for NATO if countries don’t pitch in to bail him out.

Meanwhile, Canada took more small but definite steps to step away from the American aegis by joining Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland in announcing a plan to form a bloc to co-operate as middle powers. Similar northern democracies with strong views on social programs, working together and, if not decoupling from the United States, at least expanding their options.

It’s clear the future will be different.