The world is suffering from a dearth of serious leadership

When Donald Trump first rose to the presidency in the United States in 2016, I told a group of friends in my native Funyula, Busia County, that, indeed, the end of the era when the global human population looked up to the so-called elected leaders for wisdom and the how-to of navigating crises was nigh, if not imminent. In his second, non-consecutive term as US President, Trump is proving me right with nearly all of his policy (mis)steps. 

Barely two months after ordering the military invasion and subsequent seizure of Venezuela and its leader, Nicolás Maduro, respectively, Trump and his fellow bully, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—the only world leader to have ladled Washington with cheer following the January assault on Caracas—are presiding over the military bombardment of Iran that has, since February 28, 2026, killed thousands, including the Islamic Republic's Supreme Leader (Ayatollah) Ali Khamenei, 86, and an estimated 168 children at a primary school in the country's south, significantly adding to global instability.

Iran, in its retaliatory action, has since externalised the ravages of the war to countries within the larger Gulf region—particularly those hosting US military bases, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman—as well as militarised out of use the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway through which one-fifth of the world's oil passes. 

Around the world, oil and gas prices are rising as a direct consequence of the war. Experts' projections promise a huge, negative impact on energy bills and global inflation. Trump has been faulted back home by both lawmakers and critics for trampling on the input of Congress in policy-making, as well as starting, instead of ending, wars. Media reports say up to 60 per cent of ordinary Americans do not approve of the Trump-ordered actions in Iran. And the inevitable fallout from the conflict, both economically and diplomatically, will likely further nibble away at global confidence in Washington's leadership. 

In 2010, then US President Barack Obama talked Prime Minister Netanyahu out of a planned attack on Iran, instead favouring mutual forbearance and understanding—and, of course, talks. Later, in November 2013, the initial Joint Plan of Action, signed between Iran and the P5+1 countries (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—China, France, Russia, the UK and the US—plus Germany) together with the European Union, was adopted and incorporated into what would be known as the Roadmap Agreement between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency. On July 14, 2015, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement aimed at limiting the Iranian nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief and other provisions, was finalised in Vienna, Austria, between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries together with the EU. During his first term in office, Trump led the US in wangling out of the JCPOA deal with Iran. And thus was paved the road to 2026. 

Trump already faces—and, alongside Netanyahu, will continue to face long into the future—questions over justification for, and the legality of, the ongoing joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran. His frail attempts at imputing the ‘preemptive’ assault to alleged, now-storied Iranian belligerence—including the November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981 Iran Hostage Crisis, a period during which, with support from then-soon-to-be-Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1900-1989), student adherents of the Imam's Line stormed the US embassy in Tehran and took captive 66 Americans, including diplomats and other civilian personnel—will be further enfeebled both by the long march of history and Tehran's seeming commitment to sobriety, made even more appreciably demonstrable by its active participation in a recent Omani-brokered process.

Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, famously led the 1979 Iranian Revolution that saw to the dethronement and flight of the country's last shah (monarch), Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (1919-1980), who'd reigned since 1941. Now, thanks to Trump and Netanyahu's lack of foresight, Iran could be about to join the list of countries, including Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, long swallowed up in the maw of post-intervention civil turmoil. 

Generally, the otherwise popular practice of democracy has yielded to the world a crop of wisdom-poor holders of public office lately. And, for it, the world is such an unstable, chaos-buffeted place bereft of both hope and imagination. Long gone are—and the whole world now pines for—the days when, amid crises, there emerged sensible, thought-minting persons around whom whole nations and states anchored vistas of hope, possibility, resilience, redemption and progress. One can only hope that beyond the moral and conscientious interregnum and leaderlessness of Trumpian America, there awaits the restoration of wisdom and genuine care for humankind as the twin lodestar that both fuels political ambition and inspires office-holder conduct. 

In Tibet, Southeast Asia, since the year 1391, wisdom has been, and remains, the first and most important touchstone of leadership that any young man minded to become the next Dalai Lama must evince. The suitability test almost chiefly entails a group of young men being presented with an assortment of personal effects, including those of the newly slain Dalai Lama's own, and made to pick them out. Wisdom—at least according to the aforementioned Tibetan model of appointive practice—ought to both inform choice and be desired even more as the outcome's best feature. Always. But does it?

Both history and humankind's experiential blight that's presently Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza, Cuba, South Sudan, Haiti, DR Congo, and, of course, Iran say otherwise.