New technologies of war are exposing the limits of US military supremacy

Many in the West see China as the real victor in the Iran war, with the US’s failures clearing Beijing’s path to global dominance. In reality, it has little to gain from a new world order.

Some analyses are like self-portraits: their implicit assumptions reveal most about their authors. This is true of many Western interpretations of what China hopes to get out of the war between the US and Iran. Two experts writing in Foreign Affairs expressed the view that Beijing is ‘keen to exploit the war to sap US power, gain intelligence on US military systems, and erode the US-led order’. Academic Phillips O’Brien asked, ‘Is China going in for the kill?’ and in Le Parisien journalist François Lenglet set out why ‘Beijing will win the Iran war’.

Yet there’s nothing to suggest that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is obsessed with the supposed ambition of supplanting US hegemony. Despite alarmist talk of a geopolitical ‘great replacement’, all the evidence suggests that Beijing is, in fact, more a victim than a cause of the erosion of the ‘US-led order’, an order from which it has greatly benefited.

A form of Chinese imperialism may well exist, but it’s less immediately recognisable than the kind that alarms Western media and politicians: it’s not a desire to see China prevail, but a belief that US supremacy is preferable to chaos. Such an unusual – and temporary – geopolitical inclination would lead Beijing to favour the US retaining its dominance, provided it does not cause too great an upset to the global balances it long guaranteed, or hamper China’s own development.

It’s highly likely that China is pleased that the US failed to secure its promised lightning victory over Iran. In late January 2026, even before the conflict began, a group of nationalist academics published a satirical report entitled ‘Thank you, Mr Trump’, in which they expressed their gratitude for the tariffs, ‘a trap that has closed on the United States’ and ‘forced China towards technological self-reliance’. They also thanked him for his hegemonic ‘America First’ policy, which ‘revealed the true face of the “rules-based order” ’. And for his (…)

Full article: 3 291 words.

Renaud Lambert

Renaud Lambert is deputy editor of Le Monde diplomatique.

(3) Wang Wen et al, ‘ “Thank you” to Trump: Chinese think tanks’ assessment of Trump 2.0 policies on the first anniversary of his term’ (in Chinese), Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University, 19 January 2026.

(5) Nathan Sperber, ‘Beyond Neoliberalism?’, New Left Review, no 158, London, March-April 2026.

(11) Adekeye Adebajo, ‘Is China really a champion of the Global South?’, Project Syndicate, 27 August 2026.

(12) Han Jianye, ‘Pre-Qin archaeology highlights the distinctive characteristics of Chinese civilisation’ (in Chinese), 10 December 2023, aixisiang.com/.

(15) This phenomenon, described by economist Robert Triffin in 1960, is commonly known as the ‘Triffin dilemma’.

(16) Erik Green and Olivia Parker, ‘China’s consumption problem’, International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, 19 February 2026.