The US is now engaged in another Middle Eastern war, is supporting Ukraine’s fight against Russia and is sparring with China in the Pacific. An overstretched and distracted Washington is being pushed by allies in Kyiv and Jerusalem and tested by adversaries in Beijing, Moscow, Tehran and Pyongyang.
This is an exceptionally dangerous moment and it doesn’t take a vivid imagination to see this so-called new cold war getting hot. It is a useful exercise to try to see the world the way our adversaries do, and now may be a good time to reflect on the words of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.
A week ago Putin met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in Turkmenistan. There the Russian President spoke of a world where “unprecedented threats stem from civilisational divides and ethnic and religious conflicts”.
“International relations have entered an era of profound transformation, and a new world order is emerging that reflects the world’s diversity,” Putin said.
“This process is inevitable and irreversible.”
This echoes a speech made by Xi in April 2021, when he said the world was undergoing “great change unseen in a century”.
“The most important characteristic of the world is, in a word, chaos,” he said, “and this trend appears likely to continue.”
Look at the chaos now in play.
On the Middle Eastern front the US has already fired shots in a growing regional war, twice defending Israel against Iranian missiles with destroyers based in the eastern Mediterranean. It also has attacked Houthi targets in Yemen using aircraft and warships.
Washington has now deployed an advanced missile defence system to Israel, supported by 100 soldiers. This adds to a formidable military presence in the region of at least a dozen warships – including the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group – four US Air Force fighter jet squadrons and about 40,000 personnel. The USS Georgia, a nuclear-powered submarine capable of carrying more than 150 Tomahawk cruise missiles, also is lurking in waters within striking distance of Tehran.
The fact we even know there is a nuclear submarine in the theatre is unusual. It’s all part of America’s “iron-clad commitment” to defend Israel, but the problem is it has lost control of events. Jerusalem is acting, Washington is reacting.
Israel is engaged in an existential battle and seems determined to clear the decks of all threats. It has every right to defend itself, but each action leaves unfinished business and raises unanswerable questions.
The war in Gaza is not over, Hamas has not been destroyed; the hostages have not been returned. Israel is now pushing into Lebanon to neuter Hezbollah; it cannot do that with air strikes alone and must send in ground troops. No matter what it says, it also must be contemplating striking Iran’s nuclear facilities to remove that threat from the board. Or manoeuvring its chief ally into a position where it does the heavy lifting.
You can support Israel to the hilt, as the US is so vividly demonstrating, and still ask hard questions of Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet about where they imagine things go from here.
Given the skin the US has in this game, it would be reasonable to expect that President Joe Biden be given an intimate understanding of what Israel intends. Does it mean to occupy Gaza and how would that work? Does it intend to clear a buffer zone in Lebanon and occupy that? What does it propose for dealing with Iran? And what of the West Bank?
In the words of General David Petraeus, tell me how this ends? How does the US defend Israel and itself? How does it avoid a war without end? As we have seen so often in the recent past, getting into wars is easy, getting out isn’t.
But Netanyahu has left Biden out of major decisions. This was underlined when the Israeli Prime Minister, without giving his American counterpart any advance warning, ordered from his New York hotel room the strike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. The US President clearly believes he has not been given the respect he and his country deserve, and is it any wonder he refers to Netanyahu in four-letter words?
On the European front, President Volodymyr Zelensky is pressing Biden to allow Ukrainian forces to use long-range strike missiles against Russia. The US has baulked at this, concerned that it will provoke Putin into escalating that war.
If the allies are proving difficult, the adversaries are a witches’ brew of chaos, and all of them appear to be acting in lock-step.
The Guardian reports that North Korean military engineers have been deployed to help Russia target Ukraine with ballistic missiles. The paper quoted a senior Ukrainian official as saying there are dozens of North Koreans behind Russian lines, supporting missile-launcher systems.
Iran is supplying drones and ballistic missiles to Russia and Moscow is helping Tehran with its nuclear ambitions.
In September, US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said Beijing was directly aiding the Russian military. Andrea Kendall-Taylor of the Centre for a New American Security told ChinaPower the list included “providing propellants for missiles and lots of intermediary goods that can be used to produce gunpowder and explosives”.
“(China has) provided turbojet engines and really importantly geospatial intelligence that Russia has used to hit targets inside Ukraine. So (China) has been playing a really critical role in this war.”
And the tempo of joint war games between the two nations is remarkable. In September the Russian military launched naval and air drills spanning both hemispheres and China was engaged in joint manoeuvres.
A Russian Defence Ministry statement said the Ocean-24 exercise spanned the Pacific and Arctic oceans, the Mediterranean, Caspian and Baltic seas and involved more than 400 warships, submarines and support vessels, more than 120 planes and helicopters, and more than 90,000 troops.
In July, Russian and Chinese warplanes were intercepted off the coast of Alaska by US and Canadian fighters, marking the first time strategic bombers from the two countries have operated together near North America.
On the Pacific front this week China conducted drills that encircled Taiwan, just days after the democratic island marked its National Day. The Chinese military said the drills included a “key port blockade”, severing Taiwan’s maritime lifeline for imports of trade, food and energy.
And, again, a Chinese ship has sideswiped a Philippine vessel in the South China Sea, as Beijing aggressively pursues its illegal annexation of waters far from its shores.
Anyone looking at what’s happening in the world and our region at the moment should be able to read the signs of the times. Australia should be urgently developing the capability to defend itself, understanding that the US is not going to be able to carry us as well as everyone else.
Yet we move with sloth-like steps in a world that appears to have hit fast forward on the clash of civilisations.
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