By Tom Fowdy
After some hesitation, it seems the United States has decided to contemplate Ukraine's pressure to allow it to use US-supplied long-range missiles against targets defined as "deep" into Russian territory. The lobbying has come as Kyiv faces one setback after another on the battlefield, with Putin's forces now advancing on almost every front with some critical battles lined up. For a long time, the US, at least some in the Presidential administration, sort to resist this realizing that approving such a move would mark a huge escalation that would be effectively "taking the war" further into Russia, and subsequently creating risks that would influence the upcoming Presidential election.
However, Ukraine almost always gets what it wants when it creates an orchestrated PR campaign via social media, backed by influential NeoConservative lobby groups backing the same such as the Kagan linked "Institute for the Study of War" and of course the United Kingdom, which occupies a unique position of being the most pro-escalation country with influence in the conflict (given the Balkan States have no real power). Thus, the debate notably changed over the past few weeks when the US began choreographing a narrative claiming that Iran was providing ballistic missiles to Russia.
Now note, while the claim may likely be factually true, given Iran has become a major supplier of the Russian army in terms of drones and ammunition, we should understand that the manufacturing consent strategy in the West is pushed to create a "buildup" towards a "pre-determined conclusion" and the subsequent flow of reports is arguing in its favor to make the case for the action they want. Of sorts, for example, when the US started saying Iraq has weapons of mass destruction in 2002, it had been decided they already wanted to go to war. When the US said China was engaging in "forced labor" in Xinjiang, the goal was already to put sanctions on key industries to push for supply chain shifts.
Essentially, what you see is political theatre, hence we hear first that "Iran may be about to supply ballistic missiles to Russia", and we then hear "IFIran is doing it, that constitutes a major escalation" (translate major escalation to: we want a pretext permit the strikes) and then it becomes "Iran has transferred these missiles, so we will respond and then Biden says they are working on authorizing such strikes. This is how the manufacturing consent cycle subsequently works. Why do Iran's ballistic missiles matter exactly? The point is never clarified truly only what can be derived from it, as manufacturing consent is not truly based on rational arguments, only on obtaining the favored outcome no matter how dishonest the premise is.
In conjunction with this, the US, UK, and EU then unleashed a new range of sanctions targeting Iran, which also came across as opportunistic. These parties are simultaneously opposing Iran on another front in the Middle East, which is the reason behind their unconditional support of Israel's aggression in Gaza and the West Bank. They seek to contain the potential rise of Iran as an adversarial military power, and thus see a deepening axis between Tehran and Moscow as a strategically problematic development. A Republican administration returning to the White House is likely to significantly increase confrontation with Tehran.
However, what was then notable in this "escalation" context was that US officials then quickly rolled out rhetoric targeting China, too. Suddenly, Kurt Campbell made comments stating Beijing was directly fuelling Russia's war machine going behind "dual use" items. Now the invocation of China in Russia's war in Ukraine comes periodically, and is also opportunistic, as Beijing is required to fulfill Western strategic interests regarding the conflict at the expense of its largest strategic partner, while simultaneously facing a US-led campaign to also contain it. In this case, US officials enjoy making the conflict in Ukraine a "lose-lose" outcome for China as much as they can by calling China complicit but also ignoring Beijing-led calls and proposals for peace. Usually, accusations of Chinese support for Moscow lead to more sanctions.
Ultimately, US foreign policy post-1991 is based on a "zero-sum" logic, that is America must maintain its dominance at all costs and eschew all efforts at compromise and reconciliation with its adversaries. This has been a primary aggravator of the war in Ukraine as officials have not been willing to accept peace as an option and seek to create an outcome that serves maximalist US strategic gains. By 2024, however, it is obvious that this has been a grotesque miscalculation that has neither crippled Russia in the way it was advertised it would, and nor the threat of sanctions deterring the emerging geopolitical bloc between Russia and Iran, which China indirectly supports. Iranian ballistic missiles are not really a gamechanger on the battlefield, because it's technology Russia has long had anyway, ditto with North Korean ones, yet it seems to be the strategic implications of it all that unnerve the NeoConservatives in Washington, who are back with their sanctions hammer believing every problem is a nail.
The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Tom Fowdy:
Opinion | The US Congress is an unhinged, dangerous bubble
Opinion | The surge in Anti-Indian racism and its clash with geopolitical aspirations
Comment