War is not a game of Call of Duty, Mr Trump

The plot of the 1983 movie WarGames concerns a high-school student who uses a dial-up modem to connect to the US nuclear defence programme, unwittingly taking control of it, and starts to play a computer game called Global Thermonuclear War. Spoiler alert: catastrophe is narrowly avoided.

In 2024 the US electorate voted to make this fictional scenario a reality, putting an erratic, vengeful mega-narcissist back in charge of the world’s most powerful military and destructive force. But the second time around, predictably, the restraints of his first administration have been cast off. There’s no grown-up empowered to resume control.

The expensive unreality of what has been unleashed has been given visual expression by the White House by the use of video game themes, such as Grand Theft Auto, to publicise its war against Iran. Then there’s the deployment by administration figures of Call of Duty tough-guy language – such as Trump’s defence secretary (self-retitled “secretary of war”) who seems to have stepped right out of a Hollywood satire on insecure hyper-masculinity.

In games, you blow up everything, kill all the enemies, win big and emerge unscathed back in the comfort of your gaming room, to tell the press, as Donald Trump did on Friday, that “we are in a position of dominance that no-one has ever seen before”. Back in the real world, it’s messy. At some point, when Trump wasn’t looking, God fashioned a 21-mile-wide strait, with two narrow shipping lanes, and Man then decided to pass a fifth of the world’s oil through it. Who knew? Apart from everybody else.

That position of dominance doesn’t seem to reopen the threatened waterway, and – contrary to Trump’s insistence that shipping companies simply be a bit braver and risk their cargoes and crews for his sake – the oil, liquefied natural gas and fertilisers aren’t flowing. Also on Friday Pete Hegseth told a press conference that “the only thing prohibiting transit in the straits (sic) right now is Iran shooting at shipping”. Well gosh, how did that happen? Meanwhile a new generation must learn names my generation learned 40 years ago, like Kharg island.

Contrary to contemporary belief, the 2003 invasion of Iraq had a clear objective and was preceded by quite a lot of planning for the aftermath. Maybe because things still turned out catastrophically, Trump drew the conclusion that his war on a much larger Middle Eastern country would be more successful if he had no clear objective and didn’t do any planning at all. He has kept the world confused about why exactly he used his country’s air and ballistic power against the Iranian regime, killing so many senior figures that he later admitted there was now no one left to negotiate with.

This was after he advised the Iranian people that “now is the time to seize control of your destiny and unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach. This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass.” Shortly afterwards, the US military is widely considered to have struck a school, killing more than a hundred schoolgirls and permanently liberating them from having to wear the hijab. The ayatollahs, meanwhile, are still in charge.

There are two reactions here in Britain that should bemuse readers. The first is that Trump must have a cunning plan and time will reveal his genius (my favourite theory being that it’s all a message to China). You see this a lot among supposedly intelligent rightwing commentators. The second is that the UK should have thrown in its lot with the Americans and Israelis as soon as they started bombing. This seems to have been the position of the Conservative and Reform parties.

I am amazed. Their idea is that the UK should support a war for which no preparation was made, for which no legal sanction was sought, which even the US vice president doesn't believe in, and which is being waged by an administration whose increasingly impulsive leader – rather than consulting allies – has spent the last year insulting them and whose officials ended up last December issuing a security strategy that suggested it was in American interests to undermine European governments.

And what effect has that war had so far? The Iranian people cower in their basements while the regime survives. Almost unnoticed, the Lebanese flee their homes for fear of Israeli bombardment. The economies of the unconsulted world are being impacted by the war. As the oil price rises, Russia is strengthened. Five thousand US marines are heading for the Gulf. And the dangerous perception that US foreign policy is in hock to Israel is now common on both the American left and the American right.

If they lose in a game of Call of Duty, players get the message, “Mission failed. We’ll get ‘em next time!” Well, good luck with that.

Photograph Activision