America risks grand folly in Iran war

It is just the first week of the joint attack between the United States and Israel on the Islamic Republic of Iran, but the repercussions from the Middle East for the Indo-Pacific are already discernible.

- Thitinan Pongsudhirak

This photo from yesterday shows protesters carrying placards reading 'Hands off Iran' as they march towards the US embassy during a rally condemning the US and Israeli attacks on Iran in Seoul, South Korea, one of the US's strongest allies in Asia.

(AFP)

Underpinned by its homeland securitisation and near-abroad dominance of the Western Hemisphere enunciated in National Security Strategy 2025 and National Defence Strategy 2026, now potentially overextended by its prosecution of war to topple Iran's theocratic regime, Washington's geostrategic bandwidth in the Indo-Pacific will likely be correspondingly curtailed.

In turn, the US's fluid priorities and objectives at home and elsewhere may well cede more latitude to China in its own neighbourhood and near-abroad. It does not necessarily mean China will attempt a takeover of Taiwan or the South China Sea anytime soon. But as US foreign policy and geostrategic posture are driven overwhelmingly by unilateral interests backed by raw power at the expense of traditionally shared values with allies and partners, Washington’s loss of the relative moral high ground in geopolitics will be a boon to Beijing. China, for instance, can capitalise on the US's geostrategic preferences away from the Indo-Pacific by consolidating its patronage of regimes from Myanmar's military dictatorship to Laos and Cambodia's autocratic one-party rule.