The commentaries by Deborah Haynes on Sky News, titled “The US war against Iran brings a new era of conflict and peril,” and Richard Haass in the Taipei Times (“Donald Trump’s risky war of choice in Iran”, March 3, page 7) said the world tilted into “peril” and “disarray.” They said that the US-Israeli strikes have replaced diplomacy with missiles, create a dangerous precedent for autocrats and embarked on a “war of choice” that cannot succeed.
This framing sounds principled. It is not. It is a defense of a status quo that has long since failed.
First, we must reject the moral equivalence between aggression and enforcement. Both critics say this strike hands a “rhetorical win” to leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a war of annexation; the strike against the Iranian regime is a war of accountability. To say that a targeted strike against a regime that exports terror, pursues nuclear brinkmanship and hangs its own citizens is “the same” as the conquest of a peaceful neighbor is to flatten the moral distinctions that make international law worth defending.
Second, Haass said this is a “war of choice,” saying diplomacy still held promise. For whom? For the Iranian people who were ruthlessly suppressed during the January protests? For regional neighbors targeted by Iranian-made drones?
When a regime uses the “fog of negotiations” to advance its ballistic and nuclear programs, continuing diplomacy is complicity. A rules-based order does not collapse because a violator is finally confronted; it collapses because the rules carry no cost for those who break them.
Third, the lament about “limited means” failing to achieve “regime change” misses the point of deterrence. Critics such as Haass warn that decapitation rarely works. This might be true in a vacuum, but by destroying missile infrastructure and removing the ideological architect of regional chaos, the US is not just hoping for a new government; it is physically stripping a hostile actor of its ability to project violence. The goal is not to build a democracy overnight; it is to ensure that the regime’s “terrorist proxies” can no longer destabilize the globe with impunity.
Fourth, the argument that US action in Iran distracts from the Indo-Pacific region ignores the reality that deterrence is indivisible. Beijing has spent billions turning Iran into a “strategic asset” designed to divert US resources. By dismantling this pillar of China’s regional strategy, the US is signaling that it can strike swiftly in one theater while maintaining its commitments in another. If Chinese planners conclude that the US would no longer be paralyzed by the fear of escalation, the deterrent landscape in the Taiwan Strait becomes significantly sharper.
Finally, the argument that this action “lowers the threshold” for force reverses cause and effect. What truly lowers the threshold for war is inaction. Decades of hesitation have allowed the Strait of Hormuz to become a site where 20 percent of the world’s oil supply can be threatened. Deterrence does not emerge from hand-wringing about “dangerous precedents.” It emerges from established, credible limits.
The old world order, upheld by a paralyzed UN had already been hollowed out by the very autocrats they fear could be emboldened. Calling this moment the collapse of international order misunderstands the fragility of that order and the responsibilities required to sustain it. If anything defines this era, it is not the reckless abandonment of norms — but the end of impunity.
John Cheng is a retired businessman from Hong Kong now living in Taiwan.
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