Yogi Berra, the American baseball player and king of malapropisms, once famously warned that predictions were difficult, “especially about the future”. With a shaky ceasefire in the Iran war that addresses none of the underlying causes of the conflict and a US President whose trademark is unpredictability, the task of assessing the geopolitical fallout from Operation Epic Fury is fraught.
That has not stopped President Donald Trump’s supporters from declaring him the new Bismarck or his detractors from heralding the birth of a post-American world order. But geopolitics is stubbornly resistant to such catchphrases. Assuming the war is winding down for now, one can find ample evidence of harm to American power and prestige but far less advantage for China, Russia or Iran than many seers in the media assert.
For China and Russia, the war undoubtedly has brought some near-term advantages. China has complicated American military operations by providing chemical precursors for Iranian rockets, revenue from Iranian oil purchases and public satellite images of American bases in the region.
Russian satellite imagery reportedly has been used specifically to guide Iranian drones to their targets across the Gulf. Russia also has made a windfall from higher oil prices and the Trump administration’s relaxation of sanctions to stabilise global energy markets. According to Ukraine’s KSE Institute, Russia will net at least $US45bn ($63.6bn) more in government revenue this year that can be used to fund the war in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the Central Military Commission in Beijing will take comfort from the US expenditure of munitions and concerns about magazine depth, particularly for air and missile defence and long-range precision strike that would be crucial in any Taiwan contingency.
Senior colonels also will note the effectiveness of long-range drones against airfields and radar sites. And the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs is already touting its strategic influence as one of the brokers of the current ceasefire.
However, these gains will be partially offset by dynamics that would concern Moscow and Beijing. Iran has emerged emboldened from the war but materially much weaker in terms of firepower and supporters in the region. Beijing will probably take note that despite anger at Trump for not consulting them before the attack, most of the Gulf states are now more aligned with the US militarily because of Iranian attacks on their civilian and energy infrastructure. It is a useful lesson that attacking third parties in a conflict with the United States may drive them into closer alignment with American power rather than seek neutrality or pressure Washington to back down.
If Xi Jinping asks his generals whether the PLA could pull off a campaign on the scale and at the distance of Operation Epic Fury, they would have to answer no – unless they were worried about being the next senior military officer to be purged, of course.
Meanwhile, Russian advantages in oil revenue will be offset by increasingly successful Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian petrochemical and oil export infrastructure that thus far have reduced export potential by 40%.
Moscow also is watching anxiously as more than 100 Ukrainian drone warfare experts are in the Gulf giving the Saudis, United Arab Emirates and others crash courses on the most advanced drone warfare techniques. Ukraine, too, will generate revenue and diplomatic support at Russia’s expense because of this war.
Claims that China has dramatically expanded its strategic influence in the Middle East also are overblown. Beijing has done well unilaterally securing its oil tankers’ passage through the Strait of Hormuz, as it had earlier when the Houthis in Yemen were attacking shipping — but the fact these exports generate revenue for Iran was as important to the outcome as any Chinese diplomatic prowess.
And in the case of the ceasefire agreement (such as it is) it was Pakistan that was in the driver’s seat, with Beijing along for the ride — a useful play for Islamabad as it seeks to appeal to Trump and confound India (Pakistan brokered US-China entente in 1971 with the same goals).
For his part, Trump was happy to flatter Xi about these diplomatic efforts in advance of their May summit in Beijing. Delhi, Tokyo and Taipei will be nervous about those signals but Beijing gets points for presentation and not substantive geopolitical realignment.
Beijing and Moscow may gain more benefit from Trump’s onside goals with treaty allies. These did not begin with the Iran war, of course. From tariffs to Greenland to the embrace of Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, Trump has created a list of harms to America’s NATO allies that alone would fill a column.
More worrisome is America’s ability to rally democratic allies in future crises when the moral credibility of the President has been so questioned. That tool in the post-war American toolkit is not gone but it is bent and battered
With his lack of interest in prior consultation, outrageous social media posts and threats to punish NATO members for non-support, Trump has added more salt to the wound with the war in Iran.
The soft-power hit to the United States in Europe is palpable: European student enrolments in US universities are down by a fifth and European capitals are pursuing national champions for defence equipment over the American alternative. More worrisome is America’s ability to rally democratic allies in future crises when the moral credibility of the President has been so questioned. That tool in the post-war American toolkit is not gone but it is bent and battered in ways that could accrue to adversaries’ advantage.
That said, rumours of NATO’s demise are premature. The loudest attacks on Trump’s war have come from leaders farthest from the sound of the guns. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has made several trips to China and been the loudest critic of Trump in Europe, but his country ranks last for defence spending as a percentage of GDP of the 32 members of NATO.
And while French President Emmanuel Macron was right to warn that Trump risks losing moral credibility with his extreme social media posts, when was the last time a French leader advocated for a stronger NATO or trans-Atlantic security ties?
On the ground, NATO countries are providing critical if not always lethal support for Operation Epic Fury. Spain has loudly refused, but Britain, Italy, Germany, Portugal and even France are allowing US forces to use their bases for logistic and intelligence missions and overall power projection. The US military knows it could not have conducted the operation without those NATO bases — and most NATO leaders know they could not defend Europe without the role played by the US military in strategic lift, space and overall firepower.
When Trump ranted about NATO allies’ fecklessness this month, many expected that he would use his national television address on the war to announce a withdrawal from the treaty. He did not.
He later claimed the United States would punish outspoken countries such as Spain by moving US bases to countries that were more supportive of the US. Those countries in the Baltic states and eastern Europe are closer to the sound of the guns and would welcome increased US military presence just as much as Vladimir Putin would see those forward deployments of US troops as a setback. That said, moving bases is no small task and the changes may not be so consequential in the end.
Even if the death watch for NATO is so much hyperventilating, the deepening trans-Atlantic friction is still helpful to Beijing in the Indo-Pacific.
Two decades ago, Chinese diplomats were advancing the notion that the world was becoming multipolar with China, Russia, the United States and Europe as the major poles. While this formula dismissed the agency of Japan, India or Australia, it resonated in Germany and France where American unipolarity and then the Iraq war inspired the French foreign minister to complain of American “hyperpuissance” and light the Eiffel Tower in the colours of the PRC flag. Even Britain was tempted, the chancellor of the Exchequer stating in 2012 that London wanted to become the renminbi capital of Europe.
These trends were reversed thanks to Xi’s heavy-handed wolf warrior diplomacy and some deft diplomacy by the Biden administration to link the European and Indo-Pacific alliances through the NATO-IP4 (Australia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand). That effort has now been set back in ways that will comfort Beijing and should be of concern to Australia.
US alliances in Asia are not suffering the same damage as NATO but still will experience an impact from the Iran war. Higher energy prices will last for the rest of the year and will be attributed to Trump, which will put more downward pressure on views of the US, though support for alliance with America has been steady in Australia at 80% in Lowy’s annual poll and actually increased in Japan to 94% and in South Korea to 96% just before the war.
The uncertainty in the Gulf will likely put more demands on US forces based in Japan for deterrence against Iran and pull away more strategic assets in space needed to keep track of Iran’s likely replenishment of missile and nuclear production (particularly if Tehran can keep charging ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz). These new military requirements on the United States could revive pressure on Australia to increase its own defence spending, not necessarily to send forces to the Gulf but to ensure adequate munitions and operational readiness in this region as US forces find themselves taking on extra work in the Middle East for a time.
More attention also will be needed for Southeast Asia, where the war will likely exacerbate suspicion of the United States in Indonesia and Malaysia that had started with the Gaza conflict. On the other hand, those closest to the sound of the guns, particularly the Philippines, will again see no alternative to closer defence co-operation with the US.
Perhaps the most discernible long-term trend from the war will be the damage to Trump’s political brand back in the US. Only 40% of Americans supported the war at the outset — the lowest in history at the start of any conflict — and more than 70% blame Trump’s actions for higher prices, the most salient issue for most voters going into the midterms in November.
Trump was elected to fix illegal immigration and lower prices. His disruptive world view was never based on a popular mandate. The consequences of his approach to the world are sinking into the national consciousness in ways that will shape the midterm and presidential elections to come.
In sum, the Iran war has neither created a clean victory nor heralded a post-American world. However, the war has sent a compression wave through geopolitics that will be felt in Australia.
This is not a future that has to be defined by Thucydides’ observation that the strong will do what they will and the weak will endure what they must. In every crisis there is opportunity.
Fortunately, Australia has the economic and diplomatic tools to address those changes without needing to debate a plan B. The energy crisis is an opportunity to lead a new regional energy coalition if Canberra can get its energy policy settings right at home.
The Australian Defence Forces can lead on adopting the military lessons from the conflict and stepping up munitions production if budgets and procurement processes can become more agile.
The trans-Atlantic rift creates an opportunity for the IP-4 to help bridge the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific alliances if Australia works with Japan to occasionally look beyond Southeast Asia and the Pacific. In Southeast Asia Australia can help plug gaps and pull the US attention back to the region if it is recognised that Australian strategic influence depends as much on an ability to shape other powers’ approaches as it does the ability to conduct listening tours through ASEAN.
This is not a future that has to be defined by Thucydides’ observation that the strong will do what they will and the weak will endure what they must. In every crisis there is opportunity.
This is not a future that has to be defined by Thucydides’ observation that the strong will do what they will and the weak will endure what they must. In every crisis there is opportunity.