The Shadow of Containment: America’s Enduring Strategy and the Emerging Multipolar Response
Introduction
On the 28th of February, 2026, the world witnessed a military escalation of profound significance. The United States and Israel conducted an undeclared combined attack on Iran, followed by declarations from both President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu that their objective extended beyond regime change to the installation of a compliant government. This action, while shocking in its immediacy, represents not a departure from established American foreign policy but rather its logical continuation—a thread that can be traced directly back to the strategic architecture of the late Cold War period.
The confusion regarding who leads and who follows in the American-Israeli relationship misses the deeper structural reality. While many perceive Netanyahu and the Jewish lobby as dictating Washington’s Middle East policy, history and the ground realities suggest a different configuration. Netanyahu, despite his political prowess, operates within parameters established by American strategic interests. He is, in many ways, a chessboard pawn in a much larger game—a game whose rules were substantially written during the presidency of Jimmy Carter. For the United States, this war is ultimately about economic hegemony; for Iran, it is existential. This war is likely to extend far beyond American expectations, both in geographical scope and in its regional and global impact.
The Carter Doctrine: Origins and Essence
To understand the present, we must examine the strategic geopolitical game that President Carter articulated in his State of the Union address on January 23, 1980. The Carter Doctrine, formally known as the policy of containment in the Persian Gulf region, declared that “an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”
This doctrine was born of specific Cold War anxieties. Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, Washington feared that Moscow was positioning itself for a push toward the warm-water ports and oil fields of the Persian Gulf. The strategic objective was clear: control the Middle East’s energy resources—gas and petroleum—and restrict the communist camp’s access to these vital commodities in the event of conventional war. The doctrine established the Persian Gulf as an American sphere of influence, a line drawn in the sand of global strategic competition.
What is often overlooked is that the Carter Doctrine was never merely defensive. It asserted not simply a right to repel invasion but a prerogative to determine the political orientation of the region’s governments. A compliant government in Tehran, whether under the Shah in 1979 or under a future client regime, has always been the unspoken corollary of energy security. The doctrine’s logic requires not just access but control—control that extends to the character of regimes themselves.
The Doctrine’s Evolution and Persistence
The containment policy did not become obsolete or die with the Cold War’s end. It adapted, transformed, and persisted beneath the surface of successive administrations, both Republican and Democrat. The Cold War’s return in recent years has simply resurrected the doctrine’s original rationale, stripped of the ideological camouflage that occasionally veiled it during the unipolar moment of the 1990s.
The American heavy hand in the Middle East, the Abraham Accords normalizing relations between Israel and several Arab states, the unquantified and often unquestioning American support for Israel—all these phenomena can be understood as manifestations of the Carter Doctrine’s enduring logic. Israel’s prominence in the region serves American strategic purposes: it provides a reliable military proxy, a technologically advanced partner capable of degrading American adversaries without requiring direct American troop deployments, and a perpetual justification for American military presence in the region. The relationship is symbiotic but fundamentally asymmetrical, with ultimate strategic direction flowing from Washington. Israel acts, but within parameters set by American global strategy.
The Abraham Accords, celebrated as breakthroughs in Arab-Israeli peace, are better understood as the formalization of an anti-Iranian alliance. They normalize relations not on the basis of Palestinian rights or regional justice but on the basis of shared hostility toward the Islamic Republic. They are containment through integration—drawing Arab states into the American strategic orbit while isolating Iran.
The Stakes: American Hegemony, Iranian Existence
For the United States, the war against Iran is about preserving a global economic order denominated in dollars and secured by American military dominance over energy flows. The petrodollar system, established in the 1970s, requires that major oil transactions occur in dollars, which in turn requires that the world’s major oil producers operate within the American strategic framework. Iran, with its vast reserves and its determination to trade in euros, yuan, rupees, and rubles, represents a direct challenge to this architecture. If Iran succeeds in normalizing non-dollar energy trade, the ripple effects through the American economy would be profound. The war is, at its core, economic.
For Iran, the stakes are fundamentally different and fundamentally existential. The American objective, stated explicitly by both Trump and Netanyahu, is not merely to alter Iranian behavior but to replace the Iranian government with one compliant to American interests. This is regime change as a matter of declared policy. For the Iranian people, for the Islamic Republic, for the Shia communities across the region who look to Tehran as a protector, this is a struggle for survival. Nations that have experienced American-imposed regime change—Iraq, Libya, Haiti, Chile—provide ample evidence of what follows: state collapse, civil conflict, economic devastation, and the loss of sovereignty. Iran fights not for influence or ideology but for existence itself.
The Global Web: Ukraine, Venezuela, Africa, and Iran
The present attack on Iran cannot be isolated from broader geopolitical currents. The Ukraine crisis, the Trump administration’s interventionist posture toward Venezuela, the sharp American focus on West African petroleum resources—these are all threads in the same strategic fabric. Each represents an attempt to deny resources and strategic positioning to America’s great-power competitors.
Ukraine serves to weaken Russia through attrition and economic strangulation. The war, prolonged by continuous Western military support, drains Russian resources and reinforces NATO’s eastern flank. It also disrupts Russian energy exports to Europe, forcing European nations into greater dependence on American liquefied natural gas.
Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world, represent a resource that must not fall entirely under Russian or Chinese influence. The sustained American campaign of sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and support for opposition figures aims to either bring Venezuela back into the American orbit or ensure that its resources cannot be developed by American competitors.
West Africa’s emerging petroleum sector offers alternatives to Middle Eastern supply and opportunities to marginalize Chinese infrastructural investment. The American military presence in the region, often justified through counterterrorism partnerships, simultaneously secures access for Western energy companies and monitors Chinese activities.
And Iran, positioned athwart the Strait of Hormuz through which approximately twenty percent of global oil passes, aligned with both Moscow and Beijing through strategic partnership agreements, and developing military capabilities that threaten American naval dominance in the Gulf, represents the most significant obstacle to complete American control of Persian Gulf energy flows. To defeat Iran is to secure the Strait, to protect the petrodollar, and to demonstrate to Russia and China that the American century is not yet over.
The Question of Response: Russia and China
The great question looming over the present crisis is whether Russia and China will remain outside the playground while both are so clearly targeted. The raison d’être of blockades, boycotts, tariffs, sanctions, proxy wars, and now direct military action against Iran is to restrain Russia and abort Chinese projects that threaten American global primacy. The Silk Road and Belt and Road Initiative, the BRICS framework for alternative development and financial architecture, and China’s exponential economic growth index are all perceived in Washington as existential threats to the American-centered global order.
Neither Russia nor China can be expected to accept passive containment. For Moscow, the war in Ukraine has already demonstrated the consequences of attempting accommodation with the West. The sanctions imposed since 2014 and dramatically expanded in 2022 have severed most economic ties between Russia and the West, driving Moscow into an increasingly close relationship with Beijing. Russia has learned that it has nothing left to lose by confrontation and everything to gain by supporting American adversaries.
For Beijing, the increasing militarization of the South China Sea, the AUKUS alliance transferring nuclear submarine technology to Australia, the tightening technology restrictions designed to stunt Chinese technological development, and the growing American military presence around Taiwan’s periphery all signal that economic integration will not protect it from American strategic competition. China has invested heavily in Iran’s infrastructure, including the twenty-five-year strategic partnership agreement signed in 2021, and cannot afford to see its partner destroyed.
Both nations are likely to adopt what they perceive as existential postures and retaliate through whatever means remain available. This retaliation may not take the form of direct military confrontation with the United States—at least not initially. It is more likely to manifest through accelerated military cooperation with Iran, provision of advanced intelligence and air defense capabilities, economic support to sustain the Iranian economy under intensified sanctions, and coordinated diplomatic efforts to isolate the United States internationally. In the longer term, it may involve establishing permanent military bases in Iran, formalizing the emerging Moscow-Beijing-Tehran axis into a military alliance, and accelerating the development of alternative financial systems that bypass the dollar entirely.
The Escalatory Dynamic: Beyond American Expectations
The United States appears to assume that the war against Iran can be contained—that it will remain a campaign of airstrikes and sanctions, degrading Iranian capabilities without triggering broader conflagration. This assumption is dangerously flawed for several reasons.
First, Iran possesses capabilities that Iraq, Libya, and Syria lacked. Its missile arsenal is the largest in the region, with ranges capable of reaching American bases throughout the Middle East and American allies including Israel and Saudi Arabia. Its drone programs have been battle-tested in Ukraine and employed effectively against Saudi oil infrastructure. Its naval forces, while no match for the American fleet in open combat, are fully capable of asymmetric warfare in the confined waters of the Gulf, including mining operations and swarm attacks on commercial shipping.
Second, Iran’s regional network of allied militias and governments—Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shia militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, the Assad government in Syria, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine—provides multiple avenues for retaliation. An American-Israeli attack on Iran will almost certainly be met with rocket and drone barrages from Lebanon into Israel, renewed attacks on Saudi and Emirati infrastructure from Yemen, intensified attacks on American bases in Iraq and Syria, and efforts to disrupt shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Oman.
Third, the conflict has the potential to draw in great powers directly. Russia operates military bases in Syria and maintains close relations with Iran. China has significant economic interests throughout the region and a growing naval presence in the Indian Ocean. Both have veto power at the United Nations and have demonstrated willingness to use it. Neither can afford to watch their Iranian partner collapse without responding.
Fourth, the conflict will likely spread to the Caucasus and Central Asia, where Iran has historical and cultural ties and where Russian and Chinese interests are deeply engaged. The southern route of the Belt and Road Initiative passes through Iran. Instability there threatens Chinese investments and trade routes.
The Historical Pattern in the Muslim World
History confirms a devastating pattern of American intervention in the Arab and Muslim world. Iraq, subjected to a decade of crippling sanctions followed by invasion and occupation, remains shattered, its society fractured along sectarian lines, its economy dependent on oil exports managed under international supervision. Syria and Lebanon have been torn by proxy wars and destabilization fueled by competing regional and global powers. Libya, once among Africa’s most prosperous nations with the highest Human Development Index on the continent, has become a failed state, a transit point for African migrants sold in slave markets, its oil infrastructure contested by rival militias. Sudan has been partitioned, its southern regions separating after decades of civil war, its northern regions now embroiled in their own conflicts. Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest nation, has been starved and bombed into humanitarian catastrophe, its population facing what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst famine in decades. Afghanistan was occupied for two decades, its development stunted, its institutions warped by dependency on foreign aid, then abandoned to Taliban rule as American forces withdrew without ensuring the stability they had promised.
The unfortunate situation of Palestine, including the devastating situation in Gaza, is attributable to the same systemic logic. The Oslo process, the Camp David Accords, the various peace initiatives—all have foundered on the fundamental unwillingness of American power to compel its Israeli ally to accept a just resolution. Gaza, subjected to blockade for years and periodic military campaigns that destroy infrastructure and kill civilians, is treated as a manageable humanitarian problem rather than the site of a people’s struggle for existence. The American veto at the United Nations Security Council, deployed repeatedly to shield Israel from condemnation and accountability, represents the most consistent application of American power in international affairs.
This pattern is not accidental. It is the product of a strategic logic that views the Muslim world primarily as a source of resources, a battleground for proxy conflicts, and an obstacle to be managed rather than peoples to be respected. The nations of the region are not seen as having legitimate aspirations, sovereign rights, or development priorities of their own. They are chess pieces in a game played elsewhere, their suffering the acceptable cost of great-power competition.
The Fog of a New Era
We stand at the threshold of a rebirth of the Cold War and, simultaneously, the start of something new and more dangerous. This new era is characterized by savage competition, a dangerous arms race accelerating into hypersonic and space-based weaponry, the paralysis of the United Nations Security Council by veto-wielding powers pursuing competing interests, and the increasing probability of what could become the Third World War—not as a single cataclysm but as a series of escalating confrontations that gradually consume the architecture of global peace.
The Cold War, for all its dangers, possessed certain stabilizing features that are now absent. The superpowers, despite their rivalry, maintained communication channels, accepted certain spheres of influence, and recognized the catastrophic consequences of direct confrontation. The contemporary environment is more fragmented, with multiple nuclear-armed powers, non-state actors capable of triggering escalation, and a United States that has demonstrated willingness to abandon international agreements and norms when they constrain its freedom of action.
The arms race now extends into domains where no regulatory framework exists. Hypersonic weapons, capable of evading existing missile defense systems, are being deployed by multiple powers. Space is being militarized, with anti-satellite weapons tested and space-based missile defense systems contemplated. Cyber warfare capabilities, developed in secret and employed without attribution, create the possibility of escalation through misperception and miscalculation.
The United Nations, designed to manage great-power conflict through the Security Council mechanism, has been rendered nearly impotent by the very competition it was meant to contain. Each of the permanent members uses its veto not to prevent conflict but to shield its allies and advance its interests. The General Assembly debates while the world burns.
The Path Not Taken
Unless fair play is accepted in international economic relations, unless energy and resources are equitably shared among nations, unless historical responsibilities are acknowledged and assumed by those who have benefited most from the existing order, and unless the UN’s responsibility and missions are fully reestablished and respected, global peace and security will remain exposed and precarious.
Fair play in economic relations would require accepting that the rise of new powers is not a threat to be contained but an opportunity to be managed. It would require reforming international financial institutions to reflect current economic realities rather than the post-World War II settlement. It would require accepting that nations have the right to choose their own development paths, their own trading partners, and their own political systems without being subjected to sanctions, subversion, or military attack.
Equitable sharing of energy and resources would require acknowledging that the current distribution of global wealth is the product of centuries of colonialism, exploitation, and military dominance. It would require accepting that the peoples of the Global South have the same right to development, to prosperity, and to sovereignty that the peoples of the West have long enjoyed. It would require moving from a system of resource extraction to a system of resource partnership.
Acknowledgment of historical responsibilities would require confronting the legacy of colonialism, of Cold War interventions, of support for dictatorships, of economic exploitation. It would require reparations not merely as financial transfers but as fundamental changes in the structures that perpetuate inequality. It would require accepting that the suffering inflicted on the peoples of the Muslim world, of Africa, of Latin America, of Asia is not incidental to Western prosperity but has been essential to it.
Reestablishment of the UN’s responsibility and missions would require accepting that international law applies equally to all nations, that the Security Council must be reformed to reflect contemporary realities, that the veto must be constrained or abolished, that the organization must be empowered to prevent conflict and protect populations. It would require moving from a world of sovereign equality in name only to a world of genuine multilateralism.
Conclusion
The world is indeed in a fog—a fog of competing narratives, escalating militarism, and declining institutional capacity to manage great-power conflict. But within that fog, certain realities remain clear: the Carter Doctrine lives, the containment policy continues, and the nations of the Global South, particularly in the Muslim world, continue to pay the price for strategic competitions not of their making.
The attack on Iran, the war in Ukraine, the pressure on Venezuela, the competition in Africa—these are not separate conflicts but manifestations of a single struggle for control of the resources and strategic positions that will determine the shape of the twenty-first-century global order. The United States, having enjoyed unparalleled dominance since the Cold War’s end, is determined to preserve that dominance against the rise of China and the resurgence of Russia.
Whether Russia and China will successfully forge alternatives to this system, or whether they will be drawn into direct confrontation with it, remains the great unanswered question of our time. What is certain is that the present trajectory leads not toward stability but toward a more dangerous and divided world. The fog thickens. The drums beat. And the peoples of the world, particularly those in the path of the great powers’ ambitions, can only watch and wait and hope that wisdom prevails before the worst comes to pass.
The choice, ultimately, is not Iran’s or Russia’s or China’s alone. It is the choice of the American people and their leaders: whether to continue a strategy of dominance that has produced so much suffering and so little lasting security, or to accept that a multipolar world requires multilateral solutions, that security cannot be achieved through the insecurity of others, and that the shadow of containment must finally give way to the light of genuine cooperation. The fog may clear. Or it may darken into a night from which there is no dawn.