All is proceeding according to plan.
Can Washington recognize a Sputnik moment when it sees one? The reconciliation that Chinese leader Xi Jinping brokered last week between Iran, America’s adversary, and Saudi Arabia, its most influential Arab ally, toppled the United States from its throne as the unrivalled strategic actor in the Middle East. This coup should banish, once and for all, any doubts that Xi aspires to pose a direct challenge to American military primacy in the Middle East.
For those who have been watching closely, Xi has been signaling this aspiration for years. In 2017, for example, he opened a naval base in Djibouti, which guards the gateway to the Suez Canal from the Indian Ocean. Four years later, he tried to build a military facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which guards the Strait of Hormuz. Xi’s effort to appoint the Chinese military as guardian over two chokepoints in the global energy trade should itself have already sparked a Sputnik moment.
Why didn’t it? The Biden administration, in keeping with many analysts on both the left and the right of the political spectrum, has consistently assumed that China and the United States, despite their rivalry, can stabilize the Middle East together. “This is not about China,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said last week about the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. “We welcome any efforts to help … de-escalate tensions in the Middle East.”
China, so the thinking goes, prioritizes its economic interests over any effort to supplant the United States in the Middle East. Today, the Chinese economy is experiencing a historic slump and its banks are overleveraged. If Xi’s imperative is economic revival, how could he possibly afford to engage in a contest for supremacy in the Middle East?
This reasoning misses two key points....
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