America’s rivals are piling on the pressure all at once

Growing challenges to the world order

A big muscle flex came streaking across much of the Pacific this week when China fired its first intercontinental ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean in decades. Its flight path carried it as far as Hawaii.

The very public display, which was different from past testing, comes as China continues to strengthen and modernize its military and build up its growing nuclear force, of which its ICBMs are an important element.

The test also comes amid Chinese aggression and provocations against US allies like Japan and the Philippines, the latter of which has been in a months-long stand-off with China in the South China Sea.

China has also been running large-scale air and naval drills with Russia in the Western Pacific that Russian President Vladimir Putin has characterized as a challenge to the US-led world order.

“We pay special attention to strengthening military cooperation with friendly states,” Putin said at the start of the drills.

“Today, in the context of growing geopolitical tensions in the world, this is especially important,” he added. “We see that the United States of America is trying to maintain its global military and political dominance at any cost.”

The joint military drills in the Pacific were part of a larger series of naval exercises that Moscow held worldwide, including in the Arctic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, as Russia sought to flex its maritime power, which remains strong.

“It certainly speaks to the manner in which this partnership threatens European security and how it illustrates Iran’s destabilizing influence now reaches well beyond the Middle East,” he added.

Iran has also fueled conflicts in the volatile Middle East by arming and supporting proxy groups across the region, including Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which are fighting Israel, and the Houthis, who continue to relentlessly attack merchant shipping lanes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

Tehran and its militant proxies have criticized Israel’s highly destructive retaliatory attacks, using them as justification for further aggression. The US, a key Israeli partner, has attempted to rein in Israel’s military response to curb the devastation in Gaza and prevent war with Hezbollah, but Washington primarily blames Iran and its affiliates for the chaos in the region.

Iran is reportedly trying to help the Houthis obtain anti-ship missiles from Russia, weapons that increase the dangers to defenseless commercial ships and their crews.

Iran and its network of proxies have effectively pinned down a tremendous amount of US naval firepower, which was moved into the Middle East to defend Israel and American forces in the region and counter the Houthis and other Tehran-backed threats.

Responding to Middle Eastern threats, the US has been cycling carrier strike groups into the region, with two on patrol at one point in a rare show of force. That display of power, though, came at the cost of the US carrier presence in the Pacific.

Meanwhile, North Korea, another isolated pariah state, gave the world a rare look at its nuclear weapons program earlier this month by publishing photos of a uranium enrichment site, sending a blunt signal to its foes.

Robert Gates, who served as defense secretary under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, argued in a recent op-ed that the US military is either stagnating in size or shrinking, with force readiness out of step with the rising threats.

“The defense-industrial base, after decades of neglect, cannot produce major weapons systems in the numbers we need in a timely way nor — as we have seen in Ukraine — can it produce the vast quantity of munitions required for a great-power conflict,” he wrote in a Tuesday Washington Post op-ed.

“Despite these realities, it is largely business as usual in Washington,” he said. “Dramatic change is needed to convert rhetoric into ensuring and sustaining long-term military superiority.”