The United States is burning through missiles, radar systems, and strategic assets in Iran that it would need for a potential conflict with China, two former senior national security officials have warned in a new Foreign Affairs analysis.
Rebecca Lissner of the Council on Foreign Relations and Mira Rapp-Hooper of the Brookings Institution warned in Foreign Affairs that the strikes "compromise the U.S. military's near- and medium-term readiness by burning through vital munitions and relocating key strategic assets such as missile defense systems and radars," "Hvylya" reports.
Trump himself designated the Middle East a lower strategic priority compared with the Indo-Pacific and the Western Hemisphere. Yet the Iran operation has pulled resources in the opposite direction. The conflict has cost American taxpayers at least $20 billion by late March, with no imminent danger to justify the expenditure, according to the analysis.
The scholars noted a deeper irony: during his first term, Trump won praise from realist thinkers precisely because he appeared to pivot away from the Middle East and toward competition with China. The prominent realist scholar Randall Schweller predicted Trump's second term would usher in "the most restrained U.S. foreign policy in modern history."
Instead, Trump has overseen the bombing of seven countries in just one year. His ability to maintain deterrence in the Indo-Pacific has been undercut by what the authors called the "Iran gambit and its drain on military materiel and readiness." Beijing, they warned, is watching closely.
Also read: how the Iran war exposed a critical weakness that alarmed America's Asian allies.