{"id":14826,"date":"2026-05-15T01:46:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T05:46:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/?p=14826"},"modified":"2026-05-21T02:46:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T06:46:23","slug":"hustle-and-hubris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2026\/05\/hustle-and-hubris\/","title":{"rendered":"Hustle and hubris"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe lust and the avarice<\/em>
\nThe bottomless, the cavernous<\/em>
\ngreed\u201d<\/em>
\n\u2013 Natalie Merchant (\u2018Motherland\u2019).<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing about us wise guys, the hustle never ends.\u201d \u2013 Tony Soprano.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Overview<\/h4>\n

This article takes as its starting point the U.S. attacks on Venezuela and Iran in early 2026. Both attacks, it is argued, demonstrated distinguishing characteristics of the Trump administration: greed, short-termism, incompetence, and an obsession with violent, egotistical gestures rather than strategic calculation. Trump does not pursue any version of the U.S. national interest. Nor does he consistently pursue the long-term interests of the U.S. ruling class and its empire, though the regime is backed by members of the ruling class who share its penchants for short-term gain and narcissistic gratification. The upshot is a decline in U.S. hegemony in the world and a boost to the ambitions of China and other powers.<\/p>\n

Introduction<\/h4>\n

The U.S. government launched two unprovoked acts of military aggression in early 2026. The first, in January, saw U.S. forces violently kidnap Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and first lady Celia Flores and bring them to the U.S. to face spurious charges of drug trafficking; the new head of state (the former vice-president) accepted<\/a> the Trump administration\u2019s demands to open Venezuela up to U.S. capital, assume liability for past corporate claims made against the state, and bow to U.S. oversight of how the country\u2019s oil revenues would be managed. The action was protested worldwide but sparked no serious retaliation from other governments. On its own terms, this seemed a clear victory for the U.S. empire.<\/p>\n

The second act of aggression, begun in February, saw the U.S. and Israel launch a massive military campaign against Iran, a war that quickly escalated into a colossally expensive<\/a> catastrophe in human, environmental and financial terms. Despite the current impasse in negotiations following a ceasefire, it is hard to dispute Owen Jones\u2019 verdict when he describes <\/a>Trump\u2019s \u201cexcursion\u201d as \u201cthe biggest strategic defeat suffered by the U.S. since its emergence as a superpower\u201d. This assessment is widely held. Ryan Cooper calls<\/a> it \u201can immense strategic defeat \u2013 and one that knocks the legs out from under the entire American system of power projection and global predominance\u201d. Iran proved its ability to wreak military and economic havoc on the U.S. and its allies.<\/p>\n

Current fragile<\/a> ceasefire negotiations <\/a>are based on U.S. willingness to at least discuss <\/a>Iranian proposals: these include the removal of U.S. military bases from the Middle East and continued Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz, possibly including tolls continuing to be imposed on ships transiting through the marine passageway. The very fact that such issues are even on the table <\/a>\u2013 they would not have been up for discussion before the war \u2013 represents a decisive advance for Iran and a huge blow<\/a> to the U.S. Veteran US diplomat Richard Haass concedes<\/a> that in strategic terms the US is losing the war,<\/p>\n

This article will argue that, despite their seemingly different outcomes, the two aggressions shared certain characteristics associated with the Trump presidency: greed, narcissism, short-termism, limited ambition (in terms of regime change or even resource access), incompetence and incoherence. Not all of these characteristics are unique to this presidency but the salience and intensity of the regime\u2019s avarice and egomania \u2013 its hustle and hubris \u2013 distinguish it from past U.S. regimes while undermining long-term U.S. imperial ambitions.<\/p>\n

Few dispute that the attack on Iran starkly illustrated the limits of the U.S. empire (at least in its current Trumpian incarnation) but so also, in a different way, did the attack on Venezuela. Because Venezuela is more likely to be seen as a relative success for U.S. imperialism, greater space is devoted here to that intervention to argue that, contrary to initial appearances, this was a strictly limited and globally insignificant \u201ctriumph\u201d. This is followed with a discussion of the broader pattern of greed and ego now undermining U.S. empire and of how that has worked to the benefit of China in particular. But we begin with an outline of why both mainstream and left-wing commentators typically misunderstand the nature of Trump\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n

Category errors and kleptocracy<\/h4>\n
The Trumpian state<\/h5>\n

Explanations for why the U.S. administration chose to wage its war on Iran include: a strategic<\/a> desire to eliminate or weaken the main supposed rival to U.S. control of the Middle East and its oil, and to control or limit the supply of that oil to China especially; deference<\/a> to Israel\u2019s quest<\/a> for total domination of the region (a quest that is continuing as Israel<\/a> seeks to sabotage<\/a> the ceasefire and continues aggressions in Palestine and Lebanon<\/a>); and Trump\u2019s wish to distract from the Epstein files and the cost of living crisis<\/a> in the U.S. (though of course the war worsened that crisis).<\/p>\n

All these factors may have played some role. However, writing<\/a> in the U.S. establishment insider journal Foreign Affairs before this latest assault on Iran, a distinctive, simple and useful frame for viewing the actions of the Trump regime is proposed by Alexander Cooley and Daniel Nixon:<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump has\u2026 wielded U.S. foreign policy principally to increase his own wealth, bolster his status, and personally benefit a small circle of his family members, friends, and loyalists. U.S. foreign policy is now largely subordinate to the private interests of the president and his retainers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooley and Nixon criticize other scholars for committing a \u201ccategory error\u201d (assigning to something a quality it does not possess) and continuing to believe that Trump 2.0 is pursuing (even if poorly) anything resembling the U.S. national interest or that his regime is adopting a classically realist approach to foreign affairs to which his blatant <\/a>corruption<\/a> is merely a sideshow.<\/p>\n

On the contrary, they argue, in a kleptocratic system like that of Trump, \u201ccorruption is the end; the point of holding and keeping office is to enrich a ruler and his inner circle. Regulation, law enforcement, public procurement, and even diplomacy all become means of self-dealing \u2013 of extracting resources, controlling streams of income, and diverting wealth to family, friends, and allies\u201d. Cooley and Nixon urge their fellow academics to \u201cstop obfuscating the reality of Trump\u2019s foreign policy by calling it realism\u2026 [or] great-power competition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul Heideman makes a similar case<\/a> from a different political perspective, one that is not nostalgic for prior periods of U.S. foreign policy (he references the \u201cbloodbaths in Vietnam and Iraq\u201d) but that also recognizes the distinctiveness of Trump\u2019s regime. Heideman locates Trump within the longstanding trend of the Republican Party (and perhaps U.S. party politics more broadly) becoming \u201cunmoored from the control of America\u2019s capitalist class as a whole\u201d. While individual capitalists and sectors exert influence, there is no longer \u201cthe kind of class-wide oversight that the foreign policy planning network was designed to provide\u201d \u2013 to both Republican and Democrat administrations.<\/p>\n

Dismantling the foreign policy network<\/h5>\n

This planning network, Heideman outlines, operated through corporate-sponsored think tanks that produced advisory reports for U.S. governments and supplied many of the personnel who staffed those governments\u2019 foreign policy departments. The classic example is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR, which publishes Foreign Affairs<\/em>): for example, Condoleezza Rice, George W Bush\u2019s national security advisor, was a CFR fellow while Anthony Blinken, Secretary of State under Biden, was a CFR member; there are myriad other examples. Crucially, the boards of such think tanks bring together representatives of different corporations from different economic sectors, thereby facilitating, in theory at least, the forging of a shared ruling class perspective that has been operationalized through the deployment of think tank personnel within successive administrations. The think tanks thus constitute what Alex Callinicos defines<\/a> as fora in which \u201ccollective [class] actors constitute themselves and articulate their claims\u201d.<\/p>\n

Some such personnel (albeit fewer than under previous administrations) continued to occupy key positions under Trump 1.0, but Trump 2.0 has changed<\/a> that radically: there has been, in Susan Watkins\u2019 words<\/a>, a \u201cgutting [of] the senior levels of the National Security Council and State Department\u201d, with critical foreign policy roles<\/a> now more likely to be occupied by people drawn from the worlds of TV and real estate. A military studies professor visiting Washington in March 2026 and nostalgic for the old order has written<\/a> despairingly:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is hard to convey the gloom that has overtaken Washington. All the structures that are vital to crisis management [read: war planning] have either been attenuated or disbanded. There is hardly anyone left on the National Security Council staff. A friend described an empty State Department where you could hear your own footsteps.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Those foreign policy think tanks that are now influential, unlike the CFR, tend to be aggressively focused ones of recent creation, such as the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies<\/a>, an Israeli lobbying body with which Secretary of State Marco Rubio is particularly associated, and the equally pro-Israeli Vandenberg<\/a> Coalition that lobbied hard for attacking Iran. Much has been made<\/a> of the radical conservative Heritage Foundation\u2019s influence on Trump through its Project 2025 agenda<\/a> for his presidency. That influence is indeed evident<\/a> in a number of policy areas, including: centralizing power within the Executive; working against Trans rights, \u2018gender ideology\u2019, and \u2018wokeness\u2019 more generally<\/a>; attacking public service media, university and judicial <\/a>independence; oppression and deportation of anyone deemed undesirable; the attempted limitation of citizenship and voting<\/a> rights; and shredding the civil service, especially as regards corporate regulation and workers\u2019 rights. But its influence over foreign policy is open to debate.<\/p>\n

Heritage did support the weeding out of the network of foreign policy \u201cprofessionals\u201d that had previously dominated in this area (a former Obama speechwriter called<\/a> them the \u201cblob\u201d). High-ranking military officers are also being purged<\/a>, with nine 4- and 5-star military personnel fired<\/a> during Trump 2.0 \u2013 compared to eleven over the entire previous 160 years. Those fired include<\/a>: the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Chief of Staff of the Army, the Chief of Staff of the Navy, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, the Commandant of the Coast Guard, the Secretary of the Navy, and the leaders of intelligence agencies. One result is that decisions now get made by, as Heideman contends, a \u201cstaggeringly incompetent policy team\u201d, with the particular ignorance and ineptitude of Trump golf buddy and ubiquitous special representative Steve Witkoff singled<\/a> out by some. Witkoff has been central to deliberations concerning Israel\/Palestine, Ukraine, Iran and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Incompetence<\/a> is certainly evident in the ongoing debacle<\/a> of the U.S. assault on Iran, characterized as it is by: unclear and shifting<\/a> goals; failure to rally, or even prepare<\/a> to rally, external support; insufficient stockpiles of military assets and of the raw materials necessary<\/a> to replace them; and the prior decommissioning<\/a> of minesweepers. The Trump regime\u2019s underestimation<\/a> of the strength of Iranian resistance is an acute symptom of this incompetence \u2013 especially Iran\u2019s willingness and capacity<\/a> to attack<\/a> Gulf states (and U.S. bases therein, as well as data centers<\/a>) and to close the Strait<\/a> of Hormuz<\/a>, throwing the global<\/a> economy<\/a> into chaos<\/a> and peril<\/a>, not just through pushing up oil and gas prices but also through wider<\/a> commodity price shocks and impacts<\/a> on global supply chains. Within the region itself, thirty to forty percent of Gulf refining capacity has been damaged<\/a> or destroyed and it may take up to three years to fully restore it. Experienced military leaders\u2019 words of caution<\/a> on some or all of these matters continue to be ignored or overridden.<\/p>\n

Left misconceptions<\/h4>\n
The ruling class and the state<\/h5>\n

The category error identified by Cooley and Nixon, and implied by Heideman, can also apply to left-wing writers, who tend to look to Trump as espousing, not the interests of the U.S. as a whole, but the interests of the U.S. ruling class and US imperialism. A common variant is to see Trump as a representative of an aspirant unilateral, muscular new order (in line with Heritage\u2019s Project 2025 agenda), shedding the constraints of the old, multilateral, rules-based system (I\u2019ve gone some way down that road myself<\/a> in the past). The military assault on Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president and first lady, together with the transformation of the rump Venezuelan regime into a U.S. vassal state, might seem, at first glance, a good example of this unilateral approach in successful action but, as will be shown, this is not really the case.<\/p>\n

What I term left-wing category errors, with particular but not exclusive reference to Venezuela, include the following:<\/p>\n