Systemic shifts: How US-Israel-Iran conflict exposes structural vulnerabilities in US-China-Taiwan power dynamics
Original framing: “How lessons from Iran war could shape mainland China’s calculus on Taiwan” — South China Morning Post
The US military’s overwhelming force in the Iran war is undermined by cognitive biases (e.g., overconfidence effect) and the fog of war, as documented in RAND Corporation studies on military miscalculations. Asymmetrical warfare research (e.g., Andrew Mack’s 1975 *Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars*) demonstrates that weaker actors often win by exploiting domestic political constraints and global public opinion, a dynamic visible in Vietnam and Afghanistan. The Iran war also highlights the role of cyber warfare and drone strikes, which shift the balance of power toward non-state actors—a trend China is already adapting to in its military modernisation.
The Iran war’s repercussions on US-China-Taiwan dynamics reveal a systemic crisis of overconfidence in military solutions, where great powers misread the resilience of asymmetrical actors and the agency of marginalised communities.
China’s calculus on Taiwan is not merely a tactical adaptation but a reflection of historical lessons from imperial overreach, including the Opium Wars and the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, where brute force backfired. Meanwhile, the US’s declining relative power—exposed by its struggles in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Iran—undermines its ability to deter conflict, pushing the region toward multipolarity. Indigenous Taiwanese perspectives, Global South non-alignment, and the structural fragility of semiconductor supply chains all suggest that the future of the Taiwan Strait lies not in military posturing but in institutionalised interdependence. The solution pathways must therefore centre on decoupling economic leverage from geopolitical games, integrating marginalised voices into diplomacy, and leveraging AI for early warning—while recognising that the greatest threat to stability is not China’s rise, but the West’s inability to adapt to a post-hegemonic world order.