Strategic Blindness

China is buying the future of the Middle East

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There are currently three enduring myths circulating in Washington:

1. The United States can engineer a split between China and Russia.

2. We can contain Beijing without relying on Europe or Japan.

3. That China poses no serious threat in the Middle East and that the region no longer matters anyway.

Each of these illusions is comforting. All three are wrong.

This blog post focuses on the third myth, the most overlooked and the most dangerous.

As Washington turns its attention to the Indo-Pacific, it has come to treat the Middle East as a secondary theater. This rests on the mistaken belief that China’s presence in the region is incidental rather than structural. The argument is not that the Middle East is the central front, but that in a contest with a global power, no theater is marginal. This constitutes a strategic blindness in its most classical form: a failure to recognize that vacuums invite competitors, and that history punishes powers that confuse fatigue with foresight.

China is building a durable influence through energy dependence, infrastructure with strategic utility, digital surveillance systems, and security partnerships in the Middle East. Its alignment with governments that reject Western conditions is part of a long-term design to reshape the global balance of power by establishing footholds where the United States is withdrawing. While it’s true that recent U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities signaled that the U.S. has red lines it is willing to enforce, it still isn’t enough to mark a turning point in U.S. reengagement in the region.

For years, U.S. policy in the Middle East has centered on Iran, terrorism, and sectarian conflicts. These remain serious concerns, but China’s expanding influence presents a broader and more lasting challenge, especially since Beijing is today the primary backer of Iran. But the question isn’t really if Washington is prepared for it, but whether it recognizes what is happening. In other words, so far, Washington has policies, but no strategy.

Many analysts are quick to argue that, unlike the United States, China is not seeking global hegemony. It is true, at the moment, it’s not. But that misses the point. China cannot openly pursue dominance until it has first weakened American influence. And that is precisely what it is doing now.

Beijing operates in a straightforward way; it is aware that it cannot project power in the traditional sense defined by military primacy, and so instead, it advances through systems-building, economic interdependence, and political alignment. Where the United States favors containment and visible deterrence, China practices what I’d call “a dialectic of embedded revisionism”. It operates within the existing order, not to preserve it, but to displace its foundations gradually.

This method reflects a strategic logic closer to Trotsky’s conception of permanent revolution, stripped of ideology and applied in the realm of power politics. Rather than overturning the status quo through force, China corrodes it from within, exploiting contradictions and cultivating new dependencies. In this sense, Xi Jinping grasped what many in Washington no longer see clearly: the Middle East remains a central axis in the international system.

There is also another side to this; China’s engagement in the region is also pragmatic and serves three principal objectives:

• First, energy. The Middle East supplies a large share of China’s oil, with Saudi Arabia and Iraq as key partners. As domestic output declines and consumption grows, Beijing seeks guaranteed access beyond the reach of U.S. pressure.

• Second, strategic positioning. By expanding in a region long aligned with the United States, China strengthens its global standing and gives local governments an alternative to Washington.

• Third, political and cultural alignment. Xi presents China as an ancient power that respects sovereignty and tradition. This appeals to Arab states and governments that reject Western liberal demands and favor stability over reform.

What is noticeable, however, is that rather than emulate American primacy through symmetric means, China has sought to achieve comparable outcomes through instruments less exposed to friction. The Beijing objective is not conquest but seduction and the conditioning of behavior. Let’s not forget that the U.A.E. preferred Huawei over F-35s after all.

This strategic logic extends to China’s regional posture, which rests on calibrated duality. It deepens strategic cooperation with Iran, anchoring Tehran in a framework of economic and diplomatic support that complicates U.S. containment efforts. At the same time, it expands commercial and technological ties with the Arab states, offering digital infrastructure and industrial investment without political preconditions.

More importantly, China avoids sectarian alignments and has managed to have an active strategy of non-entanglement that positions China as a neutral interlocutor. Of course, Beijing has a soft spot for “liberation movements,” but it is not stupid enough to openly say so, and when it does, it makes sure it’s on forums that the U.S. itself supported, such as the U.N.

These dynamics point to a deeper strategic assumption embedded in American policy. The push of American retrenchment proceeds from the belief that order is self-generating and that balance will emerge once external pressure is lifted. This reflects a liberal conviction in the spontaneous equilibrium of international systems, disconnected from the enduring logic of power. In practice, withdrawal produces ambiguity, and that’s when China enters as the force that gives structure.

Washington has not yet internalized the transformation underway in the Middle East. The failure to recognize that power abhors absence may prove to be the defining strategic miscalculation of the century.