Over the weekend, someone went begging to the other major powers to help him out of a disaster of his own making (from Sam Metz, Will Weissert, Julia Frankel, and Cara Anna at AP News):
President Donald Trump said Sunday that he has demanded about seven countries send warships to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, but his appeals have brought no commitments as oil prices soar during the Iran war.
The president declined to name the countries heavily reliant on Middle East crude that the administration is negotiating with to join a coalition to police the waterway where about one-fifth of the world’s traded oil normally flows.
“I’m demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory, because it is their own territory,” Trump said about the strait, claiming the shipping channel is not something the United States needs because of its own access to oil. Trump spoke while answering reporters’ questions as he flew back to Washington from Florida aboard Air Force One.
The gist is that after weeks of crowing how victorious he's been blowing up Iran, his handlers have finally gotten him to understand that angering Iran to the point of shutting down the Strait of Hormuz was a really bad idea.
If you're wondering if any of those nations have answered back by now, I think Germany has spelled out what the response is going to be like (via Ellen Mitchell at The Hill):
Germany’s defense minister on Monday rebuffed calls from U.S. President Trump to send ships to unblock the Strait of Hormuz, telling reporters “this is not our war.”
Trump has called on allies, including those in NATO, for military support to keep the vital shipping route open. Iran has effectively closed the strait for the past two weeks in response to the U.S.-Israeli war on Tehran, using missiles, drones and mines to attack oil tankers trying to get through.
“What does … Donald Trump expect a handful or two handfuls of European frigates to do in the Strait of Hormuz that the powerful U.S. Navy cannot do?” Boris Pistorius said in Berlin, as reported by Reuters. “This is not our war, we have not started it.”
Ever the bully, trump never understood that a bully's victims will not come to that bully's aid when he's getting punched in the face. Having mocked and belittled and threatened our NATO allies - and pretty much 80 percent of the rest of the planet - trump has no peace offering to give them.
This isn't post-9/11, when most of Western civilization came to our nation's aid to stamp out Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan (and more reluctantly invade Iraq over WMD lies and deception). trump and his lackeys - Rubio and whomever hasn't been fired from the State Department yet - may want other nations to sacrifice their own people and resources to rescue trump from this debacle, but they don't have the genuine skills of diplomacy - compromise, long-term planning, honesty, commitment to shared objectives - to recover from this.
The world may be facing economic turmoil if oil prices keep going up, but all of the other nations seem willing to suffer the pain momentarily if it means trump and the chickenhawk Far Right get humiliated and broken by their own idiocy and hubris.
An entire Far Right ideology of toxic masculinity is getting punched in the face right now. It's the only good news we have in all this death and fire.
Addendum: I hope this BlueSky skeet stays up. Thank you Dr. SkySkull!
Europeans when being asked to unblock the strait of Hormuz
— Dr. SkySkull (@drskyskull.bsky.social) March 16, 2026 at 2:43 PM
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1 comment:
So the damn fool has spent years shit talking Europe that they need to take care of their own defense, and the first time he starts something he runs to them demanding that they bail his lame ass out.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
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