Every aircraft carrier sent to the Persian Gulf is one not sent to the Pacific. Every naval deployment in the Middle East ties up resources that might otherwise reinforce U.S. deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. This is the quiet arithmetic shaping American grand strategy today. For three decades after the Cold War, the United States assumed it could project decisive power across multiple regions simultaneously.

It expanded NATO, fought prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, secured global maritime trade routes, and deepened globalisation — all under the belief that its supremacy was structurally secure. That assumption has now eroded. The defining question in Washington is how to compete with China without dissipating American power elsewhere.

This shift is not rhetorical. The 2022 U.S. National Security Strategy explicitly identifies China as “the only competitor with both the intent and the capacity to reshape the international order.” In defence planning, Beijing is described as the “pacing challenge,” meaning that force structure, procurement, and deployment decisions are increasingly calibrated with China in mind.

U.S. Indo-Pacific Command now receives priority in long-term naval and air modernisation, while export controls on advanced semiconductors aim to slow China’s technological ascent. Alliance coordination with Japan and Australia has deepened, and new minilateral frameworks like the Quad and AUKUS have emerged to reinforce deterrence in Asia.

Yet great-power competition does not unfold on a blank slate. It unfolds in a world still shaped by unresolved regional rivalries. And in that world, Iran remains a persistent structural constraint.

Even a superpower with limits, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan reshaped American strategic thinking. Brown University’s Costs of War Project estimates that post-9/11 conflicts have cost the United States over $8 trillion in direct and indirect expenditures. Beyond financial cost, these wars consumed military readiness cycles and dominated diplomatic bandwidth for nearly two decades. During the same period, China expanded its industrial output, modernised its navy, now numerically the largest in the world, and embedded itself deeply within global supply chains.

The lesson drawn in........

© The Friday Times