Regional order in the 1970s can be apprehended in relation to three interacting conflict dynamics, which this chapter examines in turn. The first was the competitive support-seeking dynamic between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the latter of which remained Washington’s default partner in the Gulf due to its contiguity with the Soviet Union and apparently greater internal stability. Riyadh’s main asset in this contest was its structural power within a second, Arab–Israeli arena, through consolidating its economic and political influence over Egypt and Syria. Resistance to the stabilisation of this emerging state conglomerate fed into a third conflict dynamic revolving around Syrian and Iraqi ideological externalisation strategies. The hegemonic strategies of each of these states necessitated continued confrontation with Israel.

In September 2019, China was reported to have signed an agreement with Iran to invest something in the region of US$400 billion in oil related industries and industrial infrastructure. In return, China would be able to buy discounted oil and related resources (using currencies other than the US Dollar), and Chinese firms would be given ‘first refusal’ to run existing or future contracts in all Iranian petrochemical projects without competition. As part of the deal, China was also reported as preparing to send 5,000 security personnel to Iran to protect its citizens and investments (Watkins, 2019). Three weeks later the US Department of State imposed sanctions on six Chinese companies and some of their executive officers for breaking US sanctions on transporting oil from Iran (Pompeo, 2019). The timing of the two announcements was probably coincidental. The sanctions applied to transactions that had occurred before the new deal was announced, so may well have been introduced in any case. But whether they were directly linked or not, these two stories combine to provide an example of one of the themes of the time that emerged as Chinese outward investment grew in the new millennium: the idea that China was using its financial power to get hold of strategic resources in places that others would not (or could not) go. In the process, so the argument went, China was propping up authoritarian states and undermining the attempts of others to promote the protection of human rights and to guarantee national, regional and even global security.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that high politics and strategic objectives loomed large in Chinese economic relations with Iran. Or at various times, with North Korea, Myanmar and Zimbabwe as well. But this doesn't mean that all Chinese overseas projects are driven by the same goals and delivered in the same ways. On the contrary, there is now a rather large body of research that shows how other actors and interests have driven relationships elsewhere. Even when political considerations are important – for example, in the case of Myanmar – this doesn't mean that the central government is in total control and that commercial considerations are absent.

Chapter 8 analyzes the thinking of Harry Summers, especially his critique of the Vietnam War. Summers was an outspoken military practioner who exposed the harmful effects of applying academic (and untested) strategic theories in Vietnam. He believed most armed conflicts would be fought below the nuclear threshold and hence he maintained the principles of war, which he regarded as timeless, were still sound guides for crafting military strategy. This chapter discusses his model of war’s nature, which retreated somewhat from that of Eccles and Wylie because it paid less attention to war’s sociocultural dimension. It did, however, bridge to the modern model by reemphasizing the importance of the concept of Clausewitzian friction.

Chapter 6 analyzes the thinking of Henry Eccles, one of America’s underappreciated military intellectuals. It describes his life and his "America," which again was the golden age of the middle class. It discusses how Eccles and his colleagues led a counterrevolution against the revolt of Brodie and the other strategy intellectuals. Eccles stressed rigorous examination of all principles and concepts. This chapter also explains Eccles’s model of war’s nature, which, though largely traditional, included traces of the modern model and incorporated a broader perspective that saw war not just as an extension of human competitiveness but of competition among social groups.

For a number of years, Chinese analysts who studied Chinese strategy found it difficult to find one. The level of fragmentation and the (bounded) plurality of interests discussed in the previous chapter were so great that what they found instead was a rather contradictory set of interests and drivers resulting in a lack of coherence in external action (Wang Jisi, 2011). For example, despite calling his book Inside China's Grand Strategy, Ye Zicheng (2011) focused on the myriad domestic problems at home that China had to sort out before it could do anything effective overseas. In particular, he highlighted what he portrayed as the almost impossible task of reconciling the views of ‘dogmatic conservatives’ on the one hand, and ‘extreme nationalists’ (of various varieties) on the other. Somewhat earlier, Shi Yinhong (2002: 4) bemoaned an absence of a shared understanding of what it was that China actually wanted to achieve and concluded that

In the first decade of the millennium, Men Honghua (2004; 2005) was one of the biggest critics of this lack of coordination. By 2015, while acknowledging that the job was still far from complete, he had become more confident. China was now moving, he argued, towards something that began to look like a truly integrated GS with ‘a profound strategic adjustment, gradually forming the future of China's long-term strategic layout’ (Men, 2015: 44). Three key reasons are usually given for this progress. The first is the widespread understanding in China that changes in the global environment had resulted in a rather unexpected shift in relative power capabilities, and China now had an opportunity to push for change that was previously lacking. The second is that Xi Jinping had implemented structural changes that facilitated much needed coordination among conflicting foreign affairs actors. The third was that his strategic thinking had established the fundamental objectives and diplomatic philosophy that Shi (2002) and others had argued was previously lacking.

Chapter 3 analyzes the thinking of Bernard Brodie and Robert Osgood, who were among limited war’s earliest theorists. It describes their lives and their "America," which was the golden age of the middle class. They assumed armed conflict, by its nature, would escalate almost automatically to the maximum possible level of violence. Ergo, Brodie rejected the notion that military imperatives should ever guide strategy, especially in an era in which “second-strike” nuclear weapons could render concentration, offensive action, and decision by battle suicidal. In his view, the only way to restore the utility of military force was to ensure it served only limited aims. Osgood likewise insisted America’s political leaders had to contain the aggressive instincts of the military as well as the explosive passions of the populace. His solution involved replacing the military’s imperatives with a set of principles that emphasized political control and close circumscription of all parameters of conflict. They saw war’s nature not as a violent extension of human nature, but as a coiled spring ready to explode.

Appendix

Chapter 1 analyzes the ideas of the naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan. It describes his life and his "America," which was socially and politically at war with itself. This chapter also discusses how the core principles Mahan borrowed from the Swiss military theorist Jomini – concentration, offensive action, and decision by battle – were brought from the nineteenth century into the twentieth. It ends with an explication of the traditional model of wars nature, which saw armed conflict as an extension of the competitive side of human nature.

Chapter 10 analyzes the thinking of John Warden. It describes his life and his America, which transitioned from malaise to rebirth. Warden saw enemies as integrated but targetable systems. His theories set the stage for twenty-first century airpower theorists who would build on his model of war’s nature, which was materialist because it assumed one’s will to fight could be diminished, if not completely reduced, by attacking one’s material capacity to resist.