{"id":46220,"date":"2026-06-22T13:17:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T09:17:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/?p=46220"},"modified":"2026-06-22T13:17:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T09:17:18","slug":"empires-that-outlive-donald-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/empires-that-outlive-donald-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Empires That Outlive Donald Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alexander’s empire disappeared. Rome collapsed. The British Empire dissolved. The Soviet Union vanished. Persia endured them all<\/em><\/span><\/h4>\n

London Letter<\/u><\/span><\/p>\n

By Shyam Bhatia<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

When Donald Trump warned Iranians that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” he was speaking about a country of more than 90 million people and one of the world’s oldest continuous civilisations.<\/span><\/p>\n

The reaction was immediate. Critics described the statement as reckless, apocalyptic and potentially genocidal. Yet the most unsettling aspect of Trump’s threat may not have been its novelty but its familiarity.<\/span><\/p>\n

The remark, made during the Iran crisis last April, was widely treated as another example of Trump’s uniquely incendiary style. But history suggests something rather different. Trump’s language may be unusual. The assumptions behind it are not.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span>Has the US lost the War. Pic – Newsweek<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The easiest mistake is to imagine that Trump represents some shocking departure from the history of American power. He certainly departs from the conventions of presidential rhetoric. No previous occupant of the White House has communicated foreign policy through a torrent of social-media posts oscillating between threats of annihilation and promises of peace. Trump says things publicly that earlier presidents preferred to discuss behind closed doors.<\/span><\/p>\n

But if one strips away the capital letters, the exclamation marks and the rhetorical excess, the underlying message is surprisingly familiar.<\/span><\/p>\n

During the Korean War, President Harry Truman was asked whether atomic weapons were under active consideration against Communist forces. His answer alarmed governments around the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

“That includes every weapon that we have.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The year was 1950. The enemy was China.<\/span><\/p>\n

Millions of Chinese troops had entered the Korean War. The United States was contemplating military options that included the use of nuclear weapons. Truman later sought to clarify his remarks, but the essential point had already been made. The possibility of nuclear annihilation had entered the diplomatic conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Under Dwight Eisenhower, the pattern continued. Speaking in 1955 about nuclear weapons, Eisenhower remarked:<\/span><\/p>\n

“I see no reason why they shouldn’t be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Today the statement sounds extraordinary. Yet it reflected a strategic culture in which nuclear weapons were increasingly viewed as instruments of policy rather than uniquely unthinkable horrors. During the Taiwan Strait crises of the 1950s, senior American officials repeatedly contemplated their possible use against China.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump’s threat to Iran therefore belongs to a long tradition. The difference lies less in substance than presentation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Richard Nixon provides another revealing example. Seeking to pressure North Vietnam into accepting American terms, Nixon privately explained what later became known as the “Madman Theory”. He wanted Hanoi to believe he had become unpredictable, irrational and potentially capable of anything. As he told his chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, he wanted the North Vietnamese to think he “might do anything to stop the war.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Sound familiar?<\/span><\/p>\n

Much of the commentary surrounding Trump treats unpredictability as uniquely Trumpian. In reality, Nixon elevated it into a strategic doctrine more than half a century ago. Trump did not invent the tactic. He merely broadcasts it in real time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Presidents are often remembered by a single defining image. Richard Nixon has Watergate. Lyndon Johnson has Vietnam despite his domestic achievements. Franklin Roosevelt has the New Deal and victory in the Second World War.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump’s epitaph may prove to be different. Future historians may remember him as the president who publicly contemplated the disappearance of an entire civilisation.<\/span><\/p>\n

What makes that possibility particularly striking is that the threat came from a country that has long presented itself as the world’s foremost champion of freedom.<\/span><\/p>\n

The United States has always possessed a remarkable ability to project its ideals while obscuring its contradictions. For much of the twentieth century it described itself as the land of liberty while millions of Black Americans lived under legal segregation.<\/span><\/p>\n

In August 1963, standing before the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr reminded the nation of an uncomfortable truth.<\/span><\/p>\n

“One hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The contradiction was obvious. A nation presenting itself as leader of the free world still denied basic rights to many of its own citizens.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his book Why We Can’t Wait<\/em>, King described Black Americans as living on “a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The world knew these realities. They were not hidden. Nor was racial violence confined to some distant past. The era of racial lynching extended well into the twentieth century, and historians often identify the 1981 murder of Michael Donald by Ku Klux Klan members in Alabama as the last widely recognised lynching in the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet America’s international standing endured.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why?<\/span><\/p>\n

Partly because the United States emerged from the Second World War with immense moral authority. It had helped defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. It participated in the liberation of Europe. The Marshall Plan rebuilt shattered economies. During the Cold War, many countries viewed Washington as the indispensable counterweight to Soviet expansion.<\/span><\/p>\n

These achievements were real. But they also generated an enormous reservoir of goodwill.<\/span><\/p>\n

Faced with the horrors of fascism and then the realities of Soviet communism, much of the world preferred to focus on America’s virtues rather than its contradictions. Hollywood, jazz, rock music, Silicon Valley, elite universities and unprecedented prosperity projected an image of openness and opportunity. The gap between American ideals and American realities was often overlooked, excused or subordinated to larger geopolitical concerns.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump’s significance may be that he has stripped away some of the language that once concealed those contradictions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Previous presidents wrapped threats in the vocabulary of deterrence, stability and national security. Trump often speaks the language of raw power. Sometimes crudely. Sometimes recklessly. But the underlying belief that overwhelming force can be used to shape political outcomes remains deeply embedded in American strategic thinking.<\/span><\/p>\n

That brings us back to Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n

Iran is not merely a state. It is the inheritor of one of the world’s oldest continuous civilisations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Long before there was an America, there was Persia.<\/span><\/p>\n

When the ancestors of most Europeans were still organised in tribal societies, Persian kings ruled an empire stretching from the Mediterranean to Central Asia. Persian scholars contributed to mathematics, astronomy, medicine and philosophy. Persian poets produced works that remain part of world literature.<\/span><\/p>\n

More than a thousand years ago, the poet Ferdowsi wrote:<\/span><\/p>\n

“Much have I suffered in these thirty years; I have revived the Persians with this Persian.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The line referred to his monumental Shahnameh<\/em>, a work that helped preserve Persian identity through centuries of upheaval and conquest.<\/span><\/p>\n

Empires have risen and fallen since then. Alexander’s empire disappeared. Rome collapsed. The British Empire dissolved. The Soviet Union vanished.<\/span><\/p>\n

Persia endured them all.<\/span><\/p>\n

That is why Trump’s threat resonated so widely. He was not merely threatening a government or a military programme. He appeared to be threatening a civilisation measured not in decades or centuries but in millennia.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whether he intended the statement literally is almost beside the point.<\/span><\/p>\n

Words matter.<\/span><\/p>\n

And history suggests that civilisations measured in thousands of years have a habit of outlasting politicians measured in election cycles.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shyam Bhatia is a London-based Indian-born British journalist, writer, and war reporter. He has covered conflicts in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Sudan, and is a former diplomatic editor for ‘The Observer’.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 19 June 2026<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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