The United States, following the lead of Israel, has gone to war against Iran. The reasons for Israel’s attack are many and includes an embattled Prime Minister that sees an opportunity to prolong his stay in power by taking on Iran, the country’s principal enemy and its proxies and achieve a decisive victory with the help of America.
For President Trump, there are also personal and family reasons (remember Gaza beach resort?) along with a few canisters of enriched uranium that were supposed to have been destroyed some weeks ago by our sophisticated B-2 stealth bombers that dropped 30,000 pound GBU-57 Massive Ordinance Penetrators (MOP) also known as bunker buster bombs.
In the end, the coordinated air attacks on Iran seem like the thing to do for a President that has attacked several countries in his first year in power. Getting into war with Iran seems rather easy. Getting out is another thing altogether.
Iran is no Venezuela where the President has gotten in and out of its affairs at his leisure. Iran may very well decide to hold on to the confrontation and force the United States to pour more resources into the fight as well as make the economic life of the world much more expensive and difficult.
As serious as this matter is, we have in the offing a more difficult issue with regard to China. China is mostly sitting on the sidelines analyzing the moment and the window of opportunity offered by America to invade Taiwan and take control of it.
Some years ago, while attending a change in command of the 33rd Combat Air Rescue Squadron in Okinawa, Japan, I had several conversations with my son about world events and challenges to American military power, that at the time, still required significant deployments to the Middle East.
The consensus expressed in our conversations centered around the notion that it was China’s growing economic and military power that required immediate as well as long-term attention. The thought was that China be the priority because it was in fact the emerging economic and military leader in the world and the United States should be deeply engaged with the Chinese in order to make sure that their future competition be primarily economic and not military as it was with the Soviet Union.
The current situation in the Western Pacific and Asia is one of imperative and priority. Yet, despite his expressed intention to deploy America’s major economic and military resources in the Far East and keep China in check, President Trump has chosen to “take the eye off the ball” and use our armed forces to attack 7 countries in 3 continents. One of those countries is Iran. Attacking Iran is costing us dearly economically, militarily and in the effectiveness of our posture toward China. The posture includes our moral authority that now appears in shambles.
Under normal circumstances, China’s view of Taiwan as a runaway province appears logical except for the fact that, in contrast to their attachments, both South Korea and Taiwan are free and democratic states facing dictatorial regimes.
China sees itself as having the ability and the authority to take Taiwan back and that is dangerous because, although President Trump appears to like making wars on other countries, I do not believe that this extends to taking on a powerful nation like China. So, given the fact that our leadership is playing politics in a different place, the window of opportunity for China to take Taiwan is there.
The views expressed by David Conde are not necessarily the views of LaVozColorado. Comments and responses may be directed to News@lavozcolorado.com.
