The Newest Chinese Trick: No First Use

By Peter Huessy, Senior Fellow, NIDS and Warrior Maven

This loss of or not having deterrence is according to Victor Davis Hanson an absence of their being consequences for rogue behavior. To refer to just five key conflicts illustrates Hanson’s point—Russian aggression against Ukraine; the Iranian proxy Houthis war against Red Sea commercial ocean shipping; the Hamas attacks on Israel; the Mexican cartels smuggling drugs and trafficking women across the US southern border; and the Chinese military aggression against nations on the periphery of the South China Sea.

Prior to these aggressions, the US had largely not even tried deterrence, in fact in many instances seemed to explicitly take deterrence off the table. The US told Russia our reaction on Ukraine depended on how much territory Russia might grab. And after the war began, the US largely refrained from green lighting Ukraine to attack Russian territory, creating in Russia a relative sanctuary from attack.

Iran has had a hundred billion dollars freed from sanctioned accounts, largess that continued despite Iranian violations of the additional IAEA protocols and attacks on the US Navy and commercial tanker traffic while oil revenue soared.

The Houthis have forced commercial ocean-going freight traffic to virtually cease in the Red Sea, requiring shipping company’s like Maersk to voyage around the Cape, adding a forty percent premium to shipping costs, even reportedly getting GPS assistance from Russia and China to find freighter and tanker targets.

Hamas still receives billions in aid and has much of the world condemning Israel even after the horrific October 7th massacres.

The Mexican criminal cartels are getting richer and more powerful with only a very marginal US or Mexican law enforcement response.

China continues a $280 billion trade surplus with the US, steals hundreds of billions in US intellectual property, ignores a Hague tribunal ruling on the South China Sea and Philippines, while with its fentanyl trade helps annually kill through drug overdoses some 100,000 Americans.