Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig – The New Domino Crisis: Iran, Ukraine, Taiwan

Dominoes might be a child’s game, but not when it involves international relations. President Biden is now learning that game quickly, as he’s faced with a particularly acute case of “dominotis.”

Three serious threats comprise this game of dominoes, emanating from America’s three greatest contemporary “enemies” – two erstwhile superpowers and the third a regional hegemonic wannabe. First and foremost is China with its increasing saber-rattling regarding Taiwan for which China has never relinquished its claim of being part and parcel of the mainland. The United States has been democratic Taiwan’s stalwart ally and strongly supports its independence, albeit not with any formal mutual defense treaty. Clearly, America will not send troops to Taiwan in case of a Communist Chinese attack, but it will try every other way to lend support, militarily (arms) and diplomatically (alliances with other East Asian countries). The question for President Biden, then, is simple: how to convince the Chinese not to attack Taiwan?

Iran does not constitute a superpower threat to the U.S., but it is even more belligerent in its region, threatening Sunni Arab states and Israel alike – all close allies of the United States. Here the problem is not a military attack but rather the development of a nuclear weapon capability that would destabilize the entire Middle East and ultimately threaten the very existence of Israel. Making the situation even more complicated for Biden is the possibility that Israel might attack Iran’s nuclear development plants – as it did against Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007. So how to convince Iran to agree to a broader treaty than that signed in 2015? And barring that, Biden has to ask himself, should the U.S. attack Iran’s nuclear program? Alternatively, should it give Israel the green light to Israel to attack Iran?

The Ukraine is a more recent ally of the West, which is part of the problem from the Russian standpoint. President Putin views the Ukraine as an integral, cultural and historical part of Russia (Russia came into being a thousand years ago in Kiev), and certainly part of Russia’s hegemonic realm. The Ukraine turning to the West is unacceptable to the Russians and they have now started massing a huge army on the Ukrainian border – this, after having invaded and “annexed” Crimea several years ago. Here too, as with Taiwan, Biden has made it clear that he will not send troops to fight the Russians (even though the Ukraine has pleaded for several years to join NATO) – but he has already warned Putin of placing even more severe economic sanctions on Russia, not to mention sending significant military aid to the Ukrainian army.

Which of these three crises counts the most for the U.S.? Israel might not like to hear it, but clearly it is Taiwan. First, China is easily the biggest (and really the only) threat to American world dominance. Enabling China to conquer Taiwan would send a very bad message to the rest of the Asian Pacific countries regarding trust in American willingness to defend democracies and allies (Secretary of State Blinken just visited the Far East to bolster its alliances, warning China to stop its aggressive actions in the region). This is especially necessary today in order to counteract America’s acute “image” problem resulting from its Afghanistan withdrawal embarrassment. Second, Taiwan is home to the largest semiconductor chip manufacturer in the world: TSMC, which holds significantly more than half (!) of the global, semiconductor market. With chips already in short supply around the world, a Chinese takeover of Taiwan would cause economic havoc in everything from computers to cars.

It is precisely here that the diplomatic triumvirate in the title becomes all too clear. For if Biden enables Russia to successfully invade and conquer the Ukraine (or further parts of it) in the very backyard of the West, he will have completely undercut his ability to stop Iran and China from doing what they intend to do close to their own home. The Ukraine case would then effectively offer the green light to Iran and China – crises that have far greater meaning to the United States.

We can therefore expect the U.S. Administration to play hardball in the more immediate crises – Ukraine and Iran – in order to send a clear message to China. Unless Biden is willing to completely give up U.S. global influence – and his recently initiated international “Summit for Democracy” shows that the president is very interested in shoring up the world’s democracies, not abandoning them – he has no choice but to be very firm with the Russians (albeit somewhat hamstrung by the understandable lack of willingness to send U.S. troops) and with Iran (politically more palatable, as any military action would be from a distance: bombers, cruise missiles etc., and not many soldiers on the ground, if at all).

In sum, standing up to Putin will make it that much easier to stand up to the Iranians – and that in turn would be far more convincing to the Chinese that the U.S. is not going to easily let China get its way regarding Taiwan. The Ukraine crisis might be the lesser of the three, but if its domino falls, the rest will go that much faster.

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