From the Persian Gulf to the Pacific: Rethinking US Deterrence for the China Challenge

The ongoing conflict in the Middle-East has changed the geometry of war by exposing the structural vulnerabilities of fixed forward bases. Iran fired multiple long-range ballistic missiles, such as Qadr cruise missiles, and Shahed-type high-speed jet drones hitting at least 20 American installations across the Gulf. Prominent military bases including Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, Camp Arifan in Kuwait and the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain were main Iranian targets. These strikes have damaged the critical US military infrastructure with a loss of $800 million forcing American troops to temporarily scale back several military operations and relocate to alternative sites.

The conflict has spurred shockwaves across the region, carrying serious implications for the US global military footprint, particularly in the Indo-Pacific theatre. As the Pentagon pivots towards Asia with a great power competition with China, the First Island Chain (FIC) has emerged as a strategic location of the 2026 National Defence Strategy. These islands span from Japan and the Ryukyu islands down to the northern Philippines, constituting a strategically significant geographical barrier. Americans’ Indo-Pacific allies specially, Japan, Taiwan and Philippines act as an anchor for US security alliances. Its emphasis on Deterrence-by-Denial Defence strategy aims at preventing China’s dominance in the “Near Seas”. With an increasing production of precision-guided munitions (smart weapons) like hypersonic and cruise missiles that is capable of hitting both moving vessels and static bases and proliferating anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) modern warfare capabilities, the Gulf crisis offers timely lessons for reinforcing deterrence by denial along this critical maritime frontier.

Army aims for Littoral Power

The US relations with the FIC is significant not only in terms of preventing China’s dominance over these islands, but also providing a ground stage for the US Armed Forces in the contested environments of the Indo-Pacific. This region is critical as Japan, Taiwan and Philippines clusters are envisioned by the 2024 Indo-Pacific Command in a distributed force posture. The US Defence Department efforts to counter ChineseA2/AD require a strong logistical distributed infrastructure. Thomas Schelling’s argument on latent violence influences the opponent force, convincing them their objectives will not succeed in the very first place. Disaggregating forces across the region, regular joint and combined military exercises, dispersing of bulk goods spread across regions, Distributed Maritime Operations, Stand-In Forces, Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations, and Agile Combat Employment are some of the modern approaches that can only succeed if properly sustained.

Both the Persian Gulf and the FIC live between rivalry nations inviting enduring security dilemmas and encirclement. The Gulf hosts a dense network of U.S. military bases which survive on the hub-and-spoke model to deter Iranian aggression which has exposed flaws during the recent US-Iran war. The analogous situation is unfolding in the Indo-Pacific, where China operates the largest area denial network, which is designed to lock the South China Sea, contesting the US and its allies.

Frankly speaking, the traditional model of deterrence suffered a setback, straining expensive US defence systems against comparatively low-cost Iranian missiles underscoring severe cost asymmetries. This in turn requires broader systemic changes and the importance of deterrence by denial strategy, making aggression impossible to operate. The same maneuver can be adopted for FIC centred on dispersed military posture and logistic hubs, mobile missile systems, small-footprint sites, expanded sensor networks, submarines and unmanned operations. These lessons can be valuable to counter Chinese fait accompli strategies.

The Gulf presents the best scenario of an alliance security dilemma by hosting US military forces confronting the risk of entrapment driven by regional conflict. Comparatively, it will be a litmus test for the Philippines and Japan amid Chinese military advancements and shifting regional balances. Consequently, long-term success depends on minilateral cooperation, such as the QUAD (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue), SQUAD (Security Quadrilateral), and TSD (Trilateral Strategic Dialogue), burden-sharing arrangements and resilience among host nations to withstand regional pressure. Meanwhile, initiatives such as the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement with the Philippines can be promising that require further deepening. To offset some of these costs, the US must invest in integrated modern warfare capabilities that uphold a regional order favourable to it. These are the measures that can be taken to support operations within the disruption zone.

Disclaimer: Views expressed are of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Statecraft Institute.