Washington weighs military force in Iran and Venezuela to contain China

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s inner circle is increasingly viewing the administration's aggressive foreign policy maneuvers as a unified front to contain China’s growing global influence.

Under this strategic framework, the potential use of military force in Venezuela and Iran is not viewed as a series of isolated incidents. Instead, these actions—alongside pressure directed at Greenland and Cuba—are seen as interconnected parts of a broader geopolitical effort.

The strategy aims to leverage pressure in multiple regions to gain a tactical advantage in the ongoing confrontation with Beijing. Sources familiar with the discussions indicate the viewpoint is gaining traction within policy-making circles, though they did not identify specific individuals behind the plan.

This strategic framework suggests that the Trump administration’s foreign policy is being fundamentally shaped through the prism of U.S.-China confrontation. By linking disparate regional flashpoints, such as Iran and Venezuela, to a singular containment strategy against Beijing, the administration is effectively distilling complex regional dynamics into a broader Great Power Competition. This represents not only a continuation but a clear escalation of the previous Trump term’s policies, now cast across a more explicit global theater.

For Southeast Asian nations, and Vietnam in particular, this strategic shift presents a high-stakes calculus of opportunity and risk. On one hand, a more hawkish U.S. posture serves as a more robust counterweight to Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea—a development Hanoi could leverage to its advantage. If Washington signals a willingness to project force in the Middle East, it may imply a correspondingly lower threshold for confronting Beijing’s provocations within the Indo-Pacific.

On the other hand, being subsumed into a larger geopolitical rivalry threatens to force Vietnam into a binary "choice of sides," potentially undermining its long-standing foreign policy of multilateralism and strategic balancing. There is also the persistent concern that if Washington views Vietnam and its neighbors merely as tactical pawns in an anti-China endgame, it may overlook the specific sovereign interests and nuanced concerns of these individual states. Ultimately, Hanoi will be forced to navigate an increasingly narrow corridor to protect its national interests without becoming collateral damage in the escalating friction between the two superpowers.

The Vietnamese-American community is keeping a watchful eye on this strategy, given its deep-seated concerns regarding China and the South China Sea. Thus far, however, there have been no direct impacts on the day-to-day livelihoods of the diaspora. From the family-owned phở restaurants and the nail salon industry to the flow of remittances and immigration processing, everything remains business as usual. No immediate changes have been noted for those navigating standard visa categories such as F2B, H-1B, or EB-5.