Naval power rarely changes course through headlines. It changes through personnel. The removal of US Navy Secretary John Phelan and the elevation of Hung Cao as Acting Secretary is one such signal, subtle in form, strategic in implication. In the language of great-power competition, this is not about administrative turnover. It is about …

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Despite the apparent success of the US Air Force during six weeks of intense operations over Iran which saw much of Iran’s high-end integrated air defense network suppressed or destroyed, the broader implications of the still-ongoing US-Iran War point toward emerging structural weaknesses in American airpower. Far from reinforcing long-held assumptions about US aerial dominance, the war has instead raised serious questions about its sustainability and credibility in future high-end conflicts, particularly in the Asia-Pacific.

Operation Epic Fury can reasonably be described as a “maximum-effort” stress test of the doctrinal logistical, and technological foundations underpinning modern US airpower. While attention has naturally gravitated toward headline losses such as the downing of an F-15E Strike Eagle, the destruction of an E-3 Sentry on the ground, and the loss of an MQ-3 Triton drone, the deeper significance lies not in the losses themselves, but in what they reveal. In total, the US has reportedly lost 39 manned and unmanned aircraft, with an additional 10 damaged. These figures, while notable, are less important than the systemic vulnerabilities they expose. Even against a degraded adversary operating under asymmetric constraints, the US faced friction that would likely be magnified exponentially in a conflict with a peer adversary.

Lesson 1: The growing fragility of US long-range airpower sustainment

The first and perhaps most consequential lesson is the increasingly tenuous nature of America’s ability to sustain prolonged, long-distance air campaigns. At the core of this issue lies the ageing aerial refueling fleet. The backbone of this capability remains the KC-135 Stratotanker, with more than 150 aircraft still in service despite originating from the 1950s and 1960s. Efforts to modernize this fleet have faltered. The retirement of the KC-10 Extender in 2024 created a capability gap that the still-troubled KC-46 Pegasus program has struggled to fill.

The operational strain on this fleet has become increasingly visible. Incidents such as a KC-135 returning to the US visibly damaged by shrapnel, alongside confirmed tanker losses from operational crashes and destruction from Iranian missile strikes, illustrate the vulnerability and overstretch of this critical support system. Aerial refueling is not merely a supplementary function. It is the linchpin of US global airpower projection.

This problem is compounded by the new strategic reality that US access to forward bases is increasingly not guaranteed. In scenarios where allied basing rights are restricted or unavailable for political reasons, US aircraft will be forced to operate directly from the continental United States. Such missions dramatically increase flight durations, reduce sortie generation rates and accelerate wear on already aging airframes. Maintenance demands rise sharply, further constraining operational tempo. Meanwhile, the Next-Generation Air-refueling System program intended to deliver a modern and potentially stealth-capable tanker remains uncertain, leaving a looming future critical capability gap unresolved.

Lesson 2: Erosion of airborne early warning and control capabilities

A second major concern is the growing precarity of US airborne early warning and control (AWACS) capabilities. These systems are indispensable for coordinating both high-intensity air combat and lower-intensity counter-drone operations. The destruction of the E-3 Sentry at Prince Sultan Air Base represents more than a symbolic loss: it highlights the increasingly-strained fragility of a small and ageing AWACS fleet central to the very idea of precision American warfare.

The rushed deployment of US Navy E-2D Hawkeye AWACS to compensate for gaps during Operation Epic Fury underscores both quantitative shortages and qualitative limitations. Compounding the issue is policy uncertainty, with political-military seesawing in Washington DC seeing the initial cancellation of the E-7 Wedgetail program in 2025 partially reversed in 2026 under congressional pressure but without a clear future adoption timeline.

At the same time, maintaining the aging E-3 fleet is becoming increasingly costly and inefficient, as it shares the same legacy airframe lineage as the KC-135 Stratotanker (both based off the Boeing 707 airliner). Transitioning to next-generation systems is further complicated by optimistic punts on ambitious but unproven concepts such as space-based radar networks linked to futuristic homeland missile defense networks. These ideas are reminiscent of the technologically aspirational Strategic Defense Initiative of the 1980s and remain far from operational viability.

Meanwhile, the proliferation of low-cost drone warfare has exposed gaps in current detection and tracking capabilities. Iran’s sustained use of small, low-flying drones across the Persian Gulf region illustrates how even relatively unsophisticated systems can asymmetrically challenge timely tracking by advanced aerial or ground-based air defense radars. The limited deployment of advanced active electronically scanned array radar systems in the present US AWACS fleet (mainly on carrier-borne AWACS like the E-2D Hawkeye, but also on the land-based E-7 Wedgetail) further exacerbates this vulnerability, particularly in cluttered and contested environments.

Lesson 3: Persistent vulnerability of airbase infrastructure

The third lesson concerns the vulnerability of US airbase infrastructure and the shortcomings of current doctrinal debates surrounding base hardening. Iranian missile and drone strikes on regional air bases, most notably at Prince Sultan Air Base, demonstrated the consequences of insufficient protective measures. The destruction and damage of high-value assets, including tankers and airborne early warning aircraft parked in the open, underscore the risks inherent in underestimating the threat.

These incidents lend credence to prior analyses such as the Hudson Institute’s 2025 “Concrete Skies 2.0” report, which warned of the vulnerability of US bases to air and missile attack. This issue is even more acute in the Asia-Pacific, where US power projection relies heavily on a small number of major hubs including Hawaii, Guam, and Okinawa. These bases are central to the hub-and-spoke model of US operations but are increasingly exposed to advanced missile threats.

China’s development of intermediate-range ballistic missiles equipped with hypersonic glide vehicles such as the DF-26 “Guam Killer” and DF-27 “Hawaii Killer” poses a significantly greater threat than anything encountered in the Iran conflict. These systems are explicitly designed to target key US bases and airfields, raising serious doubts about their survivability in a protracted high-intensity conflict.

The viability of emerging US airpower doctrinal concepts such as Agile Combat Employment, which emphasize dispersal and flexibility, ultimately still depends on the resilience of these primary hubs across the vast expanses of the Pacific. Without substantial investment in hardened infrastructure, including reinforced shelters and bunkers, US airpower risks being degraded at the outset of a conflict and tethered by a short leash to the continental US west coast.

Not merely tactical but structural

Taken together, these lessons suggest that the challenges facing US airpower are not merely tactical but structural. Operation Epic Fury, while demonstrating operational effectiveness in the short term, has exposed underlying weaknesses in sustainment, force multiplication, and infrastructure resilience. These vulnerabilities are particularly concerning in the context of potential future conflicts with peer adversaries more substantial than Iran, where the scale, intensity, and technological sophistication of threats would be far greater.

If unaddressed, these issues risk undermining the credibility of US airpower as both a warfighting tool and a political deterrent. In an era defined by contested logistics, proliferating missile technologies, and asymmetric threats, maintaining air dominance will require not just advanced platforms, but a comprehensive rethinking of the systems and assumptions that support them.

Andy Wong Ming Jun writes about defense matters for Asia Sentinel.

The war with Iran has exposed uncomfortable truths about the limits of American naval power, with implications that extend far beyond the Persian Gulf to the broader foundations of US global dominance and deterrence. What was intended as a decisive exercise of force has instead highlighted structural weaknesses in fleet composition, doctrine, and strategic reach for the US Navy.

Together, these limitations raise questions about the durability of Pax Americana and the credibility of US commitments in other theaters, including the defense of Taiwan. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the country’s most advanced supercarrier, limped into port at Naval Support Activity Souda Bay, a US and NATO base located on the Greek island of Crete yesterday after deployment was extended twice and was now passing the nine-month mark. During their time at sea, crew members have faced sewage issues and a fire in addition to so-called shakedown issues.

When the United States launched Operation Epic Fury at the end of February, it did so following the largest American naval buildup in the Middle East since the Iraq War. Over two months, more than a third of the US Navy’s operational battlefleet was concentrated in the Eastern Mediterranean and Arabian Sea, anchored by two carrier strike groups centered around the USS Gerald R. Ford and USS Abraham Lincoln. This deployment, combined with a sustained air and missile campaign that effectively destroyed the Iranian Navy within days, was meant to demonstrate overwhelming American superiority and compel regime change in Tehran.

Yet the results have fallen short of expectations. Unlike the earlier Caribbean deployment that contributed to the capture of Nicolás Maduro and made limited progress toward regime change in Venezuela, Iran has proven far more resilient. Even after the deaths of Ayatollah Khamenei and much of the senior leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the opening days of the conflict, the Iranian state has remained intact and operationally effective even if in limited fashion to retaliate with missile and unmanned drone strikes by air or sea.

Three interrelated lessons emerge from this conflict, each pointing to deeper vulnerabilities within the US Navy.

First, the centrality of aircraft carriers and the Arleigh-Burke class destroyers, long the two centerpieces of American naval strategy and surface battlefleet composition, has come under scrutiny. While carrier strike groups remain potent symbols of US power projection, capable of delivering sustained strikes and asserting control over vast maritime spaces, their ability not just in operating within constrained and heavily contested littoral environments, but even attempting to approach them by sea appears increasingly limited.

In the case of Hormuz, the US Navy has demonstrated neither the willingness nor the practical ability to challenge Iranian control and access denial directly. The risks posed by overlapping threat vectors of antiship missiles, explosive drones and underwater mines make contested entry and escort operations into the constrained littoral environs of the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf prohibitively dangerous for large warships.

At the same time, the US Navy’s shipborne defense systems are primarily missile-based and optimized for intercepting large, high-end aerial threats like enemy warplanes or ballistic missiles. They are entirely unsuited for point or area defense against small, low-end aerial drone swarms or kamikaze drone boats. Efforts to enhance point-defense capabilities for US warships with newly-upgraded remote gun turrets are underway, but these remain in early stages and are not meant to be permanently equipped as standard fleetwide.

Second, the naval war has exposed a structural imbalance in the composition of the US fleet. Decades of investment and doctrinal thinking have prioritized large, capital-intensive platforms such as aircraft carriers and destroyers for blue water combat against peer adversaries, often at the expense of smaller, more numerous vessels suited to less intense escorting duties and littoral combat. The retirement of the Cold-War era Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates in 2015 and the failures in subsequent replacement programs such as the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) and Constellation-class frigate have left a gap in precisely the sort of cheap, lower-end ships needed for escort duties, minesweeping, and littoral operations.

This capability shortfall has had immediate consequences. The absence of sufficient minesweepers exacerbated by the recent withdrawal of aging Avenger-class vessels built in the 1980s has limited the Navy’s ability to clear safe corridors. Meanwhile, LCS vessels equipped with minesweeping modular kits were intended to fill this niche, but recent reports indicate that the minesweeping kits are qualitatively inadequate. In any case, such LCS minesweepers are not even currently present in the theater in meaningful numbers to make a difference, with two of the three deployed for Operation Epic Fury currently withdrawn thousands of miles away to Singapore.

Without a balanced force structure, the US Navy faces a dilemma: risk its high-end Arleigh-Burke class destroyers which form the bulk of its surface battlefleet to contest asymmetric high-threat environments like the Strait of Hormuz, or concede operational space to weaker but more adaptable adversaries such as the IRGC. With oil price at over US$100 a barrel of Brent Crude, every day that the Strait remains closed despite five Arleigh-Burke class destroyers nearby in the Arabian Sea is yet another dent in the navy’s capability to deter and defeat threats to freedom of navigation in international waters.

Peacetime freedom of navigation cruises through the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea in the past made it easy to maintain the illusion of Pax Americana. The failure to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by force against an adversary with no navy to speak of has now shattered said illusion for good.

Third, the strain on overall force availability reveals the true scope of American naval reach and power projection. The redeployment of the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli and its Marine contingent from the Pacific to the Middle East illustrates a broader pattern of resource reallocation. With only a handful of Amphibious Ready Groups (ARG) available and fewer still fully operational, the navy has struggled to meet simultaneous commitments across regions. US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) has longstanding issues with amphibious vessel availability due to maintenance backlogs and ARGs only being deployed transitionally through them on their way to Central Command (CENTCOM) in the Middle East.

This increasingly entrenched “robbing Peter to pay Paul” dynamic carries significant strategic implications. The Asia-Pacific, where US naval and amphibious presence is central to deterring Chinese action against Taiwan, has already experienced gaps in amphibious and carrier coverage over the past two decades. The last time an ARG finished a full deployment and was not asset-stripped from the Asia-Pacific to other regions was in late 2022 and early 2023. The almost-reflexive constant diversion of forces meant for the Indo-Pacific Command to Central Command further weakens that posture, even as China continues to conduct large-scale exercises simulating blockades or an invasion of Taiwan.

Taken together, these developments challenge longstanding assumptions about American naval dominance. The US remains qualitatively unmatched for high-intensity combat and long-range power projecting strike operations, as demonstrated by the destruction of Iranian conventional naval forces and land targets by US carrier aviation and ship-launched cruise missiles. However, such superiority does not automatically translate into control of contested maritime chokepoints, freedom of navigation for global trade, or success in coercive “gunboat” diplomacy.

Instead, the current conflict suggests that US naval power functions increasingly as a glass cannon. Immensely powerful, but constrained by vulnerability, cost, and limited numbers. In environments where adversaries can implement an anti-area, access denial strategy in a cost-effective manner with drones, mines, and coastal antiship missile systems, the US Navy simply does not have the risk tolerance to take damage or lose any of its warships to force contested waters.

For Pax Americana, the implications are profound. The US through its Navy has long underwritten the post-1991 global order, ensuring freedom of navigation and providing credible defense support for its allies. If the US Navy cannot have either the will nor the means to reopen by force the Strait of Hormuz against a regional power like Iran with no navy to speak of, questions will inevitably arise about its ability to do so elsewhere.

Nowhere is this more consequential than in Northeast Asia. The credibility of US commitments to Taiwan depends not only on formal alliances and political will, but on the ability to deploy and sustain forces in the face of Chinese efforts to challenge for command of the Western Pacific. Beijing, Taipei, Seoul, and Tokyo will doubtlessly be studying the naval aspect of the ongoing US-Iran war closely. Only one will take positive encouragement from it.

Andy Wong Ming Jun specializes in defense commentary for Asia Sentinel

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In late February, the Philippine, US and Japanese militaries for the first time moved their joint “Multilateral Maritime Cooperative Activities (MMCA)” military exercises from the South China Sea to the Bashi Channel that separates the Philippines from Taiwan, a shift that serves as a key focal point of strategy for the US and its allies to restrain China’s maritime expansion and deter a potential Taiwan invasion.

The drills’ geographical focus is Mavulis Island, a 2.2 sq. km uninhabited outcrop 142 km from Taiwan and 200 km from the northernmost tip of Luzon. The island is garrisoned by Philippine troops who have constructed a shelter for local fishermen, a water desalination plant, a helipad, lighthouse, and a hilltop flagpole.

Mavulis shares conspicuous characteristics with Japan’s westernmost Yonaguni Island, which is readying for a dramatic militarization effort owing to its geographical closeness to Taiwan, with Japan’s Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi in late February unveiling the government’s plans to deploy surface-to-air missiles at Yonaguni. That follows a suggestion by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in late 2025 that Japan would militarily intervene if China used armed force or a naval blockade against Taiwan.

Whereas the Japanese military has had a base with electronic warfare units on Yonaguni since 2016, the Philippine Navy and Marines began using Mavulis with small detachments in 2023.

“Conducting military exercises in the waters surrounding Mavulis Island carries significant strategic importance, as the area lies near the northern entrance of the Bashi Channel, which, together with the Balintang Channel, forms the main maritime routes of the Luzon Strait,” said Hung Tzu-Chieh, an associate research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a public think tank in Taipei. “This strait is a key route for the Chinese Navy, particularly its submarine forces, to move from the South China Sea into the Western Pacific. If the island were further militarized, it could potentially serve as a strategic monitoring node for activities in the strait.”

Hung went on to explain that Mavulis Island covers only about 2.2 square kilometers and is characterized largely by steep, rocky coastlines, lacking a harbor and basic infrastructure. Whereas Hung sees these geographical constraints as imposing significant limitations on the long-term deployment and sustainment of military facilities, another observer thinks they are an actual advantage.

“These northern islands are almost empty of locals and a Chinese attack on US forces on these rocks helps exclude the main island [Luzon] from direct attack by Chinese missiles and fighter jets,” said Wendell Minnick, a veteran Taipei-based military analyst and the editor of the China in Arms Substack blog.

Similarly, James Holmes, a professor at the US Naval War College, said any outpost in or adjoining the Luzon Strait and Bashi Channel is going to have value, given that it is China’s best maritime gateway to the Western Pacific. According to Holmes, waters are deep enough and have rough-enough environmental conditions that submarines could slip past US or allied antisubmarine defenses.

“A standing allied presence would reduce its value to China, helping the allies seal off the First Island Chain to China’s navy in keeping with longstanding practice, which was codified most recently in the 2026 National Defense Strategy,” Holmes said, referring to a strategy released by the Trump administration in January that, among other things, focuses on the First Island Chain between Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines for deterrence by denial.

While no formal defense ties exist between the Philippines and Taiwan, the Philippines is obviously warming to the idea of a Taiwan contingency, as indicated by the government under Ferdinand Marcos Jr in 2023 allowing the US military to use a naval base in Cagayan facing Taiwan under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) and deploy a Typhon missile system in Ilocos Norte, also facing Taiwan. In November, a US congressional body, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), raised eyebrows by recommending that Taiwan bankroll improvements to EDCA sites in the Philippines, a proposal it believes will boost the US’s ability to defend Taiwan from a potential invasion from China.

“If Taiwan funded Philippine military facilities, the US would likely shepherd the deal, conducted secretly to avoid domestic backlash in Taiwan and severe diplomatic repercussions from Beijing for Manila,” said Lucio Blanco Pitlo III, president of the Philippine Association for Chinese Studies. “The Philippine military would likely welcome support given persistent budget constraints and domestic issues like corruption.”

However, Pitlo went on to caution that these steps irritate Beijing and may complicate its planning but are unlikely to change China’s fundamental objective on Taiwan. “If reunification is central to CPC legitimacy, such efforts may only delay timelines rather than prevent action, as allied deployments are modest compared to the PRC buildup along the Fujian coast,” Pitlo said, referring to mainland China’s closest to province to Taiwan.

Pitlo believes that the recent joint MMCA exercises around Mavulis were oriented towards a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping that had initially been scheduled but has been delayed by the Iran situation, with Trump signaling his intention to postpone it.

“Amid the escalating conflict in the Middle East, Washington may be sending a message that it can fight on multiple fronts, that redeployment of troops and arms from one theater to another does not adversely affect its posture in the Indo-Pacific, and that its regional allies are stepping up in terms of security burden sharing,” Pitlo said.

In this exclusive interview with Asia Sentinel, former Iranian diplomat Seyed Hossein Mousavian warns that the US and Israel have sent a dangerous message that security is better found through the nuclear-deterrence model of North Korea.

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Reports last week that US President Donald Trump is considering asking Congress for a waiver to the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, more commonly known as the Jones Act mandating that cargo shipped between two US ports must be carried by ships built and primarily owned and staffed by Americans, is recognition that US shipbuilding is mostly dead and gone and has been for decades.

When Trump returned to office in his second term, he launched a sweeping effort to revitalize the US maritime industry with an executive order called “Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance” aimed at reversing decades of decline. He was forced to back off almost immediately from an ill-considered proposal to levy fees on China-built ships up to US$1.5 million per port call in an effort to kill global demand for Chinese cargo ships, which caused a massive backup at US ports as exporters sought alternatives to transport goods overseas when Chinese-built ships stopped calling.

In February this year, the administration released a strategic roadmap called the Maritime Action Plan whose key components include “maritime prosperity zones” to incentivize private and allied investment in domestic shipyards, a Maritime Security Trust Fund and tax-deferred accounts that allow shipyards to reinvest earnings into infrastructure and equipment and funds to upgrade dry docks, cranes, and digital shipyard infrastructure and other features.

The president’s decision to go to war with Iran, however, has forced a shift of resources toward immediate military needs and away from what had been a plan to build 250 new merchant vessels over 10 years to restore maritime dominance. Although the waiver is being framed as a national defense necessity to secure fuel supplies in the US domestic market during a time of war, in fact the conflict is accelerating long-term arguments for the permanent repeal or major reform of the century-old protectionist act.

As Asia Sentinel reported last April, the US had a minuscule 0.1 percent of global shipbuilding capacity in contrast to China’s 53.3 percent. US Navy intelligence data from 2023 showed Chinese shipyards as being more than 200 times more capable of building surface warships and submarines than American shipyards.

That has gone a long way to enable the massive naval buildup by the People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN) in overtaking the US Navy to become the world’s largest in terms of hull numbers in that same year. At the time, the US-based Geiger Investments described the destruction of America’s industrial base as a “massive national security threat.”

As things currently stand, a key issue is how to incentivize increased overall demand in a more evenly distributed manner across all current and future US commercial shipyards. The plan now seems to be to let Asians do it on US soil, with domestic shipyards partnering with the Koreans and Japanese.

As a May 6, 2025 report by the Santa Monica-based think tank Rand Corporation noted, “The United States cannot compete with China alone. To rebuild the shipyard industrial base, as well as to make US vessels commercially competitive in the global market in the long run, the United States must turn to allies who already possess the industrial capacity, expertise, and motivation to help close the gap.”

Last week, the South Korean legislature passed a bill to invest US$350 billion in strategic industries in the US including shipbuilding among other industries, to partner to revitalize the industry by sharing digital technology, enhancing efficiency and potentially assisting with nuclear-powered submarine construction, a useful strategy in leveraging cooperation as a useful bargaining chip in trade negotiations now nullified by the Supreme Court’s February 20 decision outlawing Trump’s sweeping tariffs. South Korea’s Hanwha Ocean has already engaged in US Navy Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) projects. Reforms and waivers such as those related to the Jones Act are under consideration to facilitate cooperation.

In 1943, America’s once-mighty shipbuilding industry was producing three Liberty ships a day. That has all but vanished since the 1980s. According to Geiger Investments, one shipyard in China made more commercial ships in 2024 than the total number the US has produced since World War II. Optimism that South Korea and Japan, which rank second and third globally behind China in shipbuilding, can restore US primacy needs to be tempered with realistic assessments of the state of the shipbuilding industries of the two to meet US demands for more non-Chinese built commercial ships or even build US-ordered commercial and naval vessels.

According to a senior Japanese executive at NYK Lines, Japanese shipbuilding is maxed out in terms of capacity up to 2028 at the earliest, and South Korean shipbuilding is in a bad financial spot similar to the US, owing to the rise of Chinese shipbuilding.

As Asia Sentinel noted in its 2025 report, according to some planners and naval officers, there is a strong case to be made for the GOCO (Government Owned, Contractor Operated) model to be more widely adopted to rebuild US shipbuilding capacity. This is a middle-ground framework whereby the government would own the physical infrastructure and assets but contracts with private companies to use them to fulfill production orders from the government. US shipbuilding infrastructure and assets would be insulated from market volatility or contractor business failures, both of which have been key factors in the precipitous four-decade decline of US shipbuilding in the face of the rise of Asian shipbuilding in countries like South Korea, Japan, and now China.

GOCO would be the closest the US government can get to emulating China’s fully state-owned shipbuilding industry, allowing for some degree of free market competition for shipbuilding companies to earn their own keep and turn a profit from commercial shipbuilding, made easier by these companies having fewer liabilities and assets on their books to finance and upkeep. In the same way as demonstrated by China’s shipbuilding industry, with more experience gained from building commercial ships, US shipbuilders would then be better placed to apply them in a dual-use scenario to build naval ships.

However, shipbuilding is something that demands long time durations with heavy sustained capital investments, both conditions being dependent on stable constant political will from those in power. When a lifetime in politics can be defined in as short a time span as a week, it remains to be seen if the current bipartisanship on revitalizing US shipbuilding and rebuilding the US Navy’s battle fleet will survive the next three years of the second Trump presidency and his reshaping of the global economic order.

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The “Hormuz Risk” is no longer an abstract exercise for Riyadh. A prolonged disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, which is now effectively paralyzed following U.S.-Israeli military strikes and Iranian threats of mining, would expose structural vulnerabilities for Saudi Arabia that have long been masked by the seeming stability of Gulf shipping lanes.

Although the global oil market keeps framing conditions to remain tight but manageable, potential closure of the Strait, in reality, means the consequences would run far deeper for the kingdom. Hormuz isn’t just a maritime corridor through which Gulf oil flows to global markets. For Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter and de facto OPEC leader, it remains the central artery through which the bulk of the kingdom’s export economy still moves.

The Bypass Myth

Saudi Arabia exports roughly 7 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil, the backbone of a state budget that still relies heavily on petroleum revenues. Most of that oil leaves the kingdom through terminals in the Persian Gulf and has to traverse the Strait before reaching international markets. Riyadh does however have a strategic bypass: the East West Petroline, which runs across the kingdom to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. Built during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the pipeline was designed precisely to reduce Saudi reliance on Hormuz in times of crisis.

However, there’s a catch. The Petroline’s capacity, estimated at roughly 5 million bpd, falls well short of the kingdom’s total export potential. Even if fully utilized, total production capacity of 12 million bpd would be severely bottlenecked, leaving millions of barrels stranded. Furthermore, Yanbu’s loading facilities would become a massive single point of failure and a primary target for aerial or missile interdiction.

Flawed economic model

Notably, the gap between production and export capacity reveals a critical reality. Saudi Arabia’s economic model still depends heavily on uninterrupted maritime access to global markets. A prolonged disruption wouldn’t simply drive and keep oil prices higher. It would choke Saudi export revenues at the very moment global markets are demanding much-needed supply. That pressure would come at a fragile time for Riyadh. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 economic program is designed to diversify the kingdom away from oil dependence through massive infrastructure investments, industrial projects and tourism development.

Yet, those ambitions remain financed largely by oil income.

Ostensibly, nothing has changed for the Saudis, even as they try a hard pivot away from over-reliance on petrodollars. A sustained disruption of export flows would therefore strike at the financial foundation of the kingdom’s economic transformation strategy. The crown prince’s grandiose US$1.5 trillion flagship projects are already in trouble, including the 170-km-long linear city, with 500-meter-high towers, originally budgeted at US$500 billion. Costs have ballooned to as much as US$8.8 trillion, with only 2.4 km expected to be completed by 2030, housing fewer than 300,000 residents instead of the projected 1.5 million.

More fundamentally, the vulnerability extends beyond state revenues. Saudi Arabia’s domestic infrastructure, particularly its water supply, depends heavily on energy. It relies extensively on desalination plants along its coasts to produce fresh water for cities and industry alike. These facilities are energy intensive and depend on stable flows of oil and natural gas to power them. In other words, oil exports are not merely a source of wealth for Saudi Arabia. They are also embedded in the broader system that sustains daily life in the kingdom. Any prolonged disruption in oil flows would therefore carry implications not just for fiscal stability, but also for the infrastructure that underpins the country’s domestic social contract.

The China Connection

The implications wouldn’t stop at Saudi Arabia’s borders. Asian economies, particularly China, have become the primary destination for Gulf oil exports over the past two decades. China is now one of the largest importers of Saudi crude, and Gulf supply remains a cornerstone of the country’s energy security strategy. If Hormuz were disrupted for an extended period of time, which is appearing increasingly likely, Beijing would face tough choices. China has diversified its energy supply in recent years through pipeline connections with Russia and Central Asia as well as becoming the world’s largest renewables developer, leading the US by a more than 2:1 ratio. Moreover, imports of pipeline gas from Russia, Turkmenistan and other regional suppliers have expanded steadily. Is it enough? Not at all. Pipeline supplies simply can’t fully substitute for seaborne crude flows from the Gulf.

Nor is China in a position to guarantee the security of maritime energy routes in the same way that the US has historically done. Beijing has invested heavily in naval modernization, but projecting sustained military power into the Gulf remains far from its core strategic priorities. The argument that China has yet to develop a true blue-water navy rings true when compared to the logistical footprint required for Persian Gulf escort operations.

In the event of a prolonged disruption, China would likely rely on a combination of strategic reserves, alternative supply contracts and increased pipeline imports. But problematically, none of these measures would fully replace the scale of energy that normally flows through the Strait of Hormuz.

Finally, a prolonged shutdown of the Strait would force the global market to adapt quickly to constrained supply and heightened geopolitical risk. Energy markets have long treated Hormuz as a theoretical vulnerability. The Strait has remained open through decades of regional tension, reinforcing the assumption that flows will ultimately continue. Nonetheless, the concentration of global energy trade through a single narrow corridor has never disappeared.

A disruption in Hormuz wouldn’t simply be a shipping story or a temporary spike in prices, it would expose how much of the global energy system, and particularly the economic stability of Gulf producers, still depends on the uninterrupted flow of oil through one of the world’s most strategically sensitive waterways. While the Saudis grapple with getting their oil to market, Beijing also faces hard choices as the conflict stretches into its second week. It is a structural trap that both Riyadh and Beijing have yet to escape.

Tim Daiss is an energy markets analyst in the Asia-Pacific region and a partner at APAC Energy Consultancy. He is a regular Asia Sentinel contributor.

The Indonesian government’s decision to import tens of thousands of vehicles from India — rather than purchase domestically manufactured models — has ignited a fierce national debate. What officials describe as a cost-saving measure has been cast by opponents as a reckless gamble, a policy rushed through without coordination, financed by debt and potentially damaging to Indonesia’s own industrial base.

At the center of the controversy is PT Agrinas Pangan Nusantara, a newly established state-owned enterprise known simply as Agrinas under the umbrella of the mushrooming national investment firm Danantara, which has gobbled up scores of state-owned enterprises, many of them deeply corrupt, inefficient and unprofitable, sparking controversy over governance issues, fiscal sustainability and its potential to distort the domestic market.

Created to spearhead President Prabowo Subianto’s ambitious food sovereignty agenda, Agrinas now finds itself embroiled in a widening storm over its plan to import 105,000 pickup trucks and six-wheeled cargo vehicles from India. The contract value stands at Rp24.66 trillion (US$1.45 billion). About 1,200 units have already arrived on Indonesian soil.

The import plan first surfaced publicly in early February in India, not through a domestic announcement but via a statement posted by Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., one of India’s largest automotive manufacturers. On its website, the company said it would supply 35,000 units of its Scorpio Pik Up — a four-wheel-drive utility vehicle — to Agrinas for what it described as the “Merah Putih Village Cooperative Project.”

Largest vehicle import in history

In addition to the Mahindra pickups, Agrinas has reportedly signed agreements to import 35,000 more four-wheel-drive pickups and 35,000 six-wheeled trucks from Tata Motors. All told, the procurement represents one of the largest single imports of commercial vehicles in Indonesia’s history.

The imported vehicles are intended to serve as operational assets for the Koperasi Desa Merah Putih, or Red-and-White Village Cooperatives — a flagship initiative of President Prabowo’s administration. The program aims to establish roughly 80,000 cooperatives nationwide, forming a vast grassroots network designed to bolster rural economies and tighten the supply chain of food distribution.

Although many of these cooperatives have yet to be fully built or begin operations, the government has set an ambitious target: 27,000 units are expected to be functioning by April. Each cooperative is envisioned as a multifunctional hub, equipped with warehouses, cold storage facilities, basic grocery outlets, village pharmacies and microfinance services.

For Agrinas, the vehicles are essential logistical infrastructure. They are to transport agricultural products, distribute essential goods and connect farmers with markets. In theory, the system promises to reduce inefficiencies, stabilize prices and empower rural communities.

But critics argue that the method of procurement threatens to undermine the very economic ecosystem the program purports to strengthen.

Debt-Financed Efficiency?

The Ministry of Finance has confirmed that the vehicle purchases are being financed through loans from Indonesia’s state-owned banks, collectively known as Himbara. To repay the debt, the government plans to allocate installments from village funds over a six-year period.

The numbers have startled observers. Analysts estimate that the cumulative repayment obligations, including interest, could reach as high as Rp240 trillion over the coming years. Village officials have voiced concerns that redirecting portions of local budgets to service vehicle debt could delay or disrupt development projects ranging from road construction to sanitation improvements.

The optics have also been damaging. For an administration that has repeatedly pledged fiscal prudence and domestic empowerment, the image of borrowing heavily to purchase foreign-made vehicles has fueled accusations of policy inconsistency.

Business leaders, particularly in Indonesia’s automotive sector, have responded with alarm. Saleh Husin, deputy chairman for industry at the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, warned that importing fully built-up (CBU) vehicles on such a scale could weaken domestic manufacturers already struggling with sluggish demand. Indonesia has long cultivated a robust automotive assembly industry, hosting production facilities for global brands including Toyota, Suzuki, Honda, Daihatsu, Mitsubishi Motors, Hino Motors, Hyundai Motor Company, DFSK, BYD and VinFast.

Domestic production capacity remains underutilized, Husin said, meaning local factories could potentially fulfill much of Agrinas’s demand if given the opportunity. “If the president’s target of 8 percent economic growth is to be achieved, national industry must be allowed to grow,” he said. “The government should ensure a level playing field.” If Indian manufacturers are serious about participating in Indonesia’s development, he added, they should invest in local production facilities, as other global automakers have done.

Political Friction

The controversy has reached Parliament. Members of the House of Representatives have complained that Agrinas moved forward with the import contracts without adequate consultation. Even figures within Prabowo’s own political orbit have expressed unease. Sufmi Dasco Ahmad, a deputy speaker of Parliament and a senior member of the president’s Gerindra Party, called on Agrinas to postpone the purchases.

The episode has exposed tension between the administration’s stated commitment to domestic products — a theme Prabowo championed during his campaign — and a procurement decision justified primarily on cost grounds.

Joao Angelo De Sousa Mota, Agrinas’s chief executive, has defended the contracts. He argues that the imported vehicles are Rp120 million to Rp150 million cheaper per unit than comparable domestic models. Moreover, he contends, local manufacturers lack the capacity to deliver 105,000 vehicles within the required timeframe.

“The decision was purely based on efficiency and availability,” he said in a recent statement.

Yet Mota has also acknowledged that if instructed by the government, Agrinas would be prepared to cancel the imports — albeit at significant financial cost. The company has already paid 30 percent, approximately RP7.39 trillion.

A New State Giant

Agrinas itself is emblematic of President Prabowo’s expansive vision for state-led development. As a newly minted state-owned enterprise, it operates under the coordination of Danantara, a holding structure overseeing hundreds of government-linked companies across strategic sectors. To jump-start operations, the government transferred 425,000 hectares of farmland — much of it derived from previous “food estate” projects in Kalimantan — to Agrinas.

The mandate is sweeping: manage food production end-to-end, from cultivation to post-harvest processing and distribution. The Red-and-White Village Cooperatives are a central pillar of that mission. By 2029, more than 80,000 cooperatives are slated to be established, funded in part by village budgets. Supporters say the initiative will decentralize economic power and fortify food resilience.

But the scale of spending — combined with the military’s reported involvement in physical construction and oversight — has raised eyebrows. Critics argue that entrusting the armed forces with such roles risks blurring institutional boundaries and invites governance concerns.

Allegations of Corruption

Even before the vehicle contracts have been fully executed, allegations of irregularities have surfaced. Nailul Huda, director of digital economy studies at the Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS), has suggested that “import mafias” may be profiting from opaque procurement processes. He noted that the plan became public only after contracts were reportedly signed, fueling suspicion about transparency.

“The process was not transparent from the beginning,” he said. “It appears to benefit import intermediaries.”

Ristadi, president of the Confederation of Nusantara Trade Unions, has called on Indonesia’s anti-corruption agencies to audit the deal. “We urge the Corruption Eradication Commission and the Supreme Audit Agency to investigate,” he said, citing the extraordinary scale of the imports.

The controversy has also drawn in the Defense Ministry, led by Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, a close Prabowo ally. Social media speculation alleged that the ministry supported the imports after receiving four pickup trucks as a grant from Agrinas. A ministry spokesman, Brig. Gen. Rico Ricardo Sirait, denied any impropriety, while confirming that the four vehicles had indeed been received in December and distributed to military units assigned to disaster response in North Sumatra, West Sumatra and Aceh.

Despite warnings by Middle East experts to Donald Trump that a new military attack against Iran might trigger a much larger conflagration that risks enveloping the entire region, the US and Israel attacked on Saturday following weeks of threats of a major assault, with Iran counterattacking against US bases in the Middle East as well as other targets.

It is possible, although unlikely, that the US could conclude a relatively painless military victory, or that the Islamic regime, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khomeini and other top officials dead, would collapse altogether. That will depend on whether the government in Tehran can survive the onslaught and figure out ways to mount an asymmetric response.

Trump’s dominant characteristic until now has been a readiness to trust his own instincts rather than rely on the experts. After the quick and – so far – painless ouster of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, he may believe it will be painless again. He and the MAGA crowd are obsessed with what they see as the “Deep State,” or in simpler words, the Washington Establishment.

Mostly, they are frustrated that what used to be considered the Establishment now sees them as uncouth outsiders, ignorant of history and with little understanding of international relations or diplomacy. This time around, Trump might do well to listen to the experts.

The difference between the Trump administration and what remains of the US State Department is decades of experience. Despite its traditional nickname, Foggy Bottom, the State Department is all too aware of what can happen when an administration goes off the rails. A not-too-distant example of how things can go wrong is the case of George W. Bush’s efforts to topple Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.

No next step

As Bush discovered, using America’s overwhelming military superiority to defeat a weakened Iraqi regime wasn’t difficult. The mistake that the administration’s key strategists, Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, made was to stop the State Department from drafting a plan for what was likely to happen once Saddam’s regime was gone. Rumsfeld’s concern was that victory in Iraq would be hamstrung by bureaucratic red tape. What he failed to realize was that the procedures he distrusted had been put in place to prevent the kind of disaster that eventually consumed Iraq because of a lack of planning.

Not just Trump, but Republican administrations in general have long felt impatience at what they saw as an overly cautious approach by State Department experts and America’s professional intelligence agencies. They have always felt a temptation to shoot first and clean up the mess later. Unfortunately, what Hollywood scriptwriters might have mythologized about the Wild West of the late 1800s rarely works in real life. In today’s world, considerably more is at stake.

As it turned out, Bush’s ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ triggered a war that lasted nearly eight years from 2003 to 2011 and cost the lives of more than 4,400 U.S. servicemen, along with another 37,000 wounded. The actual fighting cost somewhere between US$700 billion and US$800 billion. Helping American veterans recover from the war added another US$2 trillion to US budgetary costs.

Conquering Iran would be a much more serious undertaking than subduing Iraq. Iraq has a population of 45 million. Iran’s population is 92 million, double Iraq’s. Although Iraq had caused Britain problems during colonial days, it had never really engaged in a serious Middle East conflict until the Iran-Iraq war, which ended in a stalemate. Iraq’s army could intimidate smaller countries in the region, but it didn’t really amount to that much as an organized force.

Iran, on the other hand, eventually proved itself to not only have an impressive military capability but also an effective strategy and an astonishing capacity to develop formidable allies including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and the Houthis in Yemen.

Iran trains Hezbollah

During an Israeli incursion into Lebanon in 2006, Israeli troops were surprised to discover that the Hezbollah troops had become much more formidable than in the past. They had received professional training from Iran. Faced with unexpectedly high losses, the Israelis pulled out of Lebanon.

When Saddam mounted his invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, I was in Saudi Arabia. The concern was that Saddam’s military force would simply knife through Kuwait and grab the oil fields in northeast Saudi Arabia. There was literally nothing to stop him. The US flew the 82nd Airborne Division into Saudi Arabia to provide a blocking force. What no one knew at the time was that the US paratroopers only had enough ammunition to hold out for 48 hours. The rest was a bluff. The US flew in fighter-bombers and stationed them on the Saudi runway. Reporters flying into Saudi Arabia were paraded past the stationed aircraft in order to create the impression that the US presence was much stronger than it actually was.

Saddam looked like toast, but this time around the real bluff was American. It took six months, from August until January, before the US felt that it really had enough force in place to take out Saddam’s army. When the American onslaught finally happened, Iraqi prisoners-of-war, delighted to be removed from the action, asked their American captors, “What took you so long?”

It is pretty obvious that that would not be the case in Iran, particularly if the administration thinks that what Iran really wants is to go back to the Pahlavi monarchy. Trump, who likes to act on instinct, has suggested that the US might engage in “regime change” by knocking out Iran’s Supreme Guide, Ali Khamenei. Eliminating Khamenei and the current government, however, would simply clear the way for Iran’s brutal Revolutionary Guard to seize power without Islamic pretensions. The result could be another version of Saddam Hussein, only this time the dictatorship would be equipped with the basic knowledge needed to acquire a workable bomb.

Disintegration likely

If the IRG isn’t able to take power, the country could very likely disintegrate into outright civil war with competing tribes and clans killing each other, convinced that supremacy is necessary for their own survival. The result could very likely be an exodus of refugees spreading throughout the Middle East. That would destabilize the entire region, which still remains the source of a significant portion of the world’s energy supply. Stopping the flow of energy would lead to the spread of chaos throughout the entire world. In any case, as we learned in Iraq, bombing does not make dangerous troublemakers disappear; it simply encourages them to move somewhere else.

The mistake that was made in the Iraq war by Bush’s plenipotentiary, L. Paul Bremer, was to dismiss Saddam’s administration and the Iraqi Army’s officer corps without bothering to consider what they would do next or where they would go. That mistake cost thousands of American lives, not to mention the destitution of what remained of Iraq.

George W. Bush had at least had a few advisers, who, if occasionally misguided, were unquestionably intelligent. Donald Trump is not even there. We now have a director of national intelligence whose qualification is the fact that she is a former US Army nurse. She has no experience with intelligence at all, and it is questionable whether she even knows what intelligence is. We have a secretary of defense whose qualification is a bit of brief service as a part-time member of the National Guard followed by part-time work as a weekend anchorman on Fox News. The Trump administration is flying blind. As far as any real national defense goes, the US is naked.

A British friend once said that America’s approach to the rest of the world is like handing a loaded shotgun to a toddler and waiting to see what happens next. That description fits Trump perfectly. It is a safe bet that anyone who knows the Middle East will rejoice if Trump pulls yet another TACO and finds an off-ramp, sidestepping what could turn out to be another unnecessary disaster in a region that has known plenty of them. If he gets it wrong, Trump will have lost, but we will all be losers along with him.

William Thatcher Dowell has reported on the Middle East for NBC, ABC News, and Time Magazine, reporting on the Iranian Revolution, the Civil War in Beirut, and drought and famine in Africa. He was Time Magazine’s Middle East Correspondent from 1989 through 1992. During that period, he traveled throughout the Arab world and covered Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, Operation Desert Storm, and the aftermath. This is adapted from his Substack blog, A Different Place.

When a girls’ school in the southern Iranian city of Minab was struck yesterday, apparently accidentally, on the opening day of the latest phase of hostilities between the United States, Israel, and Iran, killing dozens of children, the world saw more than a tragic act of wartime collateral damage. What was hit was not a military target, but a civilian institution. It is nonetheless emblematic of a deeper and far more dangerous logic unfolding in this conflict: a campaign that goes beyond forcing regime change, toward destroying Iran’s political, military and societal capacity to challenge or threaten the United States or Israel ever again.

What the US wants

This war is not merely about removing a government from Tehran and remaking the state. For Washington and Jerusalem, the imperative appears to be ensuring that Iran, as a geopolitical and strategic entity, never rises again as a competitor or challenger. This logic extends far beyond the conventional goal of regime change into what is effectively a strategy of total societal destruction.

Why is this necessary? Even if the regime can be toppled, there is no guarantee that a new regime, even if not ‘Islamist’ or ‘revolutionary, would necessarily be pro-US and pro-Israel. How can it be ensured that Iran never becomes a threat? The US and Israel seem keen to punish Iranian society, forcing it into a situation where it has no other option but to struggle for its survival.

With tragic clarity, such an objective vis-à-vis Iran closely mirrors Israeli strategy—fully backed by the US—in Palestine. Israel targeted, indiscriminately, everything in Palestine: schools, universities, libraries, hospitals, children, women, and unarmed civilians of all kinds. The target was not just Hamas. It was the Palestinian people and society. It is not a coincidence that the larger number of those killed were children. Israel forced the Palestinian society into a severe generational crisis.

Keeping this in mind, Trump’s announcement that “bombs will be dropping everywhere in Iran” reveals a similar pattern of obliteration. But Palestinian society is merely 6 million people as compared with the 93 million Iranians. The latter is a far more complex, larger, and proud society with deep historical roots. Can these objective factors be undone through massive bombing campaigns?

Disaster in Afghanistan

The US and its allies tried this model in Afghanistan in recent history. They spent more than US$2 trillion over two decades only to bring, ironically, the same group/regime back to power that the NATO alliance had sought to overthrow when it began its campaign in 2001.

The war in Afghanistan was still fairly contained. Although it extended to Pakistan, the war in Iran will extend far beyond Iran’s borders. For one thing, Tehran understands the nature of US-Israeli objectives. Its pattern of retaliation shows this understanding rather unambiguously. Without wasting any time, Tehran decided to launch missile strikes on almost all Gulf states. Latest reports show Dubai and Abu Dhabi under attack. If the regime is to survive, it appears to be ready to match the indiscriminate bombing of its people and military and political leadership and infrastructure with an equally indiscriminate bombing of Gulf states and their shiny capitals. Tehran is ready to inflict maximum pain, a tactic that it must have decided to adopt long before today’s attacks.

But the scope of this pain will not remain confined to the Gulf region. Latest reports show that Tehran has closed the Strait of Hormuz, not a mere symbolic gesture. It is a strategic lever with global consequences: roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and massive volumes of liquefied natural gas pass through this narrow chokepoint. By signaling that no vessel will be allowed safe passage, Iran is demonstrating both its capacity and willingness to escalate the conflict far beyond its borders.

This is a message to Washington, Jerusalem, and the global market alike: any attack on Iran will not remain contained within its territory. The economic shockwaves of a blocked Strait would be felt worldwide, amplifying the stakes and underscoring the extraordinary risks of pursuing a campaign aimed at societal annihilation rather than mere regime change.

The Middle East Remade

Meanwhile, the US and Israel appear prepared for a much longer and more expansive conflict than that in 2025. For both powers, at stake is not just Iran’s leadership or nuclear capability, but the future geopolitical architecture of the entire Middle East. Since the Abraham Accords — which began normalizing relations between Israel and several Gulf/Arab states — the stated aim of Washington and Jerusalem was to reshape the region along lines that would establish enduring Israeli hegemony.

Yet this vision has been repeatedly undermined. The resistance by Iran-aligned groups such as Hamas, particularly during the October 7 attacks, exposed deep fractures in any narrative of normalization. The subsequent Israeli war on Palestine demonstrated that peace cannot be sewn on the foundation of unchecked state violence without addressing core political grievances.

Even previously reluctant states like Saudi Arabia, long courted for normalization with Israel, have been forced to recalibrate their stance. The idea of a regional order anchored in unconditional alignment with Washington and Jerusalem faltered amid widespread regional and global expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian cause and broader regional public opinion. It ultimately pushed US and Israeli strategists toward a more radical option: eradicating Iran’s geopolitical influence altogether, thereby compelling reluctant Gulf states into acquiescence.

The war on Iran thus cannot be viewed in isolation. It began long ago and reached a critical phase when Israel and the US obliterated Iranian influence in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen to a large extent. The war is part of a broader strategic ambition to remake the Middle East’s political landscape, not merely in terms of governments in Tehran or Riyadh, but of alliances, energy flows, and global power competition. Were Iran’s capacity to influence region wholly dismantled, Gulf states might find themselves compelled into closer alignment with US–Israeli security frameworks, reshaping regional politics and containing the influence of rival powers such as China and Russia. (Once remade in this way, the US can safely focus more on China in the Indo-Pacific region.)

This would represent not just a military conquest but an ideological one – the subjugation of an entire regional order in favor of a hegemonic configuration centered on US-Israeli interests. But the logic of annihilation has a cost. In Afghanistan, replacing one regime with another didn’t create stability, it undermined it. In Iraq and Libya, dismantling existing structures without building equitable governance produced vacuums that empowered extremist factions. If the aim in Iran is comprehensive destruction of state and society, the consequences are likely to be far worse than the US or its allies appear to have imagined.

If Iran falls, the consequences will almost certainly radiate throughout the Gulf region, exacerbating sectarian fault lines that are already fragile. Sunni-Shia divides, long manipulated by both local and external actors, would likely intensify, creating fertile ground for unrest in countries that the US and Israel currently view as strategic partners. Monarchies such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE, could find themselves fighting internal and external battles for survival.

Far from consolidating the “new” Middle East that Washington and Jerusalem envision, the collapse of Iran could instead destabilize these states, undermining the very alliances the US and Israel hope to leverage for regional hegemony. In short, the intended outcome — secure, compliant partners under US-Israeli influence — could transform into a region-wide crisis, where sectarian conflict becomes both a political weapon and a strategic liability.

Dr. Salman Rafi Sheikh is Asia Sentinel’s diplomatic correspondent.

The South Korean arms-maker Hanwha Aerospace last week broke ground on a production facility in Romania, marking its first defense manufacturing base in Europe. Initially tasked with the production of self-propelled howitzers and automatic ammunition resupply vehicles, Hanwha plans for scalable expansion to infantry fighting vehicles, unmanned ground vehicles and precision-guided weapons systems.

“Hanwha is embedding itself within Europe’s defense industrial base as a permanent, long-term industrial partner — contributing to sovereign capability, supply resilience, and regional security,” Hanwha says on its website, adding that the new facility will be “reinforcing NATO’s Eastern Flank industrial resilience.”

Since the invasion of Ukraine, the “Zeitenwende”— its rearmament drive that marks a historic reversal of Germany’s previously cautious arms procurement policy – has presented European governments with challenges beyond merely pushing up defense budgets. The arms industry is grappling with production bottlenecks, delayed delivery schedules and limited scalability, hindering its ability to meet urgent capacity needs and long-term NATO commitments. The manager of a German defense industry supplier, after visiting a factory where armored wheeled vehicles for Germany’s previously cautious arms procurement policy, told Asia Sentinel most of the workers he met were near-retirement age, counting the days until they can mothball their work overalls for good.

“The company wants to increase that plant’s output from one vehicle per month to 10, but to me it’s unimaginable that those guys would be putting up with all the new training courses and overtime hours needed for that,” the manager said.

With the US shouldering the bulk of European defense for nearly 70 years, the domestic industry is faced with its most significant expansion since the Cold War, driven by an urgent need to support Ukraine and enhance security. But, as the German defense industry manager acknowledged, it faces severe logjams. The industry is largely fragmented among 27 smaller, often protectionist domestic markets, limiting economies of scale and leading to higher costs per unit compared to the US with its behemoth “Big Five” prime contractors—Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Boeing.

Enter South Korea, which has emerged as a key partner. Driven by the persistent threat from North Korea, the South Koreans have developed a high-scale, export-ready defense sector optimized for maximum output and rapid deployment. The country is aiming to become the world’s fourth-largest arms exporter by next year, with annual export contracts projected to have reached US$24 billion in 2025, a significant jump from US$14 billion in 2023. The combined order backlog for major firms like Hanwha Aerospace, Hyundai Rotem and KAI, with key exports including the K9 Thunder howitzer, K2 Black Panther tank, FA-50 light combat aircraft, and Cheongung II (MSAM) air defense systems, surpassed W111.9 trillion [US$80.7] billion last year.

The first European country choosing Korean arms-makers for major deals was Poland, which since 2022 has been in the process of acquiring up to 1,000 K2 Black Panther tanks from Hyundai Rotem to modernize its land forces. Poland is also buying the Chunmoo rocket launcher system from Hanwha and has signed a contract with the Koreans for local missile production. In December the Chunmoo system was sold also to Estonia. It marked Estonia’s second major defense procurement from Hanwha, following the successful acquisition of K9 self-propelled howitzers.

Analysts say Estonia’s decision to procure Hanwha’s Chunmoo over the US’s HIMARS, and Germany’s KNDS and Rheinmetall wasn’t a surprise against the backdrop of political tensions between Trump’s US and European capitals.

“EU and US relations seem changed, and solid partners are now looking for ways to work together in the future,” said Ramil Lipp, an Estonian defense expert and former manager at the Estonian Center of Defense Investments, which handles the country’s military procurement. “Economically, Chunmoo for sure has a competitive price tag, even if we do not know the exact prices that were offered to Estonia.”

Lipp added that delivery times for rocket artillery from different producers are quite long and that the Estonians were told publicly that Hanwha will invest into Estonia’s defense industry, which, he said, “is a highly valued perspective in a world that is becoming more complex and has tense logistical constraints. “

Norway, for its part, ordered the Chunmoo in early February. “The Chunmoo and its associated missiles, from open sources, is a tier 1 system with comparable attributes to the other competitors but Hanwha won across the totality of criteria, including platform quality, cost, delivery times and support,” said Ian Bowers, Professor of International Security at Norwegian Defense University College (FHS). “Further, the European system was not yet ready, particularly with the 500km missile range that Norway specified, and HIMARS was probably expensive and would likely take a longer time to deploy.” Norway’s deal confirms that Hanwha is now a major player in Europe’s land domain arms market, Bowers added.

Germany, which is striving to build Europe’s largest conventional forces, is also open to Korean offers.

“Recent arms deliveries to European countries show that South Korea offers Germany a realistic option to quickly bridge capacity deficits, such as artillery systems, ammunition or armored vehicles,” Eric Ballbach, a fellow of the Korea Foundation at the Foundation for Science and Politics (SWP), wrote in a recent opinion piece in the German daily Handelsblatt. “The country can thus fill exactly those gaps that the German and European arms industries cannot close for the foreseeable future. To Poland, South Korea delivered the first K2 tanks and K9 howitzers just 15 weeks after signing the contract.”

To a query by Asia Sentinel, a Hanwha spokesperson said the company is continuing its efforts to expand its footprint in Europe and is seeking to build strategic partnerships in Germany through strategic investments.

“We can provide comprehensive solutions across land, sea, air, and space domains, and are ready to establish various forms of cooperation tailored to customer needs,” the spokesperson said. “Among these areas, Hanwha is initially exploring business opportunities related to air defense, energetics, and deep-strike capabilities.”

Last October 15, another crack in the wall of American democracy, another date etched into the long chronicle of press freedom, and its erosion. Four months later, it is still difficult to process, its implications still spreading. On that day, the press corridor inside the Pentagon, one of the most powerful buildings on earth, went silent. …

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In the annals of international relations, paradigms rarely shift gradually; they shatter in moments of shock. January was one such watershed. Donald Trump, unburdened by reelection concerns and driven by a legacy mindset, discarded the mask of the traditional statesman to reveal the naked nature of 21st-century power: Politics…

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In early February 2026, the 10th Singapore Airshow was held in Singapore. Marketed as the largest annual aerospace and defense exhibition, the airshow serves not only as a commercial event but also as a reflection of national defense industrial capabilities and broader geopolitical competition. Compared with the relatively region-focused defense exhibitions in Japan and South Korea, the Singapore Airshow targets a far more diverse global market, naturally attracting defense companies from different political and strategic camps.

China once again participated by renting exhibition space behind the main booths of the host company, ST Engineering. A large-scale model of the J-35 stealth fighter was on display. There were also live flight demonstrations by the People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s August 1st Aerobatic Team flying the J-10C. Chinese sources emphasized that the J-10C aircraft flew to Singapore using aerial refueling throughout the journey, and during the airshow conducted multiple formation flights.

However, aviation enthusiasts attending the event noted that the J-10C’s flight demonstration remained conservative, with no display of aggressive vertical climbs or high-angle-of-attack maneuvers. Some analysts argue that future air combat will place less emphasis on individual aircraft performance and more on cost-effective, system-of-systems operations. From this perspective, the J-10C’s restrained performance was intended to highlight its affordability and its suitability for helping budget-constrained countries rapidly establish an integrated air combat force.

This approach was also reflected in the participation of numerous Chinese civilian component suppliers, including manufacturers of bearings, seals, valves, and other defense supply chain products. At the same time, it was noticeable that the number of Chinese exhibitors had declined compared to previous years. This reduction appears to stem from increasing international procurement restrictions on non-Western supply chains, as well as tighter domestic government subsidies for overseas exhibitions. While Chinese products continue to enjoy price advantages, their target markets are increasingly focused on customers with limited defense budgets or those procuring consumable or expendable systems.

Unmanned systems remained a central focus of the airshow. The global UAV market is increasingly polarized. Companies such as Anduril Industries – well known for its frequent interactions with Taiwan – showcased UAVs integrating AI systems, stealth-oriented designs, and extensive use of carbon-fiber composite materials, such as the “Fury” drone, developed to support fifth-generation fighter “loyal wingman” concepts.

However, lessons drawn from the war in Ukraine and recent conflicts in the Middle East have highlighted that unmanned platforms are no longer primarily reusable assets, but increasingly function as expendable munitions for one-way attack missions. As a result, the ability to mass-produce systems quickly and at low cost has become a critical factor. In the small- and medium-sized UAV segment, trends include the use of 3D-printed modular components, simplified operating procedures, and designs that allow operators with minimal training to deploy systems rapidly. These developments reflect the growing emphasis on low-cost, attritable unmanned capabilities.

In response to demographic challenges such as declining birth rates, many exhibitors also showcased solutions aimed at maximizing manpower efficiency and reducing training costs. Virtual-reality–based training simulators and more intuitive, human-centered control interfaces were notable highlights of the exhibition.

In the field of counter-UAV systems, attention extended beyond electronic warfare and signal jamming. A key focus was on how to counter low-cost drones using equally cost-effective defensive methods. Concepts on display included the integration of proximity fuzes – first developed during World War II – with AI technologies and modern intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems. Using drones to intercept other drones was also presented as a viable option.

These approaches, however, significantly increase demands on power generation and energy management. Improving energy efficiency, reducing system weight through advanced materials engineering, and enhancing system integration and autonomous control were recurring themes, particularly at Japanese exhibitors’ booths, where civil–military technological integration was clearly evident.

Beyond the defense industry, Singapore also hosted its first Space Summit (Space Summit 2026) during the airshow and announced the establishment of the Singapore National Space Agency (NSAS) in April. Organizers indicated that future Singapore Airshows will increasingly integrate space technologies.

Some observers question whether Singapore truly requires a dedicated space strategy, unlike major powers such as the United States and China, or regional actors like Japan, South Korea, and India. However, modern space strategies no longer demand the high costs or dedicated launch facilities of the past. In particular, the deployment of low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites and other small satellites can be supported through commercial providers and international cooperation, significantly reducing entry barriers and costs.

LEO satellite communications are expected to be one of the primary motivations behind Singapore’s establishment of a national space agency. In terms of resilience, Singapore shares concerns similar to those of Taiwan: whether redundant communication systems can be maintained under attack or persistent gray-zone pressure. LEO satellite communications are directly relevant to these resilience challenges.

These developments suggest that future Singapore Airshows will expand further in scale and scope, attracting a broader range of military and civilian participants. As global aerospace and defense supply chains undergo restructuring, companies are no longer evaluating partners solely on cost considerations. Resilience, political reliability, and geopolitical alignment are becoming equally important. For many firms, these shifts also represent new opportunities to enter or reposition themselves within the evolving defense industrial landscape.

Dr. Ying Yu Lin is an associate professor at the Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies at Tamkang University in New Taipei City, Taiwan, and a research fellow at the Association of Strategic Foresight. This article is the result of a cooperative sharing agreement with The Diplomat, the Tokyo-based current-affairs magazine for the Asia-Pacific region.

The recent wave of coordinated attacks by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) across more than 10 cities in the troubled province of Balochistan, which takes up 44 percent of the entire country of Pakistan, wasn’t just another insurgent spectacle; it was a clear strategic escalation. The scale, timing, and coordination of the assaults showed that the province’s long-running conflict has entered a more dangerous phase. What was once a localized separatist insurgency has evolved into a crowded militant ecosystem, where ethnic rebels, jihadist outfits, and transnational networks now intersect.

In 2025, there were 1557 attacks in the province. This is not merely a security crisis. It is the accumulated consequence of decades of political neglect, economic extraction, and an overreliance on military force in a province that demanded political accommodation instead. It has significant international implications including suspicions of Indian conniving, with threats to the security of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, and bears on relations with Iran and Afghanistan, with insurgents often operating across porous borders.

The Escalation That Changed the Equation

The BLA offensive marks one of the largest coordinated attacks in the province in years. Militants struck security installations, civilian targets and government infrastructure across multiple cities, triggering days of fighting and leaving dozens of civilians and security personnel dead. Pakistani forces responded, claiming to kill more than 200 militants, according to official accounts. But the sheer scale and synchronization of the attacks surprised analysts, contradicting earlier claims that the separatist militancy was under control. These claims were reflected in the more than 75,000 intelligence-based operations Pakistan conducted in 2025 only. Pakistan military called 2025 a “landmark” year.

The insurgency is not new. Baloch separatist groups have fought the state in multiple phases since the early years of Pakistan. Yet the current phase, ongoing since the early 2000s, has become more urban, more technologically adaptive, and more willing to target infrastructure and foreign investments. What distinguishes the latest attacks from the past is not just their brutality, but their coordination – evidence of improved planning, communications and recruitment capacity among insurgent networks.

This shift exposes the limits of a strategy that has relied overwhelmingly on kinetic force. For more than two decades, successive governments have treated Balochistan primarily as a security problem. The results are visible: cycles of insurgency, heavy militarization, and persistent political alienation.

Separatist Insurgency to Militant Convergence

One clear outcome of this failure is that Balochistan is no longer just a theater of ethnic separatism. It has become a crossroads of multiple militant currents. Recent reporting indicates that the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has expanded its presence in the province, establishing operational networks beyond its traditional strongholds and making inroads into ethnic politics. This development signals a growing overlap between ethnic and jihadist militant spheres. The Islamic State–Khorasan Province (IS-K) has also demonstrated an operational footprint in Balochistan. For instance, an IS-K bombing targeting a bus carrying Balochistan Constabulary personnel in Mastung in April 2025 killed three and injured twenty others. This was not an isolated phenomenon. Security reports note that major militant organizations—including the TTP, BLA, and IS-K—collectively account for the overwhelming majority of terrorist deaths in Pakistan.

The presence of these diverse actors creates an unusual convergence. The BLA is an ethno-nationalist insurgent group seeking independence. TTP and IS-K are jihadist organizations with transnational ideological agendas. They share little ideological affinity. Yet they now intersect around overlapping targets. The BLA has repeatedly targeted Chinese projects and personnel, including the port in Gwadar, accusing Beijing of exploiting Balochistan’s resources. The TTP and IS-K, meanwhile, frame China as an enemy due to its policies toward Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.

The result is a convergence of operational interests, even without formal alliances. Each group benefits from the instability created by the others. In such an environment, Balochistan becomes less an ethnic insurgency zone and more a multi-layered militant ecosystem. This evolution dramatically raises the stakes. It turns a domestic political conflict into a node within wider regional jihadist and geopolitical rivalries.

Regional Tensions and Externalization of the Conflict

Pakistan’s deteriorating relations with the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan have further complicated the situation. Islamabad has repeatedly accused Afghanistan of serving as a sanctuary for militants, including BLA, targeting Pakistan. Recent reports on the Balochistan attacks note official Pakistani claims that militants were operating from across the Afghan border.

At the same time, the regional geopolitical environment has grown more volatile. Pakistan’s tensions with India, particularly following the Pahalgam attack and the brief India-Pakistan war in 2025, have deepened mutual suspicions. Pakistani officials have long alleged Indian support for Baloch insurgents, often claiming such assistance flows through Afghan territory. Recent statements following the BLA attacks again pointed to alleged Indian involvement, though without publicly presented evidence. These claims are difficult to verify independently. Yet the strategic logic is clear: when domestic conflicts persist unresolved, they invite regional interference—something that Pakistan itself did from the late 1980s onwards in the Indian held Kashmir as well.

A thaw in India-Afghanistan relations creates new diplomatic space. Combined with Pakistan-Afghanistan tensions, it increases the possibility—real or perceived—of proxy maneuvering. In such a setting, Balochistan risks becoming a geopolitical battleground. While separatist insurgents frame their struggle in ethnic and economic terms, Jihadist groups exploit the security vacuum, and regional rivals see opportunities to exert pressure. The conflict thus shifts from a primarily internal dispute to a multi-layered regional contest.

Ignoring the problems

But Pakistan’s response is not finding a cure for underlying structural drives, decades of Baloch marginalization and separatism. Pakistan, on the other hand, wants to introduce another layer of geopolitics into the region. This was reflected in Islamabad’s recently reported offer to Washington to build a port in Balochistan’s Pasni region. This port would ostensibly help the US import rare earth minerals from Pakistan. It would use American presence in the region as a deterrent against Afghanistan’s and India’s support for BLA and TTP. Any attack on American interests could draw the US military into the conflict.

China, on the other hand, has never shown any interest in committing its military resources to addressing the problem. Pakistan has not been keen to develop such an alliance with China, i.e., allowing China to establish a security footprint within Pakistan. Whether or not the US will develop a port in Pakistan remains to be seen, but Pakistan’s moves clearly show that it remains disinterested in resolving the conflict through political means.

Province at the Crossroads

In short, Balochistan today sits at the intersection of insurgency, regional rivalry and great-power interests. It is no longer just a troubled province; it has become a strategic space where militants, neighboring states, and external actors all pursue their own agendas. In such a crowded environment, every new security operation or foreign partnership risks adding another layer to an already complex conflict.

The deeper danger is that the original political dispute—over autonomy, resources, and representation—will be buried beneath these competing calculations. What began as provincial grievance in the early 1950s could harden into a permanent arena of proxy competition, with no clear path back to a political settlement. This trajectory carries long-term consequences for Pakistan’s federal structure. A province managed primarily through security doctrines and external alignments cannot become politically stable. It instead turns into a guarded frontier, strategically vital but perpetually unsettled.

Avoiding that outcome requires Islamabad to rethink what stability in Balochistan means. It cannot be defined solely by fewer attacks or more investment. It must rest on credible institutions, genuine provincial ownership, and a political process that restores trust between the center and the province. Without such a shift, Balochistan will remain a contested geopolitical space rather than a stable part of the federation.

As Myanmar marks five years since the February 2021 coup d’etat that ended representative democracy, the country’s civil war shows little sign of de-escalating. The three-stage election cycle has concluded, and any retrospective must conclude that fighting during that month was less about “election-related violence” by all sides, and more followed the logic of pre-existing combat dynamics that have been shaped by years of expanding conflict, which has resulted in more than 3.5 million displaced people, an estimated 90,000 deaths on both sides, and nearly half the population requiring humanitarian assistance.

The election, with the final stage held on January 25 amid junta claims of overwhelming victory, occurred only in areas under military authority only with parties it approved, and has done nothing to assuage international condemnation of the junta, which has largely beggared the country, and has had no effect on Myanmar’s economic crisis. Inflation is projected to remain above 30 percent in 2026, with GDP continuing to contract.

A closer look at several battle fronts suggests that far from the stalemate some analysis has suggested, the conflict remains highly kinetic and the Myanmar military’s counteroffensives over the past year have produced mixed results. Following the success of Operation 1027 in October 2023, members of the Three Brotherhood Alliance and multiple People’s Defense Force (PDFs) seized large swaths of territory and inflicted heavy casualties on military regime forces, known as the Tatmadaw. Phase 2 of the operation in 2024 saw the capture of major cities such as Lashio and Mogok in the north, although these cities were then relinquished following the intervention last year of a China increasingly concerned over its border security and its economic projects in the country.

Counteroffensives win back some territory

Well-planned counter-offensives, bolstered by new recruits, advanced drone warfare, and more decentralized military tactical operations saw the army retake the towns of Nawnkgchio, Kyaukme and Hsipaw in Northern Shan State. The Mandalay rebel defense force was also forced to retreat from the township of Madaya north of Mandalay after heavy air strikes accompanied by ground troops exerted too much pressure on the resistance forces, who retreated into the hills.

The rebel Kachin Independence Army (KIA) has still failed to take the strategic town of Bhamo on the Ayeyarwady River since besieging the area in late 2024. Air strikes and heavy artillery bombardment, plus air and river resupply, have, for the time being, bolstered the Tatmadaw army defenses. Perhaps one of the most notable reversals of fortune has been in Kayah State and Southern Shan State, where multiple Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) have lost territory over the past year to methodical army advances.

In January, 80 Myanmar military prisoners of war staged a dramatic prison break in Kayah, stealing weapons and crossing into Thailand before being handed over to Myanmar authorities, suggesting activist narratives of collapsing army morale in the past few years to be questionable at best.

Some rebel progress

Yet elsewhere, setbacks for the multiple rebel ethnic organizations and defense forces are less pronounced. Indeed, progress is being made. In Rakhine State, the Arakan Army (AA) has not just held onto territory it captured between 2023-2014, but has edged closer to the state capitol of Sittwe and the major port area of Kyaukphyu: at some points AA forces were just kilometers from the town center of Sittwe. It remains to be seen if the AA will take these twin offensives to fully overrun both locations, and likely invite punitive air strikes, but China’s major investments in Kyaukphyu will be a decisive factor. The AA has also expanded its governance and service delivery across the majority of the state it controls.

To the north of Rakhine State, the AA and multiple PDF allies it trained and equipped are continuing an incremental advance into Magwe Region, threatening the network of Defense Services Factories (Ka Pa Sa). The AA appears to be pursuing a gradual offensive of clearing army outposts along key roads, taking its time advancing instead of a risky ‘thunder run’ to key urban centers. To the west, the AA allied Chin Brotherhood (CB) has managed to dent army advances into Chin State.

The Karen National Union (KNU) spent 2025 finishing its years-long operation clearing out almost all Myanmar army bases along the border with Thailand: in time to mark its 77th anniversary of revolution against the central state, the longest continuous insurgency in the world. In neighboring Bago Region, PDFs backed by the KNU have expanded attacks against army outposts in multiple locations around the Sittang River in January. Thousands of civilians have reportedly been displaced.

New alliance bolsters rebels

But perhaps the most notable news on the rebel front has been the formation of the Spring Revolution Alliance (SRA) in December. This group’s 19 PDFs into one umbrella organization, including the Karenni National Defense Force (KNDF), the Bamar People’s Liberation Army (BPLA), the CB and groups from the Yaw Valley region in Magwe Region, and ethnic Mon, Pa-O and Danu resistance forces.

Notably, many of the members of the SRA have been trained by the Arakan Army and other members of the Three Brotherhood Alliance over the past three years, including the Ta-ang and Kokang armed groups from Northern Shan State. These are powerful benefactors. The composition of the alliance makes them a formidable national military player, as well as symbolically diverse but ‘networked’ in ways the exiled National Unity Government (NUG) has failed to achieve since 2021.

The widely respected KNDF commander Khun Bedu is the SRA’s official spokesperson, who told The Irrawaddy magazine in an interview that “we’ll operate across Sagaing, Magwe, Bago, Chin, Mon and K(ayin). Now the junta has gained an advantage through drones, we’re upgrading our own drone capabilities and other technologies to ensure the revolution can advance nationwide with greater strength. We don’t plan to seize or govern one specific territory. Rather, our purpose is to build a strong, interconnected alliance capable of working collectively across all regions.”

Khun Bedo was at pains to downplay speculation that the new alliance was a rebuke to the National Unity Government coalition, which is facing intensifying criticism for its failures in coordinating the kaleidoscope of resistance forces. But the Spring alliance formation was greeted by renewed optimism, especially among the younger generation of post-coup fighters and their supporters, and the kind of innovation many people in Myanmar, exhausted by five years of war, wanted to see. But just as the military regime is not close to collapse, neither are its opponents down for the count. Armed conflict across Myanmar looks set to persist for some time.

David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst working on conflict, humanitarian and human rights issues in Myanmar and a regular contributor to Asia Sentinel

Japan is entering a consequential phase in its national security planning. As Tokyo moves toward an early revision of its three core security documents – the National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, and Defense B…

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The Saturday sacking of China’s second-most-powerful military leader, General Zhang Youxia, and another top Chinese general, Liu Zhenli, has awakened speculation that the two had sought to pull off a coup against Chinese President Xi Jinping and comes at the expense of a weakened and unsettled People’s Liberation Army (PLA), possibly narrowing the prospect of an invasion of the recalcitrant island of Taiwan.

It is the latest in a series of purges of Chinese military officers since 2023 that has wracked the Chinese military, with at least 70 arrested over a corruption scandal in the elite rocket force. On June 29, 2024, Asia Sentinel reported that two former defense ministers, General Li Shangfu and General Wei Fenghe, were prosecuted and expelled from the Chinese Communist Party.

At 3 PM Beijing time on January 24, China’s Ministry of Defense announced that Zhang and Liu were being investigated for “serious violations of party discipline and the law.” Although scores of senior Chinese officers have been taken down since 2023, Zhang is the most powerful military chief to be purged since the 1971 falling out between Mao Zedong and Marshal Lin Biao, a defense minister and heir to Mao. The charges are not only about corruption but also disloyalty to Xi, according to an editorial in the PLA Daily published around 11 PM Beijing on January 24. The editorial said, “The resolute investigation of Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli is a major victory of the struggle against corruption of the party and military.”

“As senior officers of the party and military, Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli seriously betrayed the trust of the party center and the Central Military Commission, seriously trampled upon their responsibilities in the Central Military Commission, severely affected the party’s control of the military, damaged the party on political and corruption issues,” the editorial disclosed.

The Central Military Commission (CMC) is the small group of China’s most powerful military leaders. Xi is the CMC chairman, with Zhang until recently vice chairman, and Liu a member.

“Seems Xi has removed all hindrances to remaining emperor, but at the expense of unity and normalcy,” Willy Lam, a senior fellow of the Jamestown Foundation, a US think tank, told Asia Sentinel. “He can only depend on rising stars who know how to flatter him, but whose military efficacy is dubious. Most generals with experience have been removed. Taiwan is safe for the moment.”

“Xi sees Zhang Youxia as a real threat. He must have gotten enough support to get rid of [him]. Xi will have a greater mandate and confidence facing Trump,” said a source who asked not to be named.

The PLA Daily editorial hinted more heads will roll, saying the elimination of the “ice” of corruption in the PLA “is not a day’s work” and the digging into corruption is getting deeper.

More arrests are likely, agreed David Tsai, a US-based China watcher, in a January 24 tweet: “The arrests were carried out like a shocking military mutiny. Next, a large number of lieutenant generals, major generals, and even division-level officers will be arrested as well.”

Just a year ago, the CMC had six members including General He Weidong, Admiral Miao Hua, Zhang and Liu. The current purge means only Xi and General Zhang Shengmin areleft, leaving a significantly thinned and unsettled high command. Zhang Shengmin oversees anti-corruption investigations within the PLA, so he was probably Xi’s tool to take down Zhang Youxia and Liu.

He Weidong and Miao Hua, two former Xi allies, were purged last year, Asia Sentinel reported last June 5, in a downfall that bears the hallmarks of a power struggle between Xi and Zhang Youxia – leaving Zhang, after the removal of He and Miao, to be purged in turn. Zhang and Liu Zhenli were the only members of the CMC with significant combat experience. Removing them leaves the PLA high command with less seasoned leadership, a level of disruption that could cause confusion and dysfunction in decision-making, particularly in a potential wartime scenario. The need to purge top-ranking loyalists suggests a deep trust deficit within the PLA, with political loyalty prioritized over operational readiness.

Dennis Wilder, a professor at Georgetown University, tweeted on January 24, “This is definitely the CCP equivalent of the Nazi ‘night of the long knives.’ Zhang’s real crime. Becoming all powerful in the military after destroying the He Weidong network…. Xi wants his fourth term, and nothing will stand in his way.”

Xi is currently serving a third term, breaking the rule laid down by the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping that limited the tenure of China’s leaders to two five-year terms.

Ironically, Xi and Zhang were childhood friends. Zhang Youxia’s father, Zhang Zongxun, was a founding member of the PLA and served alongside Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun, in the Chinese Civil War. The Xis and Zhangs hailed from the same province of Shaanxi.

“How do you convince Xi that his childhood bestie is threat to him? Who would dare to do it? What would be their incentives?,” tweeted Victor Shih, Director of the 21^st Century China Center of the University of California at San Diego, on January 24. “This is shocking to me. I had thought that He Weidong was the Lin Biao figure, but it turns out to be Zhang Youxia, one of Xi’s oldest friends who helped him consolidate power. I just can’t believe that corruption alone did this.”

Trump’s National Defense Strategy

Hours before the Chinese Defense Ministry announced the investigation of Liu and Zhang, the US Department of War released its National Defense Strategy, which doesn’t even mention Taiwan. The report said the US will “deter China in the Indo-Pacific through strength, not confrontation.” President Trump, it said, “seeks a stable peace, fair trade, and respectful relations with China, and he has shown that he is willing to engage President Xi Jinping directly to achieve those goals. But President Trump has also shown how important it is to negotiate from a position of strength.”

The de-escalation also demonstrates the Trump administration’s worldview of the planet as divided into distinct spheres of interest dominated by Russia, China and the United States, each of which allows the other to live and let live. The US will support “strategic stability with Beijing as well as deconfliction and de-escalation, more generally. But we will also be clear-eyed and realistic about the speed, scale, and quality of China’s historic military buildup. Our goal in doing so is not to dominate China; nor is it to strangle or humiliate them. Rather, our goal is simple: To prevent anyone, including China, from being able to dominate us or our allies,” it added.