Ahmed Kawah
A great power is not exposed only when a weaker state defies it. Sometimes its limits become clearer when it knows exactly how to punish a major rival — and hesitates because the punishment may come back home.
That is increasingly the American dilemma with China.
Washington can sanction a bank in the Middle East, a company in Turkey, or a financial network in the Gulf and make proximity to Iran expensive for states that depend, to varying degrees, on the dollar, American markets and the global financial system. But the equation changes when the road leads to Beijing.
American power does not disappear there. The cost of using it simply becomes much more visible.
Since the end of World War II, the United States has built much of its influence around a global architecture in which the dollar, financial institutions, technology and market access became essential arteries of international commerce. Over time, those advantages became instruments of coercion.
Political scientists Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman later described this phenomenon as “weaponized interdependence”: states that control critical nodes in global networks can use them not only for commerce, but also for political pressure.
Yet every network can create countervailing nodes.
China appears to have absorbed that lesson remarkably well. If Washington still dominates major parts of global finance and advanced technology, Beijing has accumulated leverage over another side of the equation: rare earths, industrial processing, manufacturing capacity and supply chains that are difficult to replace quickly.
There is a historical irony here.
In 1973, the United States discovered, at the height of its global power, that military and financial superiority could not eliminate vulnerability to oil. The Arab oil embargo demonstrated that the strongest country in the international system could still become strategically exposed if it depended on a commodity for which it lacked an immediate substitute.
More than half a century later, the commodity has changed, but the principle has not.
Today, the vulnerability may lie in a magnet used in an engine, a mineral needed for a missile system, or a processed material essential to advanced manufacturing. China controls a dominant share of rare-earth mining and an even larger share of refining and processing. That position has turned export restrictions into a strategic instrument that Washington cannot ignore.
This is where Iran becomes especially revealing.
The Trump administration wants to reduce Tehran’s oil revenues and restrict access to funds, technology and components that can support its military capabilities. Washington has already sanctioned Chinese and Hong Kong-based firms and individuals connected to Iranian oil trade and procurement networks.
But there is a fundamental difference between sanctioning Chinese companies and imposing a level of pressure that risks a full economic confrontation with China itself.
If “maximum pressure” were merely a matter of consistent enforcement, the logic would be simple: whoever buys Iranian oil is punished, regardless of nationality.
But international politics is not a commercial court. It is a calculation of power, cost and retaliation.
This is where Thomas Schelling remains useful. One of the central insights in his work on coercion was that power is not simply the ability to inflict pain. It is the ability to turn the threat of pain into bargaining leverage.
The problem begins when the other side can hurt you too.
China may absorb American sanctions or technological restrictions, but it also possesses tools that can hit vulnerable parts of the U.S. industrial base. Rare earths and critical minerals have therefore become part of the bargaining process itself, rather than a peripheral trade issue.
That changes the meaning of American superiority.
During the 1990s and the post-Soviet period, Washington operated in a world in which it could impose severe economic costs on many states without fearing retaliation of comparable scale. The asymmetry was enormous: the United States could deny access to finance, technology and markets, while most targeted states had little they could withhold in return.
China has weakened that asymmetry.
It is not stronger than the United States across every dimension, nor is it immune to sanctions. Beijing remains dependent on foreign markets, technology and trade. But the relationship is no longer one in which one side holds all the keys.
It increasingly resembles two interconnected rooms, each containing a valve capable of shutting off something the other needs.
That is why Iran matters as a test case.
Washington can pressure middle-sized and smaller economies to reduce their dealings with Tehran, while exercising greater caution when the same logic points directly toward Beijing. At the same time, the United States preserves its own diplomatic channels with Iranian officials when those channels serve American interests.
There is no mystery in that. Great powers have always demanded discipline from partners while preserving flexibility for themselves.
The real question is whether they can continue imposing the cost of that asymmetry.
With China, that is becoming harder.
This may also explain the growing political importance of American disclosures and assessments concerning Chinese links to Iran’s economy and military capabilities. When direct coercion becomes expensive, reputational and diplomatic pressure becomes more valuable.
If Washington cannot easily force Beijing to retreat, it can try to raise the political cost of China’s relationship with Tehran by persuading Gulf states, European governments and Asian economies to view that relationship as a security issue, not merely a commercial one.
In other words, when bilateral coercion reaches its limits, great powers rediscover the value of coalitions.
Here again, history offers a useful parallel.
After the 1973 oil shock, Washington sought greater coordination among energy-consuming states and built institutions and policies designed to reduce its vulnerability to producers. The lesson was straightforward: dependency becomes less dangerous when it is diversified and managed collectively.
The same logic may now apply to rare earths, industrial inputs and strategic supply chains.
So the central question is not whether the United States remains powerful.
It plainly does. No other state combines the dollar, financial reach, advanced technology, military power, alliances and market access in quite the same way.
The more interesting question is this: how expensive has it become to use that power?
Empires do not begin to discover their limits only when their armies stop moving or their currencies collapse. Sometimes those limits appear much earlier.
The weapon is still in the hand.
But pulling the trigger now carries the risk of being hit by the shrapnel.
That is precisely the space China is trying to widen.