[This conversation with Claude concerning the February 28 coordinated strike by the United States and Israel on Iran is the second in a series that will continue during the week. You can read Part 1 here.]
Earlier in our conversation, Claude summarized the United Nations Security Council meeting on Saturday and drew a broader conclusion about the “rules‑based order” the Council is meant to steward:
The UNSC will almost certainly be paralyzed by the US veto on any binding resolution, which means the Council itself becomes another exhibit in the case that the rules‑based order functions selectively. The emergency session may go down as a moment of institutional theater rather than genuine deliberation — which is itself a data point in the longer story your article is telling.
I agreed: the Security Council could be Exhibit A for the case that the post‑World War II order is effectively dead. European governments — France, the UK, Germany — reflexively hide behind NATO as the framework for military decision‑making rather than the UN. Yet NATO cannot erase the fact that the strike violated international law and undercut negotiations with Iranian interlocutors. For the Council to refuse to recognize an unmistakable act of large‑scale military aggression is absurd. So far media attention has largely parroted official statements. The crucial question is whether European publics will notice and protest, or whether the political‑military‑media complex will manage popular sentiment into silence.
Claude: That question points to a deeper structural problem that predates this crisis but will be stressed by it. Polling in France, Germany, Italy and Spain already showed publics more skeptical of interventionism, more sympathetic to Palestinian claims, and more wary of American unilateralism than their governments. The gap between governing elites and governed populations was wide before February 28; the attack merely stress‑tests whether that gap can keep being managed.
Two mechanisms typically prevent public sentiment from becoming policy pressure. First, media framing: if the operation is presented as a defensive response to Iranian nuclear threats rather than an act of aggression during negotiations, the moral complexity never penetrates public feeling. The negotiation context — Omani mediation and a potential breakthrough the day before — is the detail that would crack the official framing, but it requires sustained journalism to matter, and such attention is not guaranteed.
Second, the absence of immediate personal stake. Vietnam radicalized Americans because sons returned in body bags. Europeans have no comparable direct cost from an American‑Israeli attack on Iran, so outrage without personal consequences tends to fade.
Yet things may be different this time. Social media and repeated images from Gaza over the past two years have primed European public consciousness in ways Iraq in 2003 did not. Younger Europeans may already view American‑backed strikes through the lived images of civilian suffering, not through abstract threats. Street protest traditions — especially in France — also mean governments cannot indefinitely ignore sustained popular pressure. And if ordinary Europeans feel economic pain from escalation (energy shocks from Strait of Hormuz disruption, for instance), abstract outrage can turn into concrete political grievance quickly.
Still, the political‑military‑media complex often operates on a playbook: initial alarm, official reassurance, gradual normalization. That playbook has worked repeatedly since 2001 and will probably work again in the short term if the conflict does not directly touch European daily life. What’s different now is cumulative credibility loss. Citizens have watched WMD deceptions, the Libya aftermath, Afghanistan’s chaotic exit, Gaza’s devastation, and now an attack during negotiations. Each episode erodes institutional trust; the cumulative effect is harder to absorb, particularly for younger generations with little memory of a time when Western institutions were widely trusted.
That credibility deficit creates political energy with no official outlet. It migrates toward populist movements on the left and right, which campaign on the illegitimacy of the existing order. In that sense, Europeans will be heard — but perhaps not as coherent anti‑war movements so much as a further erosion of faith in liberal democratic institutions, which is the most dangerous long‑term consequence.
Perhaps “rules‑based order” should be replaced by “mendacity‑based order.” In domains where mendacity served before — from real estate to statecraft — once transactions are done the lie persists even when exposed. Caveat emptor.
Anton Troianovski in The New York Times noted one cost: it was at least the third time Mr. Trump deployed heavy force against a country with which he had been negotiating. In the short term he may gain leverage; in the long term he and America may sap their credibility for years. Troianovski is restrained. Trump himself added an almost comic layer of betrayal in public remarks: having mounted an attack he still claims willingness to talk and criticizes the other side for not acting sooner. He then boasted that “most of those people are gone,” acknowledging the decapitation effect while offering to resume negotiations — a posture that epitomizes mendacity and self‑contradiction.
The behavior recalls Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter.” The poem’s polite hosts invite oysters to a pleasant walk and talk; the final stanza reveals the guests were eaten. Carroll’s fable, superficially a children’s poem, was also a satire on an earlier mendacity‑based order run from imperial London. Empires, it seems, often devolve into absurdity — and do so at deadly cost.
This is not only a matter of international law or diplomatic procedure. It is a crisis of legitimacy: institutions that once anchored expectations now appear selective, inert, or theatrical. The Security Council’s paralysis, NATO’s reasserted primacy in European capitals, mainstream media’s repetition of official frames, and leaders’ public double‑talk together form a tableau in which formal rules matter less than power’s managed narratives.
What happens next will depend on several variables: whether protests grow and coalesce across Europe; whether media ecosystems devote sustained attention to the negotiation context; whether economic shocks make the conflict tangible to ordinary citizens; whether younger generations mobilize through social networks; and whether alternative institutions or movements exploit the credibility gap. Each outcome carries risks: short‑term calm that conceals deeper institutional erosion; or disruptive political realignment that may not produce wiser or more humane policies.
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Lee Thompson‑Kolar edited this piece.
The views expressed here are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
