Thank Allah they are leaving us alone for the next 50 years as they worry about the Chinese. Regardless of all the trolling, the articles provide an interesting insight to the future of our world. The US is going to try to remain supreme even though the past 10 years have literally destroyed it economically and politically. Iraq was a failure in all military terms. The Insurgency is still active. They have not retained any bases. They have not been allowed to keep any troops on the ground and more importantly they have paved the way for Iran to influence Iraq even more.
Afghanistan is just a mess. COIN is dead. Effectively defeated by the Taliban. If you wish to read up more about COIN the AFPAK channel on FP has a bunch of articles stating how it failed and what are the lessons learned.
China on the other hand has dig in real deep in Latin America and Africa taking into its control a good deal of the natural resources the world needs.