Bluesky

This Saturday, millions of Americans and people all over the world will gather under the slogan “No Kings.” The previous two No Kings rallies, held last June and October, were the largest single-day protests in US history, drawing between 4 and 6 million people to the streets.

The sheer size of the protests has been heartening and has invigorated the ongoing and often successful resistance to Trump’s policy. Still, I’ll confess I’ve always been of two minds about “No Kings” as a slogan. Meant to evoke the American legacy of resistance to tyranny dating back to the Revolution, No Kings has, at best, felt like a blank-slate slogan that could be filled in with specific objections to Trump’s lawlessness, the brutality of the anti-immigrant crackdown, or the sheer corruption of the White House’s relationship with plutocrats such as Elon Musk. But it has risked being a bit too vague and evasive about the situation the world is currently facing. For one, Donald Trump is not a monarch; he is an aspiring autocrat who holds an elected office. And. like many forms of liberal anti-Trump politics, No Kings has seemed excessively focused on Trump’s personality rather than his policies, with no clear effort to mobilize for an alternative political vision.

This weekend’s No Kings rallies will take place under the shadow of Trump’s most dangerous political adventure, the war against Iran that the US and Israel launched at the end of last month. At least one prominent protester, Bruce Springsteen, who will be performing in St. Paul, Minnesota, realizes that No Kings now has to mean No War. In a video announcing upcoming concerts that will take up the anti-Trump message, Springsteen evoked the 1970 anti-militarist anthem “War.”

No message is more urgent right now than opposition to the Iran War.

While Trump has created many disasters, none is likely to be as far-reaching and globally devastating as the current conflict, which has already turned into a regional war. In addition to costing hundreds of lives, the Iran debacle has disrupted the global economy, raising the price not just of oil but of other essential goods such as fertilizer. So far, the most severe effects of the war are being felt in the Middle East and Asia, but there’s every reason to think that the combination of higher inflation, rising interest rates, rising yields on US high-yield bonds, and sagging stock markets could presage a global recession, if not a full economic meltdown.

The Iran War was launched with no clear objectives. (Trump and his top officials have made a string of conflicting claims about the reasons for the conflict, from regime change to leverage in negotiations to support for Israel to weakening Iran’s military.) Nor is there any clear exit strategy. As Ilan Goldenberg observed in Foreign Affairs, Trump has gotten himself into a mess for which there is no good or easy exit. Iran, having been burned twice now in US negotiations that turned to attacks, is clearly eager to inflict punishment and also win diplomatic concessions that ensure a lasting détente. It’s unclear whether Trump has either the desire to make such concessions (in fact US war aims remain maximalist). Further, major US allies in the war —not just Israel but also the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia—are in no mood for peace and want to continue pummelling Iran.

Given this impasse, the danger is that the US will continue escalating, leading to a ground invasion. On Thursday, CNN reported:

While the military campaign has heavily focused on bombing the country so far, Pentagon officials preparing for a next phase of war have drawn up scenarios for deploying troops to seize various targets within Iran, according to more than half a dozen people familiar with the discussions.

Yet not only would those scenarios risk heavy casualties, there’s also little guarantee they would successfully end the conflict.

Also on Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that “the Pentagon is looking at sending up to 10,000 additional ground troops to the Middle East to give President Trump more military options even as he weighs peace talks with Tehran.” There is reason to regard these reports with a little skepticism. The actual movement of troops into the region has been slow. Trump could simply be trying to scare the Iranians into negotiations. But this sort of shadow-boxing is itself dangerous since it encourages escalation.

Bad as it is, the war could spiral even more out of control. Further, although the war is intensely unpopular with most Americans, there is as yet little political pushback to Trump’s dangerous belligerence. Congressional Democrats, under the leadership of Representative Hakeem Jeffries and Senator Chuck Schumer, have been slow-walking opposition. The next vote on the war won’t be held till at least mid-April.

One Republican senator, speaking anonymously, told Semafor that the war was a “fucking clusterfuck.” The senator added, “There was a lot of superficial thinking that went into this operation. It’s like so much that happens right now. A very risk-seeking executive decides to make some risky moves that could turn out well.”