No. of Recommendations: 12
Okay, so you don't care to guess?
This action is about China.
No, it's not. I know - you believe that China is the single most important foreign policy priority for the U.S. So you constantly rationalize the foreign policy actions of the Administration by telling yourself that they're all about China. Even though the Administration itself hasn't pointed to China as the reason for the Iran war. This, while scrambling to come up with any reason for why they went to war now. They're not out there with Congress or the American people explaining how this plays into our China policy....because it doesn't. And none of the folks who are making the decisions about this war are doing it because of China. That's your rationalization, not theirs.
Again, this action makes China better off, not worse off. You use the metaphor of taking China's pieces off the board - but we're not. That's what you continually fail to understand about how limited the effects of our actions are. Venezuela is still just as much on the board for China as it was before, because we didn't eliminate the regime. It's still a hardcore socialist authoritarian dictatorship, which means it's going to continue to be just as much aligned with China as previously. Because the reasons it has been China's ally, and not ours, were not personal to Maduro, but structural based on the nature of the government. wW didn't change the government, just the leader, so it will still be China's piece on the board going forward.
The same is true of Iran. We swapped one Khameini for another - and even if this second Khameini gets killed, the government of Iran will continue to be just as firmly against the U.S. and aligned with China as before. China's actually in a much stronger position going forward. The new government is going to need tons of resources, capital, equipment, and access to military supplies going forward. They're not going to get that from the West, and their former main patron (Russia) is in no position to supply it. So look for China to be even more central to Iran's foreign policy and economic development than it was already.
China isn't hurt by any of these actions, because we're leaving the governments and all the geopolitical factors in place. And China's relative position has improved, because we've burned through so much of our own near-term military resources to accomplish virtually nothing of long-term consequence. We accomplished a lot of operational goals, but no strategic goals relative to China. And it cost us some tens of billions of dollars of military resources, including depleting our reserves of important anti-missile equipment which will take several years to replenish.
Trump doesn't want to keep fighting in Iran until the regime falls. That was obvious from his speech in Miami last night. He's clearly resigned to letting the regime pick replacement leaders from within that will maintain continuity, and thus remain an adversary to the West. He's not going to take the steps that would lead to the people dislodging the dictatorship. Going forward, we will continue to have Iran be exactly as it was politically - different people, but the exact same regime.
