Iran and Taiwan: A tale of two straits 

The comprehensive strategy of the the new axis of evil is succeeding — at least, to a limited extent.

The swarming, Lilliputian approach of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran against the American Gulliver (the Great Satan, by the Islamic Republic’s telling) has already stoked fears in the U.S. government and among academic elites of a multi-front conflict that is fragmenting and dissipating U.S. and Western responses. NATO allies have rejected the Trump administration’s call for help in opening the Strait of Hormuz after Iran closed it to Western shipping. They argue that “this is not our war,” even though they rely far more heavily on the flow of Mideast oil than does the energy-self-sufficient U.S.

Regrettably, President Trump has used outrageous insults rather than appeals to reason and broader self-interest to address Europe’s reluctance to join a military conflict its sees as having been initiated by Washington without any consultation. Its discomfort with Trump’s assertiveness is reinforced by his claims to Greenland and Canada, which mimic — and can be argued to justify — Vladimir Putin’s ambitions on Ukraine and Xi Jinping’s on Taiwan.  

For their part, the Europeans shortsightedly ignore the Trump administration’s portrayal of the conflict as America’s long-delayed response to Iran’s five-decades-long assault on American and Western security interests. But Trump gratuitously widens the trans-Atlantic breach by denigrating as “cowards” the very allies who, after 9/11, fought and died alongside Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan — the first and only time NATO has invoked its Article Five mandate that “an attack on one is considered........

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