|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
by Meg Hansen
In geopolitics, I subscribe to the realist school – view the world as it is, not as one wishes it to be, and shape grand strategy accordingly.
A great power like the United States has two enduring imperatives:
• Maintain dominance in its own hemisphere (“Monroe Doctrine”).
• Prevent any peer competitor from achieving regional hegemony elsewhere.
Applying this framework, U.S. strategic priorities rank clearly:
1. Western Hemisphere — HIGHEST
2. Indo-Pacific — HIGH
China is actively expanding its sphere of influence using economic coercion, political influence, information warfare, and military gray-zone operations.
3. Europe — LOW
The ongoing war has shown Russia lacks the capacity to conquer Ukraine, let alone dominate Europe.
4. Middle East — LOW
Iran’s nuclear program was severely crippled in the 2025 campaign.
In an era of intensifying great-power competition, every major military asset and policy focus carries significant opportunity costs.
The current deployment of two carrier strike groups to the Persian Gulf – with the USS Abraham Lincoln already on station and the USS Gerald R. Ford en route – therefore raises important questions.
→ Does the Trump Administration’s Middle East posture best serve national strategic imperatives?
→ Or does it risk diverting critical resources from the higher-priority Indo-Pacific theater (where U.S. interests face the most consequential long-term challenges) and from homeland resilience?
Author is Director, U.S. Chapter and Non-Resident Fellow, Indo-Pacific Studies Center.
Discover more from Vermont Daily Chronicle
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Categories: Commentary
Trump is a master of misdirection. Maybe all the buildup in the Middle East has served as a distraction for the HIGH priority western hemisphere removal of narco terrorism, as we finally see happening in Mexico. Did you think of THAT???
I’ll admit I’m way down the intellectual list where I come from. So I’ll make this brief. You can do the right thing, or we can do the safe thing….
Over 96 % of the country choose to do the safe thing by not joining the armed forces. Right or wrong.
The less than 2%, choose to serve this country, in both home and in foreign wars.
The real question is are we going to once again sit back and allow a country or countries, to murder its own people by the thousand or more, just so they can control them…
I know the risks, I served. My family knows the risks they are serving.
What’s more important winning a gold metal, or losing some teeth.
In the Middle East, don’t be gaslighted over if we don’t act, and we will lose some teeth if we do act. But in the end, to the people of the Middle East, it is far more important than a gold metal to them… it just might not be logical…
War, never is…
To me the fact that China already has nukes, but Iran does not yet, (?) but makes no bones about their ambitions to make themselves a nuclear power if left to their own devices, should be a consideration in a list of priorities
Here’s an interesting video clip. Connects some dots….
https://generaldispatch.whatfinger.com/liars-cheats-crooks-patriots-top-10/
The comments on my article raise important points that deserve to be addressed. On Friday, I discussed the objections to my realist argument for treating Iran as a low-priority theater. You can read it here: “It Will Not Be a Short War” https://mhansen.substack.com/p/it-will-not-be-a-short-war.
When President Trump announced that the U.S. had begun major combat operations in Iran, I prayed that every one of our military service members would return home unharmed. Our men and women in uniform have my full support. It grieves me that six U.S. troops have been killed and another 18 are seriously wounded.
On Inauguration Day, Trump said: “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but by the wars we end – and perhaps more importantly, by the wars we never get into. My legacy will be as a peacemaker.”
Trump supporters who voted for “no more Middle East wars” have every right to ask questions about motives, blowback, and long-term consequences.
I sincerely hope Operation Epic Fury does not turn into another endless quagmire.
If this war drags on for weeks, what’s to stop China from invading Taiwan? According to the Pentagon, the U.S. military is not sized, structured, or equipped to simultaneously conduct protracted wars in multiple theaters.
My point is this: If the U.S. is forced to divert carriers, airpower, munitions, and military readiness away from the Indo-Pacific, then the geostrategic contest with China will not be a short war.
I make no apology for wanting the U.S. to remain the world’s dominant power – always have, always will. Spain reigned in the 1500s, the Dutch in the 1600s, and the British in the two centuries that followed. Look at them now. I want the American Century to become the American Millennium.