Analogies in international politics are tricky and easily abused, yet they remain irresistible because they can illuminate patterns that are otherwise hard to see. Consider the present moment.
Just as Ukraine has become a growing burden for Washington and its Western allies, Iran is now a strategic burden for Moscow and Beijing. The US, particularly under the Trump administration, appears to be placing less emphasis on supporting Ukraine. Something similar may be happening in reverse with Iran.
Moscow continues to provide Tehran with assistance – most notably intelligence on US military targets – but the broader pattern suggests caution rather than deep commitment. Beijing, despite its close ties with Iran, appears to show little inclination to help Iran directly in its confrontation with America and Israel.
The larger contest between America and China will be decided by domestic strength, technological competition, and the ability of each country to attract support from other states
Yet it is far from clear that Iran – even if its brutal Shia theocracy is toppled – can become a strategic partner of the US True, a large number of Iranians appear more receptive to democracy and liberty than the younger populations of Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya, after the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, Saddam Hussein in 2003, and Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Yet that does not mean a future government in Tehran would align with the US, particularly given Washington’s enduring closeness to Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Gulf states.
All of this raises a broader question: will decisive US action against Iran strengthen deterrence against China and Russia? The theory is that by systematically pressuring Iran – and perhaps regimes such as Venezuela and Cuba – Washington weakens the wider network of states challenging American power, and scrambles Xi Jinping’s plan to take Taiwan.
In his Spectator cover essay last week, Geoffrey Cain makes this case in clear and forceful terms. However, the assumption underlying this argument rests on a misunderstanding of how credibility works. According to Harvard international relations scholar Stephen M. Walt, the connection between conflicts in the Middle East and the wider great-power contest is far weaker than many in Washington assume.
Hawkish pundits, politicians and policymakers often assume that demonstrations of force in one theatre automatically strengthen deterrence in another. But that is not how credibility works. What the US does to a relatively weak state in the Middle East, Professor Walt argues, tells us little about what it would do against a far more powerful country elsewhere.
Credibility does not translate mechanically. What matters are the stakes involved, the balance of power, and the relative importance of the issue at hand.
It is as if one claimed, as hawkish commentators did at the time, that the first Bush administration’s reluctance to make China an international outlaw after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait a year later – a connection historians would rightly call simplistic. Or that Barack Obama’s failure to act decisively on his “red line” over Assad’s chemical weapons in Syria in 2013 somehow emboldened Russia to annex Crimea in 2014 – again, a leap that ignores Moscow’s very different calculations, including that the home of the Russian Black Sea fleet would not become part of Nato.
In the case of China, the key question is not what Washington does in Iran or Venezuela, but how much it cares about the issues directly involving Beijing and what the strategic balance between the two powers looks like.
Chinese leaders, Professor Walt suggests, are unlikely to draw lessons about Taiwan from U.S. actions in the Middle East. The circumstances are simply too different. Indeed, from Beijing’s perspective, another US confrontation in the Middle East not just confirms Xi Jinping’s view that hard power is king, but once again shows that Washington is distracted by a regional conflict, expending attention and resources far from the main arena of great-power competition.
Such conflicts also carry reputational risks. Military action could allow China to portray the U.S. as a destabilizing power while presenting itself – however misleadingly – as a force for stability and order. Russia, too, could find advantages in the situation. US intervention would make it easier for Moscow to deflect Western criticism of its actions in Ukraine by pointing to Washington’s own behavior elsewhere.
Remember, too, that Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba are not especially important strategic assets for Beijing. Venezuela is not a powerful state and never posed a serious threat to the US. Cuba, meanwhile, has long been an irritation for Washington but hardly a meaningful strategic challenge.
The larger contest between America and China, Professor Walt argues, will be decided elsewhere: by domestic strength, technological competition, and the ability of each country to attract support from other states around the world. In that sense, the balance of great-power rivalry depends far more on internal performance and global influence than on how Washington handles relatively weak regimes in the Western Hemisphere or the Middle East.
None of this means events in the Middle East are irrelevant to the wider strategic contest. After all, the Strait of Hormuz carries roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas trade; tensions there will surely hurt oil-thirsty China.
But just as Ukraine has become both an instrument and a burden in the struggle between Russia and the West, Iran may now play a similar role in the uneasy partnership linking Tehran, Moscow and Beijing. The real question is not whether the US confrontation with Iran weakens China and Russia, but whether it exposes the limited willingness of stronger powers to stand up for the weaker partners they so often encourage. Just ask Volodymyr Zelensky.
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