The U.S. is "fighting four different Cold Wars" with China, Iran, Russia and North Korea and needs to come up with ways to cause divisions between them, according to a foreign policy expert.
Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank, where he focuses on Iran and foreign policy, said he believes the U.S. is facing multiple Cold War situations, rather than a "full-blown conflict."
Speaking on the Stay Tuned with Preet podcast, he said: "This raises a broader question which I think is very important for U.S. policy strategists to think about, in that we are, in some ways, simultaneously fighting four different cold wars—with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. If you like acronyms, the acronym for those four countries is CRINK."
Sadjadpour went on to argue that the question the U.S. needs to be asking is: "Is there a viable strategy in which we could, instead of further uniting these countries against us, is there a strategy that could potentially create divisions between them?"
He continued: "Because China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are very different regimes. Iran is a theocracy, [Russian President] Vladimir Putin has probably killed more Muslims than most world leaders and China has obviously persecuted their own Muslim minority.
"These are not countries like the United States and Britain, which have common values and common interests. I would say they actually have divergent values and oftentimes competitive interests.
"But, right now, they all share this overarching goal of wanting to defeat the U.S.-led world order. The question is, is there a viable strategy for the U.S., instead of trying to fight them all simultaneously, and instead of bringing them more together, trying to create divisions between them."
Pete Nguyen, spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), told Newsweek: "Across all these threats, the National Defense Strategy [NDS] stresses the importance of strengthening alliances and partnerships around the world to enhance collective security and deter aggression from these state actors. The NDS emphasizes a concept of integrated deterrence, which combines military power with other tools of national power to address these challenges."
Newsweek has contacted the DOD's counterparts in Russia and China, along with the Iranian embassy in Washington and North Korean embassy in Beijing, for comment.
Sadjadpour was speaking on the podcast about why he thinks there is "not a high likelihood" that the world is headed for an all-out war.
He said that he doubts Putin, who reportedly imports weapons from Iran, would want Iran to get involved in a bigger war in the Middle East.
"No one is really interested in a full-blown conflict. One of the interesting developments over the last couple of weeks has been that Vladimir Putin—Russia, one of Iran's critical strategic partners—also sent a signal, sent a message to Iran to exercise restraint," Sadjadpour said.
"One of the concerns that Putin reportedly has is the well-being of hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens of Russian origin, of Russian citizens that reside in Israel. He's wanting to avoid a conflict that could endanger them.
"And, you know, Putin is fighting his own full-blown war with Ukraine and is relying on Iranian weaponry to fight those wars. So he's worried about Iran getting involved in a full-blown war, in which case, they would have to use their own weapons rather than send them to Russia.
"And so, I think there's a lot of reasons why people are trying to put the brakes on a full-blown conflict and it's a very scary proposition, but I don't think it's a high likelihood that we spiral into full-blown conflict."
It comes as the Pentagon this week rebutted concerns about a widening "carrier gap" in the Pacific amid growing competition with China, with two U.S. Navy "flat-tops" having been retasked to the Middle East at short notice.
The flare-up between Israel and Iran forced the U.S. Department of Defense to reposition the USS Theodore Roosevelt and the USS Abraham Lincoln, two 100,000-ton Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, from their original deployments in the Indo-Pacific region.
Their arrival will add to the recent surge in U.S. forces in the Middle East and further strengthen American force posture there as the White House seeks to deter a wider regional conflict, all while maintaining support for Ukraine's resistance against Russia.
US Fighting 'Four Cold Wars' at the Same Time—Iran Expert (msn.com)