Oftentimes only the largest ideas with the most at stake capture the public imagination, which means that, today, a growing number of analysts are gaining attention for mooting the prospect of a Third World War. Although the past statements of some Trump administration officials about China and Islam have fueled such talk, the contemporary picture has lent even more force to the fear.
At a time of profound international uncertainty, with established elites unsure whether they have the power to ensure stability, it’s appropriate to think soberly about the risks ahead. But it’s important to recognize there’s still plenty of time to avoid world war without capitulating to America’s enemies and adversaries around the globe.
Of course, capitulation is precisely what the White House’s opponents are already warning against. A geostrategic partnership with Russia, they say, is a pipe dream — one that morphs into a malevolent fantasy when it’s married to respect and admiration for Vladimir Putin’s international maverick act. The historical record on U.S.-Russia relations may be somewhat mixed, with enmity and rivalry only arising after the end of the Second World War, but recent history makes clear that Russia will not play nicely and honorably for naïve or sentimental reasons. That is why the United States must choose to set and enforce a small and powerful series of boundaries.
NATO countries, for instance, are off limits, in cyberspace and the real world alike. But boundaries cut both ways: Russian adventurism in its near abroad will have to be expected, and not in all cases will it always be swiftly and completely repelled. This strategy may not satisfy everyone, or satisfy anyone completely. But to achieve America’s other objectives without tipping toward general war, Russia policy cannot be allowed to swallow up the resources of state as, say, Iraq and Afghanistan policy once did.
Those other objectives are obvious, even if many Americans believe they are overhyped or too troublesome to put first. Under Xi Jinping, China has become more autocratic, more militaristic and more revisionist in its global outlook. No good can come of Beijing’s unwelcome, illegal occupation of natural and man-made islands in the South China Sea. The move has already begun to upend the balance of power in Southeast Asia — gravely alarming American allies, many of whom have long been home to large and influential Chinese diasporas where communist authoritarianism is not admired.
Xi, however, certainly plans to upset more than the regional disposition of forces. With control of the South China Sea, Beijing can build and deploy ICBM-equipped submarines that can hide in deep “blue water,” affording the so-called “second strike” capability that would vault China into the first rank of nuclear powers. No body of water more strategically important to the United States faces more direct peril; it is hard to imagine what administration could be excused for failing to contain a threat to America’s allies, to the free flow of international commerce, and to the peace and security of the world.
Still, China is too big and important a global player to have its ambitions shut down completely. As with Russia, if the United States refuses to budge with China on one particular boundary, others will surely bend.
Then there is Iran. Although the Obama administration deserved some credit for trying to think outside the box of Mideast policy, looking for a way to rebalance away from faltering and difficult Sunni allies, its scheme to benefit the mullahs in exchange for more pliant and peaceable behavior was a dud. As ISIS contracts under pressure, Iran’s militias are systematically working their way up the length of Iraq, displacing Sunnis from towns and purging Sunnis from the country’s military forces.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, Iran’s powerful client and the global terrorist organization par excellence, has made the most of Syria’s civil war, strengthening its position and biding its time for even greater Iranian influence over the region. Teheran itself has shown impatience, needling the new administration in Washington with provocative ballistic missile tests and proxy strikes on Gulf allies in the Yemen theater of conflict. The strategy appears to be one of tiptoeing up to the edge of the tenuous and generous agreement structure put in place under Obama, the better to determine what consequences, if any, await a sudden transgressive leap.
Without doubt, there have been no more difficult nominal American allies than the key Sunni states of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, few effective bulwarks against Iranian expansionism remain — not Iraq, not Syria and not Turkey, whose own autocratic and aggressively illiberal turn has weakened NATO at its most volatile frontier.
If the Trump administration has attracted incredulity for its early interest in putting distance between Moscow and Tehran, the critics have yet to deliver much in the way of plausible and compelling alternatives. If president Obama succeeded at buying much-needed time over the past eight years to cobble together a workable Mideast policy, that dearly bought opportunity was largely squandered, again leaving his successor to choose among least bad options rather than pursuing some grand ideal. And again, rather than wiping Iranian influence off the map, the White House will have to make selective but firm choices about where not to give an inch.
America’s enemies and adversaries know this is a good time to see what advantages they can get. The more success they meet with, the more apt they will be to keep pressing. Although the United States cannot be everywhere and do everything, especially under those conditions, policymakers still have many potent tools and should apply them to the very short list of most important challenges staring us down over the next four years. Succeeding here means avoiding the chain reaction of open war. Failure could mean the opposite.
James Poulos is a columnist for the Southern California News Group.
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