Once again we appear to be fighting the last war. Politicians are falling over themselves in a vain attempt to get re-elected, failing to address the long-term economic costs of the war and failing to protect our strategic interests as they rush to protect themselves.
The real "battle" of this generation will be with China and not Terrorism but it doesn't appear to be on anyone's radar. Lets take a look at how China's commercial interests are developing into strategic ones in the Middle East by looking at their relationship with Iran and Saudi Arabia.
China with is burgeoning middle class and phenomenal internal growth rates has been a net importer of oil since 1993 and is not only looking to Iran, which has the fourth largest oil reserves and second-largest oil reserves, to quench its domestic thirst but also moving methodically and strategically to strengthen its position in the Middle East. Who has come repeatedly to the defense of Iran's nuclear ambitions and who is making any threat of sanctions a moot point? China.
By January of 2006, Riyad has become China's largest supplier of oil and China signed a 100 billion dollar deal with the Chinese company Sinopec which will "allowing it to develop the Yadavaran oil field in exchange for the purchase of 10 million tons of LNG a year for the next quarter-century" Overall trade hit 8 billion in 2006 and non-oil trade doubled from 1 billion in 2004 to over 2 billion in 2005. (The US-China bilateral trade was over 200 billion in 2005)
Both China and Iran belong to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization(SCO)along with Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and Iran, Pakistan and India are observer nations. This nonaligned intergovernmental agency has been referred to as "baby OPEC with bombs" although it's power is over overstated since it is still limited by internal disagremenets between China and Russia and it lacks any sort of mutual defense agreements
China is the second leading arms supplier to Iran after Russia and somewhat surprisingly much of the technology was originally purchased from Israel.
Iran isn't the only middle eastern county "dating" China. Saudi Arabia which had over 15 billion in trade in 05 is expected to double that by 2010, has bilateral trade agreements which open up their oil fields in exchange for allowing Saudi companies to participate in Chinese refining projects. They also supplied them with medium range ballistic missiles
Although much of their interests are economic China also is hoping to leverage many of these relationships in an attempt to manage the 7.2 million Muslim's who live in and around Xingjiang Province who are pressing for an independent Republic of East Turkestan.
China is fairly adept at balancing their Sino-American relationships but I see the next war as being one without bombs. One day not far from now they will simply place a call to Wal-Mart and announce that "the ships aren't coming". How long could we last? No light-bulbs (try to find non Chinse light bulbs) no clothing, etc. That is what our political leaders should be spending their energy on not looking back at their past mistakes. China has far more strategic interests in the Middle East than we do and yet I have never heard anyone mention bringing them to the table.
As Robert Townsend once said, "True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not the enrichment of the leaders." So I ask you all - Where are the leaders?