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Diplomatic cables show Iran war is damaging US on multiple fronts across the world
(www.politico.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2026
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Apart from all the obvious US policy failures, there are also the less obvious ones.
The current admin has no understanding of soft power. The US spent decades building trust in the Voice of America. Sure, it was US propaganda in some ways, but it was often much more truthful about the facts than the local government news. The people who worked at VoA cared about being reporters and wanted to tell the truth. They had bureaus around the world broadcasting in local languages, and it cost almost nothing. It was old fashioned radio, a technology that's a century old. Something that might have been useful in Iran where the Internet has been cut off for months now. So, Iran can now get their narrative out to all the other countries nearby, and the US has no way of correcting / countering the Iranian propaganda.
The US also used to know the value of diplomats. The Trump admin doesn't think expertise matters. So, the Iran deals are being conducted by the President's son in law, and a buddy of Trump's who's also a real estate developer. Unsurprisingly, they're not succeeding. Ambassadors have always been a cushy job, often given to big donors or friends. But, Trump has made it so entire embassies are effectively useless.
The kinds of damage being done in just a couple of years will last for decades. I don't know if the US will ever recover from this. Many of the problems probably won't even show up for more than 5 years. Instead of a US military base in a foreign country having a lease that's easy to renew, the next time it comes up there will be pushback or refusals.
The US dominated world sucked in a lot of ways, but at least it was stable. My guess is that the next few decades will be a lot less stable. Maybe the end result will be better. I'd love it if Europe stepped into the vacuum left by the US. They're doing a lot of good things when it comes to environmental laws, privacy, anti-monopoly, etc. If it's China that steps forward, I'm less confident it will be an improvement on the US. Other than those two, I don't really see any other country or bloc of countries that could try to do the necessary work.
China would at least be better than the US for environmental and anti-monopoly laws, and at this point, I think it’s fair to call it a parallel move on privacy. That’s rough to realize.
I don't think that's true. Yes, the Trump admin is horribly corrupt, but a collection of states just won in court, finding that Ticketmaster was an illegal monopoly. There's a chance that after Trump goes away / dies that whoever replaces him will take monopoly enforcement seriously. It's a popular bipartisan issue.
Meanwhile, in China, what President Xi wants, he gets. At the moment he doesn't seem to be doing the Trump speed run of corruption and personal enrichment. But, rule of law in China is limited because ultimately it's whatever Xi decides.
Privacy is basically non-existent in China. Sure, the US tries to spy on its citizens, but often the FBI is reduced to buying data on Americans from private companies because they can't spy on people directly. There's a lot of self-censorship in the US, and oligarchs are buying up media to restrict what views are published. But, that pales in comparison to the Great Firewall of China, and the massive internal censorship network.
And, keep in mind, that's what China does to Chinese citizens. When they show up in Africa they definitely don't treat Africans the same way Chinese people are treated. They are happy to help Chinese companies do corrupt deals that would never be permitted in China, but when it's Africans that suffer they really don't care. The US was hardly an angel around the world, but at least it made tiny steps towards trying to curb things a bit, like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Trump may be speed-running overt corruption and self dealing, but there are still remnants of the old system of laws and rules that occasionally stop some of the things he's doing. Xi is not as obviously overtly corrupt, but the Chinese system has never been in any way democratic. It has always been one where the people at the top get to dictate how the people at the bottom live their lives. Personally, I'd prefer a fighting chance against a corrupt mob boss style dictator who hasn't yet fully corrupted the entire system, vs. being ground under the boot heel of a "president for life" who maybe was making decisions that he thought was best for his country, but who isn't even willing to allow protests or mockery, let alone the free communication of ideas.
Xi has no more absolute power over the government than Mao had (who was forced to step aside). And saying it is in no way democratic is patently false considering all their politicians need to be elected in at the local level. Lastly, Xi's family was exiled from Beijing and they survived only to have Xi become the leader.
We won't know how much power Xi had until he has to step aside. Saying he's no more powerful than Mao, who ruled for more than 30 years and who ruled until the day he died, is an interesting choice.
Considering it was under Mao that Xi's family was exiled it is a rather salient comparison.
Edit: and we can know how much power Mao had by how big of a power vacuum he left. The fact of the matter is it is a single party republic, and that's why Mao was replaced with someone more sensible. If there was a sizable power vacuum things would not have turned out this way.