The front-page headline on the print edition was even more dramatic: The War In The Near East Is Projecting Itself Onto the Whole World.
The article by Andrea Rizzi declares:
“The attack by Hamas that sought to reverse the marginalization of the Palestinian question has led to a spiral that, in addition to immense human suffering, is causing spillovers in the price of oil, elections in the United States, and the war in Ukraine.” (quoted in the sub-head above)When what we still call the world community neglects what everyone knows is a conflict that could produce far-reaching implications – which is largely what happened for the American government from 2017 (Trump) to 2024 (Biden), it can actually wind up producing, uh, far-reaching implications.
It has led to a spiral that, besides adding to immense human suffering, is causing spillovers in the price of oil, elections in the United States, and the war in Ukraine.
Gideon Levy, the Israeli journalist who has been very critical of Israel’s occupation and war policies, wearily warns about the policy of an endless spiral of violence, which is what Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is doing: (2)
There are a few axioms in Israel that cannot be challenged a few axioms in Israel that cannot be challenged. One of the worst has now come to the fore: We must respond to the Iranian missile attack. Why "must" we?Anatol Lieven puts Joe Biden’s Israel policy into a larger picture:
Because we must, that's all. Because they started it. Because now it's our turn. Because if we don't respond, they'll attack again. Because deterrence. Because national honor. Because security. Because any country would retaliate. Because what do you want us to do? Should we do nothing? All of this is true, but how about a slightly more rational consideration, such as cost versus benefit?
It's irrelevant. They hit us, and we must – we absolutely must – hit them back. And what if this could drag us into a war more terrible than its predecessors? It doesn't matter, we must respond. These are the playground rules that govern the state and jeopardize its future. ...
As Levy sees it, the Biden Administration has somehow embedded its uncritical support for Netanyahu’s wars in their approach to balancing against China, however unrealistic their assumptions about the Middle East may be: Once, and only once, Israel violated this axiom, against its will. And it benefited as a result. It was orchestrated by the toughest prime minister it has ever known, Yitzhak Shamir, who acceded to the American request not to respond to the Scud missile attacks from Iraq that inflicted destruction, terror and death on Israel [in 1991 at the start of the First Gulf War (2)]. The rest is history. That was the last time Israel restrained itself in this manner. It lost nothing and saved many lives, first and foremost in Iraq but also among its own soldiers and civilians. [my emphasis]
In the case of U.S. administrations, and the elites that advise them, moral and political courage is a particular requirement because choosing between different foreign policy goals inevitably means infuriating one or more powerful domestic lobbies. [I think here he may mean should be a particular requirement.]The pragmatism that Biden showed by sticking to the pullout of US troops from Afghanistan looks now like an outlier in Biden’s foreign policy record. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine that entered a new phase with Russia’s new offense land territorial seizures in February 2022 has continued at great cost to Ukraine with no end or formal peace negotiations in sight. Biden’s policy there has basically been: escalate, escalate, escalate.
The failure of the Biden administration — and all the U.S. establishments of the past 30 years — to pass this test means that the U.S. has found itself committed to a whole set of mutually contradictory goals: To maintain peaceful relations with Russia and destroy Russian influence among its immediate neighbors; to support complete Ukrainian victory and to avoid the risk of nuclear war with Russia; to combat ISIS and al-Qaida Sunni Islamist extremism and to overthrow the Libyan and Syrian states with the help of those same extremists; to advocate (however feebly) a two state solution for Palestine and give unconditional support to Israel; to base America’s moral claim to global primacy on the defense of democracy and human rights, and to support Israel’s mass murder of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians; to address climate change as an existential threat and to pursue policies that require spending sums on the military vastly greater than those devoted to alternative energy or climate mitigation; to cooperate with China on climate change and to cripple China’s economic growth. [my emphasis in bold] (4)
While the official US security doctrine since 2011 has framed China as the main strategic challenge to the US – understandable from the geopolitical viewpoint – the Biden Administration has seen cooperation between Russia and China increase to levels arguably not seen since the first years after the Communist victory in the Civil War. (5) This trend is the opposite goes the opposite direction of what would be needed for the US to balance geopolitically against China’s power and influence. That would seemingly require creating conditions in which Russia would find it in their interest to cooperate with Europe and the US to hedge against Chinese power. Xi Jinping’s strategic policies over the last four years have been considerably more advantageous to his country in that regard than the New Cold War posture of the Biden Administration has been for the US an Europe.
And we just learned that China’s close ally North Korea is deploying troops in the Russian war against Ukraine. (6) Any Administration’s policy of seeking to balance other countries against China doesn’t seem to be going entirely smoothly at this point…
Meanwhile, the Biden Administration was essentially continuing the Trump Administration’s policy of promoting Israeli cooperation with Arab countries at the expense of any kind of hope for a peaceful settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Biden’s policy looks like a combination of the chronic US deference to Israeli foreign-policy and military priorities, even when that visibly damages US interests. “Never before have there been so many voice and so many distinct ones, in the whole world, questioning the policy of Israel.” (7)
The Biden Administration, obviously, is not one of those.
And Biden took his support to such an extreme that Israel’s rogue Prime Minister Netanyahu is frantically pushing two weeks before the US Presidential election to involve the US military on its side in its regional wars, in line with Netanyahu’s longtime goal of having the US go directly to war with Iran. Because he sees that Biden will support him in any war in which he engages, whether it makes sense or not. For people like Netanyahu, any notion of a just cause for war or considerations of international law are objects of contempt.
In both those cases, it’s hard not to imagine that bad habits, stale ideology, and inertia have driven the Biden policy there rather than a realistic - much less moral - position toward Israel’s war against civilian populations in Gaza and Lebanon. And all the while, Netanyahu has been blatantly favoring Trump as the Presidential candidate in this year’s election. Whether that policy has been good for Israel in the short or long term is questionable at best. It’s been a terrible thing for the United States. But Biden’s collusion with Netanyahu’s wars – effectively unconditional approval from what we can see – has definitely been bad for US interests in general and for the Democratic Party in the US.
Former diplomat Daniel Levy also observes:
In the past year, Israel has conducted an unprecedented campaign—one that numerous experts tell us is a genocide—in Gaza, in violation of urgent provisions of the International Court of Justice. Along the way, Israel has learned that there are no immediate tangible consequences for its relentless violations of international law. Gentle US discouragement of Israel’s more extreme waves of destruction, and media leaks about Biden’s frustration with Netanyahu, were completely overshadowed by the diplomatic political cover and the conveyor belt of weapons supplies the US offered to Israel, as well as its messaging alignment. These were combined with the US moving more military assets and troops to the region to mitigate any fallout for Israel, all of which tells Israel’s leaders that they could take additional risks and criminal measures. So after testing these limits in Gaza, and knowing that it had the support of the Biden administration (and other Western allies) to act without consequence, Israel was confident that expanding this destruction into Lebanon would be met with impunity. [my emphasis] (8)As Levy sees it, the Biden Administration has somehow embedded its uncritical support for Netanyahu’s wars in their approach to balancing against China, however unrealistic their assumptions about the Middle East may be:
The Biden administration leadership sees a geostrategic advantage in working with Israel to substantially degrade Axis groups [i.e., the Iran-backed “axis of resistance”], and perhaps attempt to put in place friendly regimes in Lebanon, Syria, and even Iran. If that happens, America can finally achieve the shared Trump-Biden vision of a new Pax Americana between Israel and Arab states to marginalize the Palestinians, manage the region, and prevent any hostile hegemon arising, while also serving to block Chinese and Russian interests. That would also help the US shift its attention and assets towards the Asia-Pacific and Indo-Pacific regions. [my emphasis]
Levy’s interview closes with this warning about Washington’s self-inflicted “escalatory trap”:
The US has the leverage to bring this to a close, and perhaps part of the US military is inclined to do so. But the Biden White House has been busy building an escalatory trap for itself and burning the off-ramps. At this point, it would buck decades of precedent, as well as the explicit commitments made by the two candidates—Trump and Harris—to still expect a deus ex machina from Washington, DC to save the situation. Yet the truth remains that letting the escalation continue is a political decision, not a decree from heaven.
Notes:
(1) https://elpais.com/internacional/2024-10-07/un-ano-de-guerra-en-oriente-proximo-como-un-conflicto-local-casi-olvidado-devino-en-contienda-regional-con-consecuencias-globales.html (Accessed: 2024-07-10). My translation from Spanish.
(2) Levy, Daniel (2024): Why Is It That We 'Must' Respond to the Iranian Attack? Haaretz 10/07/2024. >https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-10-10/ty-article/.premium/why-is-it-that-we-must-respond-to-the-iranian-attack/00000192-7214-daea-a5bb-7677726f0000 2024-11-10).
(3) Walker, Martin Fairhall, David (2024): Iraqi missiles strike Israel. The Guardian 01/18/ 1991. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/1991/jan/18/iraq.davidfairhall> (Accessed: 2024-11-10).
(4) Lieven, Anatol (2024): Blinken's sad attempt to whitewash Biden's record Responsible Statecraft 10/10/2024. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/blinken-defends-biden/> (Accessed: 2024-11-10).
(5) What is Putin and Xi's 'new era' strategic partnership? Reuters 05/16/2024. <https://www.reuters.com/world/what-is-putin-xis-new-era-strategic-partnership-2024-05-16/> (Accessed: 2024-19-10).
(6) Peseckyte, Giedre (2024): North Korean troops in Ukraine war called ‘huge’ escalation risk. Politico EU 10/19/2024. <https://www.politico.eu/article/north-korea-russia-ukraine-war-called-huge-escalation-risk/> (Accessed: 2024-19-10).
(7) Gómez, Luz (2024): Palestina: el mal crónico de la esperanza. El País 07.10.2024, 13. My translation from Spanish.
(8) Levy, Daniel (2024): Interviewed by Alex Kane in “Burning the Off-Ramps”. Jewish Currents 10/10/2024. <https://jewishcurrents.org/burning-the-off-ramps> (Accessed: 2024-19-10).
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