The US war on Iran exposed weaknesses in American power. Asia-Pacific allies should rethink defence settings built around US dominance and confrontation with China.

Despite advice from wiser heads, Trump and Hegseth swallowed the bait from Netanyahu and launched a miserably conceived, poorly executed and catastrophic war on Iran earlier this year. Trump is no FDR and Hegseth is no Carl von Clausewitz; it’s more like Dumb and Dumber Went to War. These are the same people New Zealand, Australia, South Korea and the Philippines’ leaders are betting the family farms on. Weep, my beloved country.

For people in the Asia-Pacific region, the failure of the US-Israeli war on Iran should seriously bring into question long-standing alignments with the US_._

If the contest between the US and China ever goes kinetic, it is highly likely the US and its allies will be defeated. The consequences for all the people of Asia-Pacific, all the way down to New Zealand, will be immense. If the two behemoths refrain from striking the enemy’s mainland, the heavy blows will fall on allies like the Philippines, Australia, South Korea and New Zealand. I think that was part of the signalling when China fired a nuclear-capable ICBM into the Pacific last week, immediately after Australia signed a defence pact with Fiji, and New Zealand announced it was joining the US-led Project Arcadia – a Five Eyes program designed to build an AI-enabled, integrated digital battlespace command system: in other words, much deeper integration with the US war machine.

In December 2025 someone in the US establishment leaked to The New York Times “The Overmatch Brief” – a secret Pentagon summary of years of US war-gaming that showed the Chinese outgunned the US in all the areas that will count in a conventional war. Whoever that person was, I suspect they were trying to avert war, trying to stop the kind........

© Pearls and Irritations