Damage Control

by Mark Van Proyen

June 6, 2026

Ranu Mukherjee, “A Place to Find the Light,” 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco.

May 19, 2026 should have been a day that would live in infamy, if anybody had bothered to pay close attention. That was the day that Vice-President J.D. Vance stood in for an absent Press Secretary Karoline Levitt, who was away on maternity leave. Suffice it to say that for many reasons this was no normal press briefing. One of those was damage control pertaining to President Trump’s disappointing visit to China (May 12 to 15), during which Chinese President Xi Jinping clearly took the upper hand on the Strait of Hormuz, Taiwan, and tariffs. Trump all but assured Xi that the U.S. would not come to Taiwan’s aid if the mainland were to attack, signaling that by indefinitely delaying a multi-billion arms package for the island nation. In return, Trump got almost nothing in return beyond a Chinese promise to buy 200 Boeing passenger jets.

Four days after Trump returned home, Russian President Vladimir Putin went to China to meet with Xi, walking away with 21 separate trade deals. During the three-day visit with Trump, Xi played him like a Stradivarius, first by refusing to greet him when he landed and then having a bevy of youthful tweeners flank Trump as he shambled toward an awaiting limousine — a pointed jab at Trump’s connections to the ongoing Jeffery Epstein scandal. Indo-Pacific allies such as Japan, South Korea and the Philippines took notice of the whole display. Japan is already increasing its defense budget.

“Bust of Commodus as Hercules,” c. 192 AD, carrara marble, h. 52 1/4”. Courtesy of the Capitoline Museums, Rome.

Xi made the point that Trump’s Indo-Pacific strategy ran the risk of falling into a Thucydides trap, which should have been taken as a thinly veiled threat had Trump only known who Thucydides was. His very presence as the American president made Xi’s case, and Trump’s ignorance closed it. The reference of course was to the Greek historian Thucydides, who wrote about the Peloponnesian conflict between Athens and Sparta that took place from 434 to 404 BCE. The Spartans finally won, forcing the Athenians to relinquish most of their powerful navy, leading to an end of their maritime empire and the “golden age” built by it.

Recent political scientists have over-simplified the idea as referring to the tendency of an established power to miscalculate the use of force into a disastrous conflict when a new rival power arises. That was what Xi meant when he spoke to Trump, but Thucydides had more to say that bears on the current situation. Indeed, Sparta did win the war, but it was not very good at winning the peace. In a matter of a few years, Athens regained its independence. Soon after came the age of Athenian philosophy, where new empires of the mind were built in the absence of the old maritime empire.

This final point highlights the current US-China situation. During the past two decades, the US has spent about 5 trillion dollars on regime change wars that were partial or complete failures. During that same time, China has engaged in no military conflicts, although it has provided weapons to other combatants. What China has done is spend a similar amount of capital on a massive global infrastructure build-out from which it is now reaping exponentially greater benefits. This is the long game, and China is winning. One measure of their success lies in trade imbalances ($203 billion in 2025, down about $33 billion from the previous year) and the amount of US Treasuries held by China (currently about $233 billion). These statistics indicate that the newly emerging “empire of the mind” is measured in the use of money as a weapon, as opposed the ancient use of ideas for the same purpose.

When Trump returned home, he was greeted with yet another sharp drop in poll numbers, his negatives dropping to an almost two-to-one disapproval rating. While the aging and increasingly incoherent President recovered from jetlag, J.D. Vance stepped up to the podium. His effort was directed at stopping the bleeding and to righting the Republican’s sinking ship.

Giuseppe Penone, “Idee di Pietra,” 2017, bronze and stone installation, Gstaad, Switzerland. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery, New York. Photo: Marcus Veith.

His May 19th address to the press was much more than a standard exercise of media management. It was a stump speech that tried to reset the entire tone of the Trump administration at a time when it was and still is hemorrhaging supporters six months before the upcoming mid-term election. Vance was sharp, affable, confident and a bit smarmy in ways reminiscent of George Bush Jr. He re-affirmed his Catholicism while backing away from his recent criticism of Pope Leo XIV’s support for migrants and refugees, at that point a feeble bone-toss to offended American Catholics. At several junctures he was outright obsequious when referring to Trump’s stewardship of the war in Iran and the economic consequences stemming from it. In short, he was trying to rally disaffected supporters while not undermining the dotard-in-Chief … too much.

The question is, who was Vance rallying support for? The obvious answer was himself. He is only 41 years old, but his political fortunes are tied to Trump and there can be no untying of that knot, no distancing himself from Trump administration policy mistakes. Instead, he drenched his appeal in rhetorical perfume. He is, after all, the Vice-President of an administration that has started an unnecessary war without the legally required Congressional authorization, a war most noteworthy for being a tactical success and a strategic failure of epic proportions.

William Hogarth, “Marriage A-la-Mode: 2, The Téte á Téte,” c. 1743, oil on canvas, 27 1/2 x 35 7/8”. Courtesy of the National Gallery, London.

That same administration will face a well-deserved tsunami of impeachment proceedings come January if it cannot contrive a way to steal the mid-term elections (lord knows it’s been trying), portending a two-year parade of lame duck shenanigans. Vance’s only chance for any political future is to win the Republican nomination in 2028 in hopes that the Democratic nominee will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on the campaign trail. Judging from the amount of sheer denial with which the Democrats have greeted their much-delayed Autopsy report about the 2024 election, such a self-destruction cannot be dismissed. In any event, Vance’s nomination is itself less then certain, as Marco Rubio is also making noises about seeking it by calling for an invasion of Cuba, claiming on May 21 that it is a “national security” threat.

But the very next day Trump announced that a ceasefire had been negotiated with Iran, with a framework for ending hostilities very close to follow. The stock market responded accordingly. Then on May 23 Trump threw cold water on the hope for peace by walking back his statement from the previous day. On Memorial Day, US forces attacked Iran in what was called a “defensive strike,” even though the Iranians were abiding by the terms of the 30-day cease fire that had lasted five days. In response, the Iranians fired ballistic missiles at American bases in Kuwait, missiles that supposedly had been destroyed. Both sides accused the other of violating the ceasefire agreement. Meanwhile, commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains at a virtual standstill. Trump’s final humiliation is that sticking with the Obama administration’s JCPOA agreement with Iran was the best deal he could have gotten. In 2017, he ripped it up, and, after a costly military misadventure, it is clear that he can do no better. Eventually, we may have to learn to live with a future Iran more determined than ever to arm itself with nuclear weapons.

Maurizio Cattelan, “No,” 2021, silicone, rubber, natural hair, clothing, boots and paper bag, 39 3/4 x 16 1/8 x 17”. Courtesy of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing.

Meanwhile, also on May 23, China deployed over 100 military ships around the island of Taiwan, rehearsing a blockade strategy at a much larger scale than previously undertaken. This may be the plan for how the PRC plans to force Taiwan to capitulate without conducting an outright invasion of the island. NVIDA CEO Jensen Huang recently claimed that Taiwan is at the center of the AI revolution because it is the place where high performance computer chips are designed and manufactured. If that is true, a peaceful takeover might have uniquely 21st century consequences that are yet to be fully imagined.

Mark Van Proyen has written commentaries emphasize the tragic consequences of blind faith placed in economies of narcissistic reward. In 2020, he retired from the faculty of the San Francisco Art Institute, where he taught Painting and Art History. From 2003 to 2018, he was a corresponding editor for Art in America. In 2025 he relaunched SquareCylinder with co-publishers Bill Lasarow and DeWitt Cheng. Photo credit: Mary Ijichi