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Is Iran a Turning Point?
The Iran War may prove to be little more than a blip on the world’s radar. Or its real significance may lie less in who wins militarily than in whether it accelerates global recognition that the United States is no longer willing or able to enforce the international order it created after 1945.
There is a strong argument that even as the missiles continue to fly the war is not that significant. It appears today the most likely outcome will be a return to something of a status quo in the Middle East. Everyone wants the oil to start flowing again, albeit for different reasons, and this is a powerful pull toward compromise. Iran will play its strongest card, opening the Strait of Hormuz to the best deal, while the U.S. will push its military advantage further forward to pressure Tehran to some kind of a better deal. If Iran signals it is willing to remain just a threshold nuclear state, this can be made to look good enough for both parties. But the paradigm shifts once hoped for will not happen. The current administration has limited political time, and shrinking leverage if the Democrats do well in the midterms. America’s allies in Europe and elsewhere have a long history of waiting out American adventures hoping the next president will play more nicely. Like so many other conflicts that changed little, history may more or less ignore this war.
The opposite argument requires focus on a longer sweep of history, which may come to see the Iran War as a significant marker in the slow-motion end of the global system set in place by the United States after WWII.
Some perspective is required to see just how dramatic those post-war events were in reshaping the planet and what might happen if they are gone. From WWII the United States emerged as the only major industrial power whose economy and infrastructure were intact, and it used that position to build a global economic system designed to avoid the instability that had helped produce depression and fascism. The two world wars shattered the old imperial order. World War I destroyed the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, while World War II fatally weakened Britain, France, and Japan, and accelerated decolonization. The U.S., alone with its nuclear weapons, was left the most powerful nation on earth.
America’s leaders rushed into the gap. Brilliantly, they did not seek the immediate gains of colonies of their own or brutal war reparations. They wanted a sustainable system, not a fragile empire, to replace the old way. At the Bretton Woods Conference, Washington created a new global economic system. It devised the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to stabilize currencies, provide reconstruction loans, and encourage development. The Federal Reserve Bank in New York became the world’s gold repository. The U.S. dollar became the world’s reserve currency, with other major currencies pegged to the dollar, giving the United States enormous financial influence. Through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947 and later the World Trade Organization the U.S. pushed against the tariffs which had previously encouraged world war to expand global commerce. The Marshall Plan poured billions into rebuilding Western Europe, alongside similar efforts in Japan. This not only created vast markets for American goods but also helped prevent another democracy-gutting economic collapse that might have fueled post-war communist movements as it had the fascists before it. The U.S. made it known it would function as the world’s policeman, unilaterally as necessary.
Despite a massive dose of propaganda to the contrary, this system was never altruistic. It was built from the ground up to serve American strategic interests and keep America the world’s most powerful nation. By guaranteeing access to trade routes through the U.S. Navy, maintaining open sea lanes, and underwriting security, Washington created the environment necessary for international trade to flourish. The United States stood alone at its center as both creator and chief beneficiary.
Time and again, despite horrendous blunders like the soul-crushing Vietnam War and failure to bring the collapsed Soviet Union into the world economy, the system favored the U.S.; it should have, having been designed that way. Through some forward-thinking diplomacy, Eastern Europe became capitalist and denuclearized without shots fired. China, with the exception of an expedition into Vietnam, stayed within its borders and evolved into one of the world’s most powerful capitalist economies. The robust South Korean economy, and that of Taiwan, was created by U.S. investment and sustained by the U.S. military to further American reach into Asia. OPEC rose to threaten the world economy and then was tamed. After Desert Storm, the United States emerged as the dominant military power in the Gulf and could have converted that position into control over regional energy flows. It chose instead to preserve the broader international system that benefited it more in the long run. Dictators were supported or selected by Washington all around the world to favor American economics, and discarded in CIA-led overthrows when no longer needed. Pundits with more imagination than knowledge once proclaimed “Japan as Number One” for a few years at some point. But despite ups and downs, the U.S.-led system prevailed.
Fast-forward to May 2026 and the real question is whether America still possesses the political patience and strategic discipline required to sustain the global order built after 1945. Questions are arising about America’s political willingness to fight for open sea lanes. With a few notable exceptions, America with Israel as its Rottweiler has for six decades acted as the principal enforcer of global nuclear nonproliferation. Will she abandon this role this time in return for Iranian promises? Ukraine has become an example of festering strategic drift, with Washington oscillating between commitments that are costly enough to prolong the war but insufficient to shape its outcome. Iraq, Afghanistan, and now perhaps Iran have ended the likely future use of the big blunt stick of coercive diplomacy the U.S. could hold over the world’s rogues. This is not geopolitical strategy anymore. It’s improvisation. America can still lash out (Libya, or Venezuela, for example) with limited consequences but the post-9/11 quasi-religious belief that American military superiority could quickly eliminate threats before they fully materialized is gone. In Iran, Washington once again demonstrates overwhelming firepower but struggles to produce a political settlement in line with U.S. goals.
If the conclusion of the Iran War is a return to the status quo, it will further expose the limits of American power brewing for several decades. More importantly, with the questions above being asked in capitals around the world, we are left with the fear that we are living through the ragged end of the post-WWII system. It is a subtle and potentially dangerous situation, the quiet retraction of an American-led world order without the safety of a replacement. We call that chaos, and chaos is when states make their most dangerous calculations.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
The One Absolute Non-Negotiable Item with Iran
Why is it so important for the U.S. to take and retain control of the Strait of Hormuz? No matter what else, why is this the only real non-negotiable with Iran?
At first glance the non-negotiable seems to be Iran’s nuclear program. This leaves open the question of what might be left of the program at all after massive bombing by the U.S. and Israel. The media makes much of some enriched uranium supposed still buried under one of the ruined sites, and of course no one should simply write off radioactive material in the hands of an adversary. But the more immediate concern is not what remnants of Iran’s nuclear program survived bombing, but how easily any reconstruction effort could be detected from space and struck from a distance. That reality makes the nuclear issue containable. The genie is out of the bottle on bombing inside Iran, so any nascent efforts to reconstruct a nuclear program can be destroyed by the U.S. and Israel with little political fallout. It would be better if none of that had to happen, but it easily could, because agreement or no agreement, Iran does not have to play fair.
Understanding what the U.S. is really negotiating with Iran — the shifting of the balance of power in the Middle East — points to the one truly non-negotiable term. That means the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway that must be open to shipping, free of violence, and free of tolls.
Granting control of the strait to Iran would set a catastrophic precedent. Would Houthi militants then try for control at the mouth of the Red Sea? What if Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, China or any of the other nation-states in the region lay claim to the Strait of Malacca? Never mind the Persian Gulf; over 94,000 vessels a year pass through Malacca, making it the busiest strait in the world. It carries about 25 percent of the world’s traded goods, including oil, and Chinese manufactured products. For decades China referred to the “Malacca Dilemma,” the fear that rivals could blockade this narrow, vital energy route, so it could be time to act. Just this week (coincidence?) China deployed ships to tighten control of the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, roiling tension with the Philippines. And what about the Taiwan Strait, or any other of the world’s commercial chokepoints?
Since the days of the Barbary pirates one of the core jobs of the United States Navy has been safeguarding global freedom of navigation, a principle that underpins international trade and economic stability. By maintaining a forward-deployed presence in key maritime chokepoints and with carrier groups in all oceans, the Navy ensures sea lanes remain open in accordance with international law. No one nation comes close to being able to play such a role. Europe’s sea power has not been able to do so since the collapse of the British Empire, and China still lacks the global blue water navy and extensive world-wide base network to try.
At present China is willing to benefit from this stable maritime order without contributing much to it. Yet a world where it appears the order is breaking down, such as if Iran remains in control of Hormuz, could press China to act. While China still lacks naval reach, it may already be capable of asserting control over regional chokepoints like the Strait of Malacca, especially if it concludes the existing maritime order is eroding. For its own self-interest (oil) China also could expand diplomacy and arms sales to the new toughest kid on the Gulf block, Tehran. Elsewhere, the Gulf states and maybe even allied countries in East Asia will have to soften ties with the U.S. in recognition of the new regional power of Iran.
But we don’t need to cede control of the Strait of Hormuz. Forcing it open is a military objective for which the Pentagon has planned for decades, and has in some form already been done twice. The Trump White House will remember in 2019 the Islamic Revolutionary Guard threatened to close the Strait. It sabotaged four oil tankers in the United Arab Emirates and damaged two others with mines. But in the end Iran backed away from the fight. It could not afford a potential blockade of its oil exports along the lines of Venezuela. The U.S. could blockade the Strait at low cost in the Arabian Sea, away from Iranian interference. Iran also knows while it could harass and frighten, it can not seal the Strait to all traffic in the face of a massive U.S. Navy deployment. This would morph from asymmetrical warfare Iran could execute, to peer-to-peer fighting, which if the U.S. was willing to escalate to, Iran could not survive.
Even more instructive is the Iran–Iraq “Tanker War.” Between 1984 and 1988, oil tankers and merchant vessels became targets for Iran in a campaign designed not to defeat an enemy navy but to strangle the Iraqi economy. After an unsuccessful gambit to reflag Kuwaiti tankers as American to warn off the Iranians, a change in American tactics neutralized the Iranian threat. The United States shifted from escorting tankers to directly confronting Iranian forces. The turning point came in April 1988, after a U.S. frigate struck a mine in the Gulf. Although the ship survived, the incident triggered a massive American retaliation. In Operation Praying Mantis, U.S. helicopters disabled an Iranian ship laying mines, and sank three other Iranian boats. Navy warships shelled Revolutionary Guard bases and Iranian oil platforms. SEALs destroyed a platform as well. Navy and Marine elements would go on to selectively destroy multiple targets as well as numerous Iranian naval and aircraft. The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) now in the Gulf would be able to carry out a similar strategy.
Having gone this far, the U.S. may need to go further. This power struggle between Washington and Tehran has been going on for a long time. This most recent round follows an emboldened Iran who watched the United States destroy or greatly weaken its two major enemies, Iraq and the Taliban, clearing both Iran’s east and west borders at no cost to Tehran. The American public went on to lose its taste for war and Iran’s nukes fell off Washington’s once sweeping martial agenda in the Middle East. Iraq became an Iranian subjugate even as Iran expanded its proxy fighting in Lebanon knowing the U.S. had had enough.
It would be strategically devastating at this point for America to follow the regional empowerment of Iran through its failures in Iraq and Afghanistan by handing over a global lever of control. This regional, multigenerational, power struggle is not a problem that will be solved in a single negotiation or a single conflict. But one principle must remain constant: the Strait of Hormuz cannot become a bargaining chip. If it does, the consequences will extend far beyond the Middle East, reshaping the global order in ways the United States may not be able to reverse.
Old sayings resonate in the Middle East. “The rug is never sold” reminds marketplace negotiators that no deal is ever final; there is always more to extract. That is useful context if U.S. officials sit down again with the Iranians for another bite at the apple. But amid the expected give-and-take, one issue must remain non-negotiable: keep the Strait of Hormuz open.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
America Won’t Be Fighting a War with China over Taiwan (So Why the Fuss?)
The United States and China will not go to war in our time over Taiwan. China is not engaging in provocative actions leading toward an invasion. So why the fuss?I’d prefer to let the argument speak for itself, but my background is relevant. I threw away my Mao (and Che) T-shirt sophomore year. I don’t have a grey pony tail. I know Beijing is not a democratic regime, much like America’s allies across the Middle East and Africa are not. I’ve been in Taiwan when it was under military rule, and China under autocratic rule. The food was great, but I do not want to live that way. So none of this is about defending that. As a U.S. diplomat, I served in Taiwan, Beijing, and Hong Kong, as well as Korea and Japan, and speak a bit of all their languages. Many of my former colleagues, who managed their careers better, now hold senior positions in State’s China and East Asian bureaucracies. I certainly don’t speak for them, but I speak to them.
Focus is also important; this is about war. It is not about China being unfriendly to democracy in Hong Kong; why act surprised, the government does not like democracy in Shanghai or Guangzhou either. But when we talk about democracy in the area, let’s not forget Hong Kong was taken from Imperial China by force by the British, who exploited it as a colony for most of its history. It was peacefully returned to China in 1997, not taken by China militarily any time along the way. Taiwan was an unimportant and undemocratic place inhabited mostly by indigenous people until 1949, when the Nationalists displaced the locals to create the enclave of the Republic of China. It existed under strict military rule, with U.S. support for the thugs in power, until around 1988. So democracy in China writ large is a fairly new thing. Many might wish to see America as concerned about democracy in Saudi Arabia as it is in Hong Kong.
China has always been America’s as-needed partner, friend today, adversary tomorrow. An ally during WWII, the U.S. backed away in 1949 after Mao took power, considering China one more link in world Communism’s march to global supremacy. Then in the midst of the Cold War Nixon “opened” China and the place was remade into a friendly bulwark against the Soviets. In 1979 the U.S. diplomatically recognized Beijing and unrecognized Taipei. The U.S. and China then grew into significant trading partners until sometime during the Obama years when China, without a clear precipitating event, morphed again into an adversary (the U.S. called it a pivot toward Asia.) Trump, and now Biden, have since upgraded China into a direct threat. In one of his few unambiguous foreign policy speeches, Biden said “On my watch China will not achieve its goal to become the leading country in the world, the wealthiest country in the world, and the most powerful country in the world.” Biden went on to claim we were at an inflection point to determine “whether or not democracy can function in the 21st century.” Along the way China has always stayed pretty much the same. It’s our fear of the same China which changes.
Those U.S. fears are mostly bunk. Take for example the boilerplate articles about Chinese “incursions” into Taiwan’s air space. Chinese aircraft are not overflying Taiwan. They are flying within Taiwan’s self-declared Air Defense Identification Zone. Look at a map of that zone, and other zones declared by Japan and China. Taiwan’s zone, the one Beijing is flying in, actually is large enough to cover thousands of miles of the Chinese mainland itself; PLA planes are in violation when sitting on their own runways. Taiwan’s zone also overlaps Beijing’s Air Defense Zone which overlaps Japan’s and Korea’s. Japan’s Air Defense zone also overlap’s Taiwan’s to take in a small island which is disputed between Tokyo and Taipei, a diplomatic fist fight the U.S. ignores. Criss-crossing everyone’s zones are American aircraft conducting “freedom of navigation” exercises (known in Beijing as “incursions.”) Chinese air flights are provocative only to the uninformed, or those who want them to be seen as provocative. Left unsaid: as China was supposedly provoking a fight in the air this October, the U.S. was simultaneously conducting some of the largest multi-national naval exercises in the Pacific since WWII.
As for that invasion of Taiwan Beijing is accused of planning, no one has ever explained why they would undertake such a enormous risk in the face of little gain. Instead, the articles claiming Beijing is readying for war are like those science fiction movies which begin with the premise most people have disappeared from earth, or some apocalyptical event took place, and then the story of the survivors begins. All the complicated stuff is left unexplained.
No one seems to examine the reasons China has no reason to invade Taiwan. China and Taiwan do loft rhetorical bombs at each other, particularly around CCP events and political holidays, while maintaining a robust economic relationship. Between 1991 and March 2020 Taiwan’s investment in China totaled $188.5 billion, more than China’s investment in the United States. In 2019, the value of cross-strait trade was $149.2 billion. Pre-Covid, travelers from China made 2.68 million visits to Taiwan. China applied in September to join the new Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. A week later, with no opposition voiced by Beijing, Taiwan applied to join as well. China is Taiwan’s largest trading partner. “One country, two systems” has not only kept the peace for decades, it has proven darn profitable for both sides. As Deng Xiao Ping said of this type of modus vivendi, “who cares what color a cat is as long as it catches mice.” China might one day seek to buy Taiwan, but until then what incentive would it have to drop bombs on one of its best customers?
A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would also require China to fight the United States. The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which established the framework behind the U.S. relationships with Beijing and Taipei makes clear Washington will “consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States” and that the U.S. will “maintain the capacity to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.” The language, unchanged since the roller disco era, is purposefully one of strategic ambiguity. It was crafted by the parties concerned specifically to incorporate flexibility, not signal weakness. Diplomats on all three sides understand this. Anyone saying the U.S. needs to rattle sabers at China to demonstrate commitment to Taiwan would better spend his time trying to explain away our abandoning Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Arab Spring.
Apart from the potential the nuclear destruction of the Chinese state (the U.S. has 10 nukes for every one China does) why would China even considering risking war with the U.S.? Total Chinese investment in the U.S. economy is over $145 billion. U.S. investment in China passed $1 trillion. When Covid shut down world logistics, everyone learned the American economy is voluntarily dependent on Chinese manufacturing and vice-versa. The Chinese are literally betting the house on America’s success.
Because there is no plausible scenario in which China would want to invade Taiwan, we need not dwell on the military impracticality of the thing. A failed invasion of Taiwan would topple Xi. Chinese amphibious forces would be under fire from Taiwan’s F-16s armed with Harpoon anti-ship missiles practically as they left harbor and tried to cross the Taiwan Strait (Harpoons have a range of 67 miles; at its narrowest the Strait is only 80 miles wide. Taiwan will soon field a land-based anti-ship missile with a range of over 200 miles.) How many could even reach the beaches? Estimates are China would need to land one to two million soldiers on day one (on D-Day the Allies put ashore 156,000) against Taiwan’s fortified rocky west coast, navigating among tiny islets themselves laden with anti-ship weapons. China’s primary amphibious assault ship, the Type 075, carries about 1,000 men, meaning something like a 1000-2000 sorties. China currently has only three such ships. Its troops are unblooded in combat. Meanwhile American and British carriers and submarines patrol the waters. American aircraft from Guam, Okinawa, and Korea would shut down the skies, and decimate Chinese aircraft on the ground via stealth, drones, and stand-off missiles. This is not Normandy. It is also not the counterinsurgency struggles which defeated America. It is the Big Power conflict played out in the Strait instead of the Fulda Gap, the war U.S. has been preparing to fight against someone since the 1960s.
But one of the most compelling arguments China plans no war is they haven’t yet fought any wars. No shots have been fired over the disputed islands, which have rabidly disputed for decades. Taiwan broke away in 1949 and after a handful of artillery exchanges in the 1950s, no shots have been fired. China never moved militarily against British Hong Kong from 1841 forward, or Portuguese Macau from 1557. Chinese President Xi’s rhetoric about reunification is essentially the same as Mao’s. Nothing really seems to have changed to the point where a stable situation has suddenly become unstable enough to lead to war, yet the Financial Times warns “The moment of truth over Taiwan is getting closer” and the NYT headlines “U.S. and China Enter Dangerous Territory Over Taiwan.” The WSJ decided on its own China is ready to “reunify their country through any means necessary.”
The war fever splash in U.S. media comes with curious timing. The U.S. is provoking a new Cold War to ensure an enemy to struggle against, guarantee robust defense spending for decades, and to make sure there is no repeat of the “peace dividend” that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. It’s the same playbook run from 1945 to 1989 against the USSR. Expensive arms development needs a target: the Soviet Union served well in that role until around 1989, when in the midst of declaring themselves the world’s last superpower, Americans also demanded less spending on the military. A new enemy was quickly found in various flavors in the Middle East, first in Saddam Hussein and then, after 9/11, in basically most Arabs. The terrorist boogeyman was shushed off stage this summer as America retreated from Afghanistan. We’re unlikely to return to the Middle East in force, especially with oil no longer the principle driver of American foreign policy.
And so to China. Chinese plans to invade Taiwan may be the new WMDs, a justification much talked about but never to materialize. Chinese weapons advances are the new missile gap, and Asia the new frontier in the faux struggle between the forces of good and another damn group of foreigners bent on world domination. Indeed, if anyone seriously believed war was likely, even imminent, where are the calls for diplomacy, a regional summit, some kind of UN help, to resolve tensions? The U.S. doesn’t even have an ambassador in Beijing nine months into the Biden administration.
However impractical an invasion might be, how unnecessary, or how risky, hasn’t China declared repeatedly it will reunite with Taiwan? Yes. But if you want to cite Chinese propaganda as evidence of actual intent, it is best to pay attention to the details.
It was the United States itself that most clearly asserted the shared tripartite goal was reunification, declaring as part of the diplomatic break with Taiwan “there is only one China and Taiwan is a part of it.” Chinese President Xi regularly reiterates reunification as a goal, but always stresses the process is historical (as in, it is inevitable and we just need to be patient, don’t wait up for it to happen) and must be peaceful. Sorry, if you’re going to quote Chinese propaganda statements as proof of intent, you can’t cherry pick out only the scary parts. It makes no sense to trust Xi on the plan but claim he’s lying about the (peaceful) execution in the same breath.
Not by coincidence most of these reunification proclamations occur around important political holidays. One of Xi’s most recent invocations was in a speech marking the 110th anniversary of the Xinhai 1911 Revolution, aimed at the foreign Manchu Qing dynasty. The chosen occasion is important, because Xinhai, ideologically midwifed by Dr. Sun Yat Sen, is acknowledged by both the most hardcore Communists and the most fervent Nationalists as the common origin point for modern China. This is drilled into every schoolkid on both sides of the Strait and forms a common vocabulary among their diplomats. The point is to understand Xi’s remarks in the same context as the Chinese, not John Wayne, likely do.
In Sun’s spirit Xi reiterated a vow to peaceful reunification with Taiwan. He urged the Chinese people “stand on the right side of history and join hands to achieve China’s complete reunification,” invoking the way the people who would form the Communist and Nationalist parties worked together against a common enemies — the Manchus, then warlordism and feudalism, then the Japanese, and perhaps someday the Americans. Xi, talking to his own people and those on Taiwan, sketched a shared vision a long way from the PLA amphibious assault the West fears. Xi was also aware that the day before his speech HMS Queen Elizabeth, USS Carl Vinson, USS Ronald Reagan, and Japan’s Ise conducted joint carrier operations in the China Sea featuring the soon-to-be-nuclear-capable F-35 aircraft.
Far from anything new or provocative, Xi’s rhetoric was consistent with 70 some years of speeches maintaining Beijing has no quarrel with the people on Taiwan, who are today mostly Mandarin-speaking ethnically Han Chinese same as in Beijing. Instead, the theme has always been a few bad apples in Taiwan’s government are preventing all Chinese from seeing they need to work together. To invade Taiwan, China would commit itself to killing Chinese, something that would cause Xi to lose legitimacy in the eyes of his own people; the Mandate of Heaven still applies. Meanwhile, on Taiwan, the current president more or less acknowledges the official line of a reunited China someday but quickly says there are more important things on her mind, like making money. Many in the West failed to notice it was Dr. Sun’s portrait which hung behind both leaders as they spoke. The idea that all these factors boil down to “China is gonna invade Taiwan” is beyond silly. America’s obsession with Taiwan independence is more Washington’s problem than Taipei’s.
Philosophically Chinese leaders have for thousands of years believed in historical cycles. They waited close to 300 years to end the foreign Qing dynasty. They waited out Britain for hundreds of years for the peaceful return of Hong Kong. Such things come up in conversation with Chinese diplomats as casually as talk about the weather. Chinese diplomacy is patient, not short-term optimistic or spasmatically reactive. There is no fierce urgency to reunification. Sun Tzu: One waits to win.
In contrast stands America’s foreign policy. A comparison of countries where the U.S., and China have military intervened post-WWII is telling. Chinese troops entered Vietnam only after the U.S. began its own campaign of regime change there. China entered the Korean War only after the U.S. Army threatened to cross into Chinese territory. Both of these events are celebrated in the People’s Army Museum in Beijing as examples of defending the homeland’s borders. The Museum, in addition, features an American U-2 spyplane shot down over the mainland. The Museum also has exhibits showing the U.S. purposely bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, killing three and destroying the diplomatic sanctuary. The U.S. claimed it was an accident, but history makes clear it was retaliation against an undefended target accused of spying in former Yugoslavia. How many American embassies has China bombed?
China got its first blue water aircraft carrier last year; the U.S. has maintained multiple carrier groups in the Pacific since WWII, recently facilitated the permanent deployment of two British carrier groups in the area (their first big show of naval force in the area since losing Singapore to the Japanese) and will sell nuclear submarines to Australia with the understanding they will patrol the South China Sea. The U.S. recently brought India into the Quad Pact agreement against China, and convinced Japan to abandon its official neutral stance on Taiwan to support the U.S. Japan has quickly grown into a multiple carrier blue water naval force under American encouragement and with American technology; an unprecedented pledge by Japan’s ruling party seeks to double defense spending and underscores the nation’s haste to acquire missiles, stealth fighters, drones and other weapons that can target China.
For the first time in decades U.S. forces are officially stationed on Taiwan. The White House recently announced the existing U.S.-Japan security treaty now extends to some additional disputed islands, and the Philippine security treaty covers Manila’s claims to Chinese-occupied islets. The U.S. maintains military bases in a ring around China’s eastern coast. Economically, Barack Obama via the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) tried to isolate China from the Asian trade sphere. Trump imposed and Biden maintains punitive tariffs on goods out of China. This autumn Congress will take up the Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act, which would authorize Biden to initiate (nuclear) war on China without any input from America’s elected representatives.
So who in fact is acting provocatively in the Pacific? Which side is saber rattling, and which simply responding the way a dog barks to warn off an aggressor?
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
Can Iran Disrupt American Encrypted GPS Systems?
Iranians may have learned how to disrupt and spoof American encrypted GPS systems, and that new ability is connected to the downing of an American drone a few years ago, and also to the capture of two American Navy craft earlier this month.If true, this new tech is a potential global game changer. Here’s some additional information on what might have happened recently in the Persian Gulf.
MisnavigationTo recap, after some bumbling false explanation about engine failure, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter explained that the captured American sailors “made a navigational error that mistakenly took them into Iranian territorial waters.” He added that they “obviously had misnavigated” as they came within a few miles of Farsi Island, where Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps has a naval base. The LA Times added “a sailor may have punched the wrong coordinates into the GPS and they wound up off course.”
All that “misnavigation” would have meant two boats making the identical error in some of the world’s most volatile waters, and that no backup systems as simple as those in your cell phone were available. Armed boats inside the Persian Gulf nosing around a foreign military base usually drive very, very carefully. Measure twice, cut once.
In 2011, when Iran downed an American drone that had “drifted” more than 100 miles into that nation from its flight path in Afghanistan, Iranian General Moharam Gholizadeh, the deputy for electronic warfare at the air defense headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, stated publicaly “We have a project on hand that is one step ahead of jamming, meaning ‘deception’ of the aggressive systems… we can define our own desired information for it so the path of the missile would change to our desired destination… all the movements of these [enemy drones are being watched]” and “obstructing” their work was “always on our agenda.”
Technology site Daily Tech explains how this might work:
A team uses a technique known as “spoofing” — sending a false signal for the purposes of obfuscation or other gain. In this case the signal in questions was the GPS feed, commonly acquired from several satellites [pictured above]. By spoofing the GPS feed, Iranian officials were able to convince the drone that it was in Afghanistan, close to its home base. At that point the drone’s autopilot functionality kicked in and triggered the landing. But rather than landing at a U.S. military base, the drone victim instead found itself captured at an Iranian military landing zone. Spoofing the GPS is a clever method, as it allows hackers to land on its own where they wanted it to, without having to crack the [encrypted] remote-control signals and communications.
What May Have Happened
If the Iranians have such technology, what happened in the Gulf with those two U.S. Navy boats is easy to explain. As they came close to Iranian territorial waters, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRG) spoofed both crafts’ GPS system simultaneously. The navigation systems were told the boats were outside of the line, when in fact they were inside the line by about a mile. Two systems with the same information displayed at the same time are unlikely to be questioned.
Why Now?
If the Iranians had such technology since 2011, and assuming they have not used it before against the U.S. in any undisclosed incidents, why did they employ it now, and against such meaningless targets as two small patrol boats?
Timing is everything. The nuclear deal the U.S. made with Iran was not popular among its own conservatives. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard represents a conservative body of thought in general, and are specifically in charge of much of the weapons-side of the nuclear program. That opens the door to two potential “why now” answers.
The first may have been to try and postpone or trash the nuclear deal at the last minute by sparking an international incident. Imagine if the more liberal, secular elements of the Iranian government had failed to get the American sailors released so quickly, and the whole mess developed into a full-blown hostage “crisis.” American war drums would have beat hard.
The second may be more subtle. The United States uses GPS technology to guide most of its long range weapons, the weapons that would play a significant role in any U.S. attacks on Iran. The Guards’ overt use of the spoofing tech may have been a warning shot to the U.S., a signal that any American aggression towards a non-nuclear Iran (as happened to non-nuclear Saddam, or in Libya soon after that nation abandoned its nuclear ambitions under U.S. pressure) would be complex, and possibly a failure. And if that wasn’t enough, the IRG may have sent a note via its actions that such tech could easily find its way into other unfriendly hands.
Speculation, of course. There may be an explanation for the boats’ misnavigation as simple as a young sailor’s human error. But the science suggests at least one other reason, with significant repercussions for years to come.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
So What Really Happened With Those U.S. Boats Captured by Iran?
Whatever happened, it does not seem to be anywhere close to what we are being told.As with the killing of Osama bin Laden, Benghazi, and the bombing of that Afghan hospital, the U.S. government seems to be spitting out explanations and seeing which one the media will swallow.
But there may be an explanation that might answer some questions. But first a review of what’s already been said, and then discarded.
When news first broke of the detention of two U.S. ships in Iranian territorial waters, the U.S. media uncritically repeated the U.S. government’s explanation for what happened — one boat experienced “mechanical failure” and “inadvertently drifted” into Iranian waters. On CBS News, Joe Biden said, “One of the boats had engine failure, drifted into Iranian waters.”
But then a few people began to ask how two boats had mechanical failures simultaneously, or why one didn’t tow the other, or evacuate the crew and sink the broken boat or call for help or anything else that made sense. And the idea that somehow the U.S. government was simply misinformed about what really happened to the degree that the vice president made a fool of himself on national TV is a bit hard to process.
And, according to The Intercept, the U.S. government itself now says this story was false. There was no engine failure, and the boats were never “in distress.” Once the sailors were released, the AP reported, “In Washington, a defense official said the Navy has ruled out engine or propulsion failure as the reason the boats entered Iranian waters.”
Instead, said Defense Secretary Ashton Carter at a press conference, the sailors “made a navigational error that mistakenly took them into Iranian territorial waters.” He added that they “obviously had misnavigated” when, in the words of the New York Times, “they came within a few miles of Farsi Island, where Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps has a naval base.”The LA Times conveyed this new official explanation: “A sailor may have punched the wrong coordinates into the GPS and they wound up off course. Or the crew members may have taken a shortcut into Iranian waters as they headed for the refueling ship, officials said.”
Well, it would have had to have been two boats making an error, and that in some of the world’s most tricky territory. Armed boats inside the Persian Gulf nosing around a foreign military base usually drive very, very carefully. Seems hard to just write this off blithely as “pilot error.” Among other questions: wasn’t the big Navy, with lots of ships and planes in the area, tracking these boats via radar? Seems the Iranians sure as hell were.
Don’t like those ideas? Oh wait, there are some more explanations.“U.S. defense officials were befuddled about how both vessels’ navigational systems failed to alert them that they were entering Iranian waters,” reported the Daily Beast’s Nancy Youseff. SecDef Carter sought to explain this away by saying, “It may have been they were trying to sort it out at the time when they encountered the Iranian boats.” The LA Times said boats were perhaps running out of gas, entered Iranian waters merely as a “shortcut,” experienced engine failure when they tried to escape, and then on top of all these misfortunes, experienced radio failure.
So, what did happen? We may never know, but here’s something to consider.In 2011 a drone (the U.S. never acknowledged it was American, but it very much appeared to be from the photos) was forced down in Iran. What if the Iranians have figured out how to jam the U.S. encrypted GPS systems and instead feed them false coordinates? The false GPS coordinates may have said the drone was at the airfield, so the thing went into a landing cycle and crashed in Iran. A lot of sensitive technology fell into Iran along with that drone.
So consider this. Let’s assume the U.S. boat crews did not intend to enter Iranian waters, technically an act of war. The U.S. itself has ruled out mechanical failure, and said the cause was navigational error — GPS-based technology. A dumb crew making mistakes is always a possibility, but two crews doing it simultaneously in such dangerous territory? Seems like a place where you measure twice and cut once. With backup.
What if their GPS was spoofed, telling the crews they were not in Iranian territorial waters, at least until the Iranian Revolutionary Guard showed up to inform them at gunpoint? The U.S. government, shocked, fumbles around for a day or two looking for an explanation people will accept. Iran accomplished its goal, tweaking the U.S., and telling the Americans not to mess around in their Gulf.
Anyway, if you have a better explanation, feel free to shout it out. That’s no different at this point than what the government is doing.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
U.S. Navy Pays $9 million a Year to Cling to Windows XP
Getting ready for that free update to Windows 10? Using the latest OS on your iPhone-Apple Watch-MacBook setup? Smart enough to have moved to a full-on Linux system?
If you answered YES to any of the questions above, you are not the U.S. Navy. The Navy is still running Windows XP, a decent enough system when it came out in 2001, fourteen years ago. Fourteen years in computer time is like twenty million people years, FYI. Dinosaurs still roamed the earth when Xp came out. You probably aren’t driving the same car you had in 2001, are you?The choice to use the obsolete operating system costs the Navy $9 million every year, as Microsoft stopped providing free technical support and security updates for Windows XP over a year ago. Never one to leave a buck on the table, especially when it is a taxpayer dollars, Microsoft provided the option of continued support for XP for a price. That’s what the Navy has to pay for.
For those keeping track, there are four versions of Windows that are newer than XP – Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and the soon-to-be released Windows 10. The Navy said it has plans to upgrade to one of those (oh sure, go for Vista!) by July 2016, but there’s a chance it will take even longer. Consequently, the Navy’s contract with Microsoft includes an option to extend the agreement until June 2017.
“The Navy relies on a number of applications and programs that are reliant on legacy Windows products,” a spokesman for Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command told CNN. “Until those applications and programs are modernized or phased out, this continuity of services is required to maintain operational effectiveness.”
ProTip: Never accept a piece of custom software that is reliant on features in a current operating system. That is not smart management. Failure to future-proof software (remember the Y2K thingie?) is great news for contractors and poor planning on the part of government and business.
And good news, while most of the Navy’s land-based computers have already been upgraded to newer versions of Windows, the 100,000 computers located on ships are the ones that still rely on XP. So sleep safe, America, your sons and daughters at sea are safe in the arms of the mighty XP.
“Ah, Alpha two niner, this is Nimitz control. Any chance you can ask the Chinese to hold off that missile attack on our fleet? We have to reboot the air defense system, and you know how damn long XP takes.”
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
Ask and Tell
Today marks the end of the military’s policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and the beginning of a new era when military members may serve without penalty simply because of their sexual preference. Gay people can now be gay people, in uniform.Of course gay men and women have served in the military forever. There is no doubt that some of the bravest soldiers, best Marines, dumbest grunts, most incompetent sailors and everyone else were gay; they just could not admit that without being thrown out of the military. That made no sense. Judge a person by his/her actions and how they do their job, not who they dream about at night.
As one Air Force enlisted man once famously said, “I got a medal for killing one man, and thrown out of the service for loving another.”
Serious about honoring our military, supporting our troops? Then stand with them as they transition to this new policy. Trust me, in combat, deployed to crappy places, in fear of their lives, they have enough on their minds and don’t spend a lot of time worrying about who is gay.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
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