United States

No, America’s war with Iran is not about China

philmullan Changing world order, China, Geopolitics, Rivalries, United States

Since the United States-Iran war started, experienced commentators have been trying to make sense of it. A common claim is that the war on Iran is really about China.

It is understandable to want to make sense of an increasingly unsettled period in geopolitics. The old US-led world order that began in 1945 is over. The form that any stable replacement world order might take is unknowable. Negotiating the complexities of today’s international interregnum isn’t easy. In such uncertain times, people are more susceptible to wanting to endow occurrences with meaning. But we should avoid making up narratives about developments – like Iran-is-really-China – that offer over-simplistic and misleading explanations.

There isn’t always a neat story behind messy reality. Sometimes it is the arbitrariness of events, the absence of a strategic plan, which is their significance. Making too much “sense” of haphazard actions can cloud what is happening. Worse, it can reinforce false stereotypes about the greatest dangers to peace. This distracts from focusing on the immediate and substantive threats.

Read the full article here.

The reckless adventurism of Trump’s war in Iran

philmullan Changing world order, Geopolitics, Politics, United States

The White House has launched a war with little thought, strategy or rationale.

What do America’s air strikes against the Islamic Republic of Iran tell us about the disposition of this aged global power? Overriding everything else, the war confirms that America retains an extremely powerful military machine, but has a political class that doesn’t know how to act in its country’s interests.

The anxieties of its insular Beltway elite are worsened because it can’t brush off how much its economy’s apparent buoyancy is dependent on foreigners continuing to lend to it. Washington’s under-discussed debt trap is a persistent risk, including for funding its military. America’s objective position in the world, its unprecedented – I employ that overused word with thought – its unprecedented combination of military superiority alongside a hollowed-out industrial and productive base, makes it an erratic and dangerous force in international affairs.

This represents a perilous situation for Americans, as well as for the rest of the world’s population. Another lesson of the war is that in opposing unexplained and arbitrary actions overseas, many voters for Trump show a shrewder grasp of geopolitics and of US national interests than do Trump and his team.

Read the full article here.

The West needs a reckoning with America’s decline

philmullan Changing world order, China, European Union, Geopolitics, Rivalries, United States

Despite Donald Trump proclaiming that a ‘framework of a future deal’ had been agreed on Greenland, it is still unclear how his demands are likely to be resolved. In any case, the fracas over this icy island is about far more than just the unpredictability and narcissism of the White House incumbent.

The Greenland saga has exposed the shortcomings in geopolitical nous of the West’s leaders – Trump included – and just how hazardous this can be for everyone. International flashpoints are more likely to get out of hand when traditional statecraft is replaced by kneejerk, megaphone diplomacy.

This danger is compounded by the fact that world leaders should already be grappling with a perilous situation: a potential Thucydides trap. But they are refusing to do so.

Read the full article here.