Can the US Take on China, Iran and Russia All at Once?
America’s top rivals aren’t allies in the conventional sense, but acting in unison they could stretch a superpower well beyond its military capabilities.
ByHal Brands
October 16, 2022 at 8:00 AM EDT
Hal Brands is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. The Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, he is co-author, most recently, of "Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China" and a member of the State Department's Foreign Affairs Policy Board.
Imagine a scenario in which, a year or two or three from now, the world is convulsed by war from Europe to the Pacific. The idea isn’t as absurd as you may think. Not in decades has the US faced such prospects of near-term military confrontation in several separate theaters.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has ignited Europe’s largest conflict in generations and provoked a great-power proxy fight. In East Asia, the chances of war are growing, as the tensions precipitated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan in August demonstrated. In the Middle East, the US may have to choose between fighting Iran and accepting it as a nuclear threshold state.
Put these crises together and you have the makings of a Eurasian conflagration.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-10-16/us-isn-t-ready-to-fight-china-iran-and-russia-all-at-once
