Is China a Friend of Israel?

The world order created by the United States is under great strain. Russia continues to change the territorial status quo in Europe and now in the Middle East; Iran competes with Islamic State for hegemony in the Persian Gulf; China is busy asserting its sway in East Asia. All of this threatens the sine qua non of American grand strategy: maintaining a favorable balance of power on either side of Eurasia as well as in the Persian Gulf. The consequences for small democratic nations like Israel are profound.

“Revisionist” powers are known to alter territorial boundaries, rules of international diplomacy, and political configurations with which they are unhappy. But Russia, Iran, and China are not only nationalist powers. They are also imperial powers, making imperial claims; they are challenging the idea of the nation-state system itself.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin justifies his actions—annexing Crimea, starting a civil war in Ukraine, allying with Iran to intervene in Syria—by appealing both to the Russian national interest and to the concept of Noviarussia, a refashioned Russian imperialism led by Putin as the defender of all ethnic Russians. In the Middle East, Sunni and Shiite factions are competing to define a new regional order based on ideological and religious extremism and superior force. The most threatening player is Tehran, a major energy producer that supports proxy groups to project and increase both its power and its version of Islamic supremacy. Acquiring nuclear weapons would solidify the Iranian imperial dream.