There is so much focus on the COVID-19 pandemic right now that Americans can’t be blamed if they’re not spending much time studying other developments.
That’s understandable, but inattention may be as dangerous as the virus itself. That’s because America’s adversaries are taking advantage of the situation by challenging U.S. interests in a set of geopolitical hot spots.
They believe we’re too distracted by the virus containment effort to mount a firm response.
At the same time, geopolitical confrontation is a classic way to rally a population against an outside threat, especially when they’re still hurting from the pandemic and the economic consequences. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the books to get the people behind the government.
This appears to be the case with China and Iran right now.
Not surprisingly, China has tried to take advantage of the situation by acting aggressively in the South China Sea and threatening Taiwan.
The South China Sea is a large arm of the Pacific Ocean surrounded by China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia.
All six countries have claims to exclusive economic zones that extend several hundred miles from their coastlines.
Parts of the sea are international waters governed by the Law of the Sea Convention and other treaties. All of the other nations around the South China Sea have rejected China’s claims. But they’ve been pushed back to fairly narrow boundaries close to their coastlines.
China has ignored all of those claims and treaties and insists that it is in control of the entire body of water including islands, reefs and underwater natural resources such as oil, natural gas, undersea minerals and fisheries.
China has also become even more aggressive by designating the South China Sea reefs as city-level administrative units to be administered by mainland China.
And China has pumped sand onto reefs to build artificial islands that have then been fortified with airstrips, harbors, troops and missiles.
It’s also fair to assume that a weakened U.S. Navy has emboldened Chinese actions recently.
The two aircraft carriers the Navy has in the western Pacific, the Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, were both taken out of action due to outbreaks of the coronavirus among their crews. That’s been a dramatic reduction in power projection in the region.
But neither side will back down, as neither wants to appear weak. This makes warfare a highly realistic scenario. It’s probably just a matter of time.
Meanwhile, Iran has harassed U.S. naval vessels in the Persian Gulf, launched new missiles and continued its support of terrorism in Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon.
These actions are more signs of weakness than strength, but they are dangerous nonetheless.
In the past 10 years, we’ve been through currency wars, trade wars and now pandemic.
Are shooting wars next?
Pay attention to China, Iran and, yes, North Korea. They haven’t gone away either.
The world is a dangerous place — and the virus has only made it more dangerous.
1 comment:
Here's what will happen on a worldwide scale. All the Arab nations immediately surrounding Israel today are the first ones to be destroyed (Psalm 83). The next group are the Arab nations left plus the Russia, China and whoever else that will be drawn into the conflict(Isaiah 17; Daniel's 70th week; Ezekiel 37-39; Rev:6-19). All the rest is conjecture.
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