Considered opinionWaltzing toward a two-front global war
Military analysts argue that the sine qua non of a superpower is the ability to fight two major campaigns in different regions of the globe nearly simultaneously. Critics of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations said that reduced defense investment and a decade of counterinsurgency campaigns had left the U.S. military unprepared to do so. Still, Christopher Bolan writes in Defense One, the United States finds itself one step away from war on the Korean Peninsula and perhaps two from military confrontation with Iran, “dancing an uncertain waltz in which a misstep would be catastrophic.”
In an analysis published in 2013, the Heritage Foundation argued that the sine qua non of a superpower was the ability to fight two major campaigns in different regions of the globe nearly simultaneously. The Heritage report noted that reduced defense investment and a decade of counterinsurgency campaigns had left the U.S. military unprepared to do so.
Nonetheless, Christopher Bolan writes in Defense One, the United States finds itself one step away from war on the Korean Peninsula and perhaps two from military confrontation with Iran, “dancing an uncertain waltz in which a misstep would be catastrophic.”
Bolan continues:
The heated rhetoric between President Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jung-un is unprecedented — certainly from the American side. Each has threatened to destroy the other’s country, and in response, both sides have taken military steps that the other is bound to see as provocative. Last weekend, U.S. bombers conducted a show-of-force mission just east of North Korea, “flying further north of the demilitarized zone…than any other mission this century.” In response, the North Korean foreign minister announced that “we will have every right to make counter measures, including the right to shoot down the United States strategic bombers, even when they are not yet inside [our] airspace.”
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With regard to Iran, the United States is two steps away from sliding toward conflict. On Oct. 15, President Trump will likely decline to renew his previous certifications of the Iran nuclear deal — formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. A longtime critic of the JCPOA, the president last week called it “an embarrassment to the United States” and said he had already made a decision about recertifying it. If he does not, the second shoe to drop would be a decision by the U.S. Congress to re-impose the nuclear-related sanctions that were suspended under the deal. That would violate the essence of the deal, and Iranian hardliners would push to rapidly reconstitute their nuclear program — a program that once came within weeks of acquiring enough fissile material for a bomb.
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Both of these dangerous scenarios could unfold nearly simultaneously, and not just because tensions are rising at the same time. Either one could ignite the other. Leaders in Pyongyang and Tehran are already convinced that the true goal of U.S. policymakers is regime change. U.S. military strikes against either Korea or Iran will convince other endangered authoritarian regimes that developing nuclear weapons remains their sole effective deterrent.
Read the full article: Christopher J. Bolan, “Waltzing toward a two-front global war,” Defense One (29 September 2017)
