Too Much Winning Wan Begin Dey Worry America, By Moses Okezie
We all know that Donald John Trump likes winning – a lot. In fact, the whole idea behind his Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement is that the United States must start winning again – at home and on the global stage. That simple message is probably one reason so many people, at home in the United States and in many places abroad, like him so much. After all, everybody likes a winner, and nobody wants his country to be the one always coming behind. And to be fair to him, America has indeed been racking up some notable gains in a number of areas under his leadership.
The concern in some quarters now, however, is that parts of No. 47’s endlesss run of winning might be slowly morphing into less than wholesome gains for everyone. I mean, with every policy, every diplomatic gamble, every trade war and (with Venezuela and Iran), every war – packaged as proof that America is ‘winning again’, the message is looking suspiciously quixotic: ‘winning is good, and more winning is even better – no matter the cost to anyone, including America itself. Yet, as any cook will tell you, too much of any condiment is bad for the sauce, so one wonders – is too much winning becoming a problem to Trump’s America?
The idea of ‘too much winning’ first sounded like political bragging – chest beating on the global stage. The deeper irony emerges when a nation begins to measure every interaction as a victory or defeat, slowly trapping itself inside a zero-sum world. In that kind of world, cooperation looks like weakness, compromise smells like surrender and every negotiation must produce a loser. The problem is that the modern world does not work like a FIFA football fixtures where elimination of other contestants is the goal.
Consider trade. When America slaps tariffs on partners to force better deals, it may win some concessions, especially when it is clear to all that trade with that ‘partner’ has been skewed against America for a good while. Do it to enough partners and you bring something akin to equity in the relationship between the US and others. However, do the same too many times and the same partners begin to redesign supply chains, diversify markets and reduce dependence on the American economy. Today’s ‘victories’ then spawn the seeds of tomorrow’s irrelevance because winning too hard can make others start planning life without you.
Diplomacy follows the same pattern. Alliances that begin to look like arrangements where only one side must always come out on top eventually push smaller partners to ask themselves a dangerous question: ‘Is this a partnership, or are we under supervision?’ Once that question enters the equation, the balance begins to shift.
Military strength is another area where ‘winning’ can get complicated. The United States still commands the most powerful armed forces on earth. Demonstrations of overwhelming force increasingly motivate rivals to invest in asymmetric ways to counter it – cyberwarfare, economic pressure, space capabilities and proxy conflicts. Take for example the current US-Israel vs Iran war. As of today, 9 March 2026, the US–Israel vs Iran war is roughly on Day 10 and no one is still debating whether the Persians have sprung unexpected surprises with their combat capabilities.
Iran appears prepared to take what many planners assumed would be a clean despatch combat to the mat and allow every side to prove its grappling mettle. The spectre of a nuclear option no longer sounds so far-fetched. The US has sent the E-6B Mercury, ominously nicknamed the ‘Nuclear Plane,’ to the theatre. This specialised command-and-control aircraft is designed to communicate with nuclear submarines and manage nuclear forces. Reports indicate its deployment to the region around March 4, 2026 serves as a warning to Iran and her allies that they can expect response in kind if escalation travels along that route.
An uncomfortable question now hovers over the Gulf battlefields as the consequences spread wider beyond the immediate combatants and begins to touch neighbouring states, rattle energy markets, alarm civilian populations and test alliances on every side. History recognises moments when victories arrive at such staggering cost that the triumph itself begins to resemble defeat – have current outcomes in the US-Israel vs Iran War started to look like a Pyrrhic victory? Whatever anyone thinks of that question the indisputable fact is that the scoreboard for this conflict has grown far messier than most people, except those in the respective warrooms perhaps, expected.
Even domestically, the culture of constant winning can produce strange side effects. Politics that evolves into a perpetual contest where the goal is both governance and total victory over political and other opponents gradually weakens public trust in institutions and process. This is because laws become weapons, compromise becomes betrayal and citizens – supposedly the beneficiaries of all this winning – begin to feel like weary spectators at a fight they never paid to watch. That moment marks the point when winning begins to look suspiciously like losing.
History offers quiet warnings. Great leaders rarely collapse because they lose too often. More frequently they collapse because they misunderstand what victory actually means. Empires that define success only through dominance eventually exhaust themselves trying to prove it again and again. This may not be the case with Trump 2.0 but recent polling places the President’s approval rating in the low forties – roughly 41 to 43 percent – with disapproval in the mid-fifties. These figures would normally be considered weak this early in an administration but they remain broadly consistent with the deeply polarized political landscape that has characterized the two Trump eras.
Sometimes the biggest win is recognising the moment when winning too much has become the problem. The smarter form of power is quieter. It is the ability to build systems others want to join. It is the capacity to create prosperity that spreads beyond borders. It is the kind of leadership where other nations cooperate not because they fear you, but because their future looks brighter with you in the room.
Which brings us back to the pidgin wisdom behind the title of this piece: Too much winning wan begin dey worry America. It means that every outcome framed purely as victory risks making a country forget the real purpose of power in the first place. It also connotes the admonition that the goal of might is not to win every battle, but to build a world where constant battles are no longer necessary.
Iran, US/Israeli Face-Off, A Long Walk From The Past
It’s no longer a news that the Supreme Leader of Iran was killed in a major military attack carried out by Israel together with the United States on February 28, 2026.
ce the 1940s, sometimes as a friend and sometimes as an enemy.
It needs to be explained why this is happening in very simple English, so that anyone who knows nothing about politics can understand.
As you may know, Israel and Iran are both in the Middle East. The Middle East is a group of countries in Western Asia. These countries include:
Iran, Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Turkey (a part of Turkey is in Europe), Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Yemen and Bahrain.
The Middle East has a lot of oil. Oil brings money, but it also brings problems. Powerful countries from outside the Middle East want control and influence there because of oil. America has been involved in Iran sin
Inside the Middle East, countries also compete with each other for regional power, politically, economically and religiously. The religion side is often overlooked. For example people often forget that Saudi Arabia and Iran fight for religious dominance in the Middle East. This is because the religion of Islam has two main denominations namely Shia and Sunni. Iran is mostly Shia and Saudi Arabia is mostly Sunni.
But ofcourse, the biggest rivalry in the Middle East is actually between Israel and Iran. Israel depends on its strong army and support from the United States. It sees Iran as a serious threat. Iran has threatened to destroy Israel. These threats were made as early as 1979 by Iran’s first Supreme Leader.
At the center of the Israel–Iran conflict is the belief among hardline leaders in Iran that Israel should not exist as a country. There is a big question about how morden state of Israel was created and why it is at war with Palestine.
In Palestine, Israel has killed many civilians, bombed homes, hospitals and schools, stopped food and aid from getting in.
Iran supports Palestine. It calls Israel’s actions crimes and even genocide, and helps groups that fight Israel by giving them money, weapons and training.
The other cause of this war is Iran’s nuclear program.
Israel wants to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons because Iran has threatened to destroy Israel before. But Iran says its nuclear program has nothing to do with nuclear bombs. However Israel doesn’t believe this.
It is worth mentioning that nuclear weapons give countries an extra layer of security. For example, North Korea built nuclear weapons to protect itself from outside threats. Because North Korea has nuclear weapons, attacking it would be very dangerous. That makes Western countries think twice. It is therefore not unthinkable that Iran wants the same level of protection. But Israel says no. America also says no.
Some people think America ONLY attacks other countries because of oil. That is not always true. America acts based on its own interests. Those interests are not always about money or oil. Sometimes they are political or strategic. For example, Afghanistan does not have large oil reserves but America still sent its military there.
Some people believe that if a country has no oil, then it does not matter to America. That is not true. Korea does not have major oil resources yet during the Korean War, America fought to defend South Korea. This shows that oil is not the only reason America gets involved in other countries. Sometimes the reasons are political, military or strategic.
In June 2019, Donald Trump even visited North Korea. He became the first sitting U.S. president to step onto North Korean soil when he crossed the DMZ to meet Kim Jong Un.
Clearly, oil is not the only factor in American foreign policy. So the claim that America does not attack North Korea simply because it has no oil is false.
Now let us look at U.S-Iran relations
After the Second World War, America became more involved in the Middle East to stop the Soviet Union from spreading its influence. Oil had become very important to global power. America strengthened its relationship with Iran because of Iran’s oil.
In 1951, a new Iranian leader named Mohammad Mossadegh came to
power. He took control of Iran’s oil and said it should belong to Iran. He nationalized the oil industry. This was during the Cold War era when America and the Soviet Union were competing against each other for power and influence around the world.
In 1953, America sponsored a coup in Iran as a response to the nationalization of oil. This coup led to the rise of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, commonly known as the Shah. This man went on to rule Iran for 26 years.
The Shah was a harsh ruler, but he was friendly to America. The United States ignored his human rights abuses because he supported American interests. During this time, Iran was a close ally of America and also had good relations with Israel.
However, many Iranians hated the Shah. One of his strongest critics was a religious leader named Ruhollah Khomeini, an Ayatollah. Remember an Ayatollah is a very senior Muslim leader in Iran. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini strongly criticized the Shah. He also criticized Western influence, and America’s role in Iran. Because of this, he was forced into exile in the 1960s. Even while in exile, Khomeini sent recorded messages back to Iran, telling people to oppose the Shah.
Public anger grew. In 1979, the Shah was removed from power in a revolution. That is how Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini became Supreme Leader and how Iran became an Islamic Republic.
The new Iranian government was strongly against America because many Iranians believed America had interfered in their democracy in 1953 and had supported a dictator for many years.
Later in 1979, Iranian students took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. American diplomats were held hostage for 444 days. From that moment, Iran and America became enemies. As Israel became closer to America, Iran’s new leaders saw Israel as a Western creation in the Middle East that was harming Muslims. This belief shaped Iran’s long-term policy toward Israel.
This supreme leader who was recently killed was known as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He had been in power since 1989, having taken over after the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
So why did they kill him?
Well, if you want to destabilize a regime in a time of war, you eliminate its leader. Not every country can survive a sudden leadership crisis in a time of war.