Opinion | China waits and watches as the US fights all its tigers at once

The bombs falling on Iran have extinguished any remaining doubt. The US-Israeli military campaign has ignited a major regional war. This explosion of violence is the ultimate rebuke to a central promise of US President Donald Trump’s second term: that America could disengage from distant quagmires to focus on confronting China.

Over a year into this administration, the strategic picture affirms the conclusion I reached last summer: America’s hoped-for single-minded containment of China lies in tatters. The president, who once envisioned a grand disengagement to confront Beijing, now finds himself forced to orchestrate a high-stakes visit. This is not born of strength, but of stark necessity – a tacit admission that the United States is overextended and requires a pause on its most formidable front.

The war with Iran is the fiercest new “tiger” in a menagerie of conflicts that has inverted the administration’s fundamental premise, having restarted a major war that threatens to draw in proxies from Lebanon to Yemen and destabilise the entire region. In Europe, the Ukraine war grinds into its fifth year. Trump’s boasts of a swift resolution have dissolved into the grim reality of a prolonged, costly commitment he now presides over. The intervention in Venezuela simmers, threats against Cuba have resurfaced and the Gaza conflict persists. Rather than freeing resources, his presidency is ensnared in a web of multi-front crises, each sapping strength.

Even the trade war has backfired; the Supreme Court ruling that his tariffs overstepped his authority has clipped his wings, exposing the limits of unilateralism.

The goal of rallying traditional allies into a cohesive front against China has been undermined by the “America first” impulse. Now, as Washington needs them most, these nations are engaging in “calculated hypocrisy”.

Their rush to engage Beijing – the parade of leaders from France’s Emmanuel Macron and Britain’s Keir Starmer to Canada’s Mark Carney and Germany’s Friedrich Merz – has a clear logic: economic hedging and risk mitigation. Even as they seek this “third path”, their transactional visits stop well short of challenging the foundational US security alliance – a loyalty reaffirmed by their pro-American statements on the war with Iran.