Americans can choose whoever they want as their president. That is their constitutional prerogative. They could go to elections and vote for a former senator, a former mayor, a former governor, or a former television personality. They could even elect a former clown, if he or she were persuasive enough, and had enough money for TV ads. What happens between Americans and their leaders is their business.

Where things cross into dangerous and conflicted territory is when the leaders Americans elect begin making decisions that send shockwaves far beyond their borders. Causing suffering to people who had nothing to do with it.

For those less familiar with history, Donald Trump is not the first American president to make choices with far-reaching global consequences. But the scale of disruption he has generated is of a different order altogether. Consider George W. Bush, whose decision to invade Iraq triggered widespread regional instability, the entrenchment of extremism, and economic costs running into the trillions. Estimates for Iraqi deaths resulting from the 2003 invasion vary widely, with documented civilian violent deaths around 187,000 – 211,000, while comprehensive studies including indirect causes suggest the total could exceed 460,000 to 1 million. These figures reflect a combination of direct combat violence, sectarian conflict, and the long-term collapse of the country’s healthcare and infrastructure.

What about Richard Nixon, who in August 1971 unilaterally suspended the dollar’s convertibility into gold, a move that effectively ended the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates and ushered in decades of currency volatility worldwide. At the time, Nixon’s advisers called it a temporary measure. However the gold window was never reopened.

This is not, of course, uniquely American behaviour, although they seem to be the ones indulging in it more disproportionately. Across history, leaders have made choices whose consequences fell hardest on people who never voted for them and who never had a say. It laughs in the face of the idea of democracy, when you have to suffer serious consequences, for decisions you and your leaders had absolutely nothing to do with.

But in the 21st century, the stakes are different. In countries like Malawi, roughly 70 percent of the population lives on less than two dollars a day. Chronic food insecurity, high inflation, devastating droughts, crippling public debt, and working poverty, and now high cost of fuel. I’m talking a situation where even employed citizens cannot meet basic needs. These are not abstract statistics. No these are real living breathing human beings, being squeezed because of the consequences of tantrums huffed and puffed in Washington and Tel Aviv.

They are daily realities for hundreds of millions of people from across the ho are now struggling to make ends meet, thanks to the current energy crisis that has been sparked by the war in Iran. And unlike Iraq, this energy crisis is affecting everyone, not just people in the middle east.

When leaders of wealthy nations make reckless and poorly thought-through economic or political decisions, it is unfortunately the poorest who absorb the impact first and longest. And unlike rich countries, poor countries don’t have resources to cushion the majority of their citizens from such shocks. Ofcourse most leaders of rich countries are too far removed from the lives of poor people in th3 Global South to even empathise. They don’t know what living on less than £2 a day feels like. In fact to be absolutely honest, many of them don’t even care.

But here’s the thing, none of the citizens of countries in the Global South voted in the US Elections. None of us voted in the Israeli elections. We did not vote for Trump, nor Benjamin Netanyahu. Most of us do not particularly care who Americans or Israelis elect to be their leaders. Even if he or she is a complete fool and an idiot, voting them in was the result of your exercising your constitutional right. However, when once elected to office your leaders – whether rightly or wrongly in your ‘collective eyes’, go on to make decisions that directly destabilise the global economy, you cannot reasonably expect the rest of the world to simply accept it. To just suck it up, while our economies crash and burn…?! No.

So I’ll say it again, now is the time for the Global South, including through coalitions like BRICS, to begin to reduce the rest of the world’s exposure to the political weather of Washington. Because that exposure is hurting everyone else. And this is, at its core, one reason why globalisation, for all its genuine benefits, has fallen short of its promise. Because it cannot be right, under any lens, that a dispute between Washington, Tel Aviv and Tehran should be sufficient to incapacitate global supply chains and tip much of the world toward recession.

This isn’t a pandemic like COVID or Ebola. This wasn’t necessary. We never signed up for this mess. Even Arab countries are saying this wasn’t necessary. Maybe picking a fight with Iran was necessary for some Americans , or some Israelis, and their warmongering “leaders”, although that’s also doubtful because your very own intelligence said Iran was not an eminent threat.

And so, we are in this situation where this fight was definitely wasn’t necessary for us. And yet our economies are now suffering?! And will be affected for years to come because of this. So, a different architecture is needed. And it’s needed now, before the next idiotic decision is churned out from Washington DC via Truth Social. Because this kind of thing – where the decisions of a few powerful nations affect the global economy, isn’t sustainable.

Folks this is not normal. 500 years ago, what was barked in the corridors of power in London or Madrid, didn’t lead to a crisis of some type thousands of miles away in Beiping(which later became Beijing). It didn’t create an economic crisis in the city which was to be later known as Cape Town.

There is a way of insulating the global economy from the excesses of these bloodthirsty leaders. And it must be done now.

And for those of you who are pointing the blame on Iran, please think about it objectively.

Iran was attacked.

What would you do if some thugs surrounded and attacked your house, and set it on fire, while you were inside? What would you do when you had one sure way of making the attacker and their associates suffer? Would you just stand there and watch while your house burns down, with your wife and kids inside it – when you had at least one move you could play, that had the potential to paralyze the thugs attacking your house, and protect your family from catastrophe?

Let’s not be hypocritical here, please, we’re not stupid, stop blaming Iran for blocking the straight of Hormuz, because that was the card you knew they had, and which you knew they would play in retaliation for your attacking them.

In the past, in a previous piece, I have proposed one way of divorcing the world from the dominance of one or two global powers: a new global commercial hub, governed by broad international consensus rather than the priorities of any single superpower. I believe it’s a framework that would insulate the world (and at least the Global South) from the irresponsibility of Washington, and the economic dominance of China, and the apathy negligence of London, Paris and Berlin.

Only through such a structure can the interests of all nations, not merely the most powerful, be genuinely protected. Anything less will one day bring us back full circle ⭕ to right here, this very situation, where the thoughtless and irresponsible decisions of a handful of leaders, creates a chain reaction that causes global paralysis very similar to what we’re witnessing now.