China always ends up winning when the United States goes to war

Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed also are those who stay out of trouble while the vainglorious and bloodthirsty go to war thinking they can dominate and win. Aggression almost never works out as intended, even with temporary success. More often than not, the warmongers don’t even achieve that much.
So good luck with imperialist-wannabes Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, and their latest war of aggression.
China will always stay out of other people’s fights. Never get entangled, never get involved. That’s why time and again, it says it doesn’t seek global dominance, despite Western propagandists’ claims to the contrary. That has been the secret sauce of China’s success.
How many times have you heard that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is a paper tiger, despite its hi-tech upgrade, because it hasn’t fought a proper war in decades? Or that Beijing is losing credibility and influence in the Middle East by not supporting Iran, which is not even an ally? Properly speaking, other than North Korea, China has no allies and therefore no military commitment.
It is no closer to Iran than, say, Brazil. Western warmongers actually want China to support Iran – and Russia – militarily so it can be discredited like the Soviets during the Cold War, but that’s the quiet part they can’t say out loud.
Well, let’s leave all the influence and credibility gaps in the Middle East to Trump and Netanyahu and see how far that gets them.
For Netanyahu, war is an end in itself; the trick is to maintain a permanent state of tension and conflict in the Middle East. A suspected war criminal who is also facing domestic charges of corruption, he knows only permanent war can keep him in power and likely out of jail.
As for Trump, despite his long-time disavowal of America’s foreign misadventures, he is now insisting on having one of his own, by bombing Iran a second time in less than a year. Like Netanyahu, a war in the Middle East also helps distract public attention from the unfolding paedophile Epstein scandal in the US that increasingly embroils Trump and his wife Melania.
The seductive power of militarism is like a drug. Once you have experienced its euphoria, it’s hard to resist. Venezuela was the watershed for the US president. But now, that feels like small beer, and Trump wants a greater high.
The trouble is, throughout America’s long history of foreign wars and invasions, far more experienced, educated and intelligent imperialists have tried and failed.
There is little evidence or reason to think Trump and his amateurish aides will fare better rather than much worse. Look up the CIA-staged coup that overthrew Iran’s democratically elected socialist government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 if you didn’t already know the history. That spectacularly “successful” coup laid the roots of the US’ unending troubles with Iran, and ultimately, with Israel as well.
The world may not like the brutal theocratic regime in Tehran. By suppressing its most recent waves of public protests, it may have committed mass killings. But outside the subservient West, no one supports the Israeli-US axis of unbridled aggression today. Even Arab leaders allied with the US are scared about being dragged into the war. Iran has been firing missiles at US military bases in their countries.
However the latest war turns out for Iran, it will further accelerate the loss of America’s global standing and credibility, low as they already are. It will especially accelerate the erosion of Israel’s moral standing and credibility with the American public.
While the American elites are still in bed with Israel, ordinary Americans are waking up to the high cost of unconditional support to their own country and its corruption of domestic politics.
Trump’s Maga (Make America great again) base with its “America first” mantra has been especially incensed and is breaking with the Republican Party establishment over its “Israel first and always” support. The Democrats, of course, are just as subservient to Israel.
So Beijing wins just “by waiting”, as a commentator wrote in the latest Foreign Affairs edition. If the US and Israel rely increasingly on nothing but brute force abroad, and censorship and repression at home, China looks more like a safe bet to the rest of the world.
The Chinese are patient in the way the American leadership is not. Trump has said things and acted in ways that completely negate other countries’ sovereignty and territorial integrity, long-standing international norms and law that are enshrined in the UN charter and supposedly held sacred by the West, at least when it comes to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Their support for the war on Iran gives the game away.
However, both principles are the bedrock of China’s foreign policy. If the PLA can’t fight a war like the American military, I say good on them. It’s not an army for aggression and invasion, but defence and deterrence. Washington’s absurd overinvestment in the military vastly distorts the domestic economy, undermines democracy, and sacrifices the well-being of ordinary Americans. China has learned never to engage in an arms race like the Soviets did. No war, no arms race – that is China’s wise statecraft.
Taiwan has long been Beijing’s Achilles’ heel, as mainland China may have to go to war over the island at some point. But thanks to Trump who has been weakening American support and threatening Taiwan’s key semiconductor industry, Beijing now has more options and time to sit it out.
For all the persistent Western propaganda about Chinese “debt traps”, Beijing is the one helping developing countries across the globe to build essential physical and telecommunication infrastructure for their economies to prosper. China trades with a majority of countries worldwide. Trump imposes tariffs on all of them.
Washington sanctions and bombs countries, and strangles their economies and starves their populations, if they act too defiantly. Venezuela and Iran today, your country tomorrow.
The disastrous Vietnam war forced Washington to bring China out of international isolation and handed it global recognition. The last time the United States went on a killing spree with its “war on terror” – by invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq – China emerged as the world’s second-largest economy.
Iran may prove another costly mistake for Washington. Beijing can just sit, wait and win.