The announcement by the Biden administration concerning a curtailment of arms shipments to Israel is a major inflection point, not only in the current Gaza War but with regard to the credibility of the United States in its relations with allies and adversaries around the world. It sends the message that the U.S. may not stand by allies under attack. As of this writing in mid-May, we cannot predict the outcome of this policy, but there will certainly be significant reverberations in the Middle East region and beyond, just as the matter points to several higher order issues relevant to international relations.
Prior to exploring those aspects, it is worth noting a degree of ambiguity in the administration’s position. While President Biden spoke of withholding munitions if Israel operates in Rafah, Secretary of Defense Austin and National Security spokesman Kirby seemed to try to soften the message, suggesting that little if anything had changed. These competing comments appear to constitute a coordinated communication strategy, with which the President can appeal to the progressive wing of his party, while Austin and Kirby attempt to reassure supporters of Israel, especially in Congress, unhappy with the policy. This balancing act may be too clever by half and is likely to backfire: it will harden Hamas’ stance in negotiations, and it allows Prime Minister Netanyahu to profile himself domestically, improving his polling numbers in Israel. These political consequences will make a diplomatic compromise even more elusive. In addition, if and when the Rafah battle heats up, President Biden will find himself in the awkward position of having to live up to his declared “red line,” and therefore abandon an ally in war, or to try to walk back his earlier pronouncements and thereby further alienate part of his base, just months before the election. Alternatively, in the face of the hostile response that the embargo announcement elicited from Democrats and Republicans, the administration may refrain from carrying it out and hope that the episode just disappears into the news cycle.
In the meantime, the historic context and the strategic significance of the threatened embargo deserve close scrutiny, and not only because of the potential impact on the conflict itself. The development of American policy in the Gaza War brings to the surface three key considerations in international relations with regard to the role of a great power facing major adversaries, its relationship with allies, and the challenge of projecting power while upholding fundamental values.
First, the U.S. today remains unsurpassed as a great power, despite the challenges posed by near-peer rivals China and Russia, who in turn cooperate in a loose coalition with each other and with Iran and North Korea. The goal of this axis is the degradation of American influence everywhere, but especially in key zones of conflict: the border region of Europe in Ukraine, the Middle East, and the western Pacific. In the Gaza War, there are in fact two congruent conflicts underway at the same time: the local conflict between Israel and the paramilitary organizations fighting in the name of the Palestinians, Hamas and Hezbollah, and the overlapping war that Iran is waging against the U.S. The former, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, has its own deep history and particular problems, but it is being instrumentalized by America’s adversaries to wear down American resolve. Washington has devoted considerable attention–material support and diplomatic efforts–to move toward some resolution, which still remains frustratingly elusive. However, Washington has no other choice but to remain engaged. If the U.S. had not taken the lead, the region would have been ceded to the adversaries, and U.S. leadership as a great power would have been greatly diminished. The chaotic exit from Afghanistan has already raised doubts about American perseverance; relinquishing leadership in the Gaza negotiations would only confirm those doubts concerning American trustworthiness. Secretary Blinken must therefore continue to be seen traveling to the region.
Second, as a great power with global reach, the U.S. cannot do without allies. Reliance on the cooperation of smaller powers may well be a feature of every hegemonic system, but it is certainly indispensable for the U.S. today. The U.S. needs allies to share the burden of maintaining the international security architecture. In order to convince the American electorate to support a global foreign policy, there has to be credible evidence that partner countries are contributing their fair share to their defense. Allies who visibly contribute to security are necessary to support the domestic democratic legitimation of costly power projection. Partner burden-sharing is especially vital, given the budgetary constraints faced by the U.S. which limit aspirations to increase defense spending. Yet as allies become more crucial, so does the relationship between Washington and allies grow more sensitive, especially if the respective national interests of the two parties are only congruent but not identical. Eager for a resolution in Gaza, the Biden administration might plausibly settle for an arrangement that leaves Hamas intact, while Israel would have a very difficult time accepting a Palestinian state next door with Hamas, sworn to Israel’s destruction, participating in the political leadership. The general problem evident here involves the complexity of power projection through cooperation with any partner or proxy that has its own distinctive political goals. The prospect of limiting military aid to Israel for what this administration sees as America’s own goals is an instance of this problem.
The U.S. may ultimately choose not to limit aid, whether due to domestic and congressional opposition or because Israel limits the scope of its Rafah campaign. However the President has made the threat in public, the prospect of cutting aid to Israel has been articulated, and this prospect will therefore enter into the calculation of U.S. allies everywhere, who, especially after Afghanistan, will have to anticipate similar American vacillation in the future. A corrosion of the alliance network may begin to ensue. To the extent to which the Biden administration’s behavior is perceived as primarily a function of electoral politics–getting the Arab vote in Dearborn in order to keep Michigan in the Democrats’ Electoral College column–the policy of undercutting an ally can be interpreted as a particularly acute version of the instability of a democracy’s foreign policy. It is commonplace to note that dictatorships can be more consistent than elected regimes because the leadership does not change regularly, and the dictator does not have to worry about the opposition. U.S. foreign policy, by way of contrast, may change every four years, and dramatically so in the current polarized environment. Making arms to Israel dependent on ballots in Michigan is a feature, not an aberration of the system, in the absence of a bipartisan foreign policy consensus. Facing this potential for abrupt policy shifts, allies have the option of diversifying their international partnerships, as with Riyadh’s opening to Beijing in response to the Biden administration's treating it like a “pariah.” Alternative sources for weaponry will be sought out. Similarly, allies may begin to invest long-term in developing their own defense industrial bases in order to become more self-reliant, which amounts to a loosening of dependency on the U.S. This is likely to unfold in Israel, and it has been a long-term goal of, for example, Turkey.
Third, democratic states cannot mobilize support for any ambitious foreign policy without credible values and justifications. Governments need to provide the electorate with rationales that a course of action is for the good. A foreign policy devoid of an ethical dimension cannot be sustained for long. However, the pursuit of power and a commitment to values are not necessarily, indeed perhaps rarely, in alignment with each other. In Gaza, from a U.S. perspective, two values in particular are prominent: the humanitarian goal to minimize civilian casualties and the democratic principle of self-governance. Each poses a set of problems when examined closely.
The violence of war inescapably and sadly involves the killing of both soldiers and civilians. International law and ethical sensibility point to minimizing the latter. In Gaza, this goal is complicated by the Hamas strategy of utilizing an underground network underneath and in the midst of civilian facilities. Urban warfare, which is at the core of the Gaza conflict, in particular, generates civilian deaths. To the extent that the U.S. may stop delivery of the precision weaponry that enables targeting, for example, a specific apartment in a building, the result will be to leave Israel dependent on less precise weapons leading to greater numbers of unintended casualties. In addition, given the casualty numbers reported out of Gaza, at this point 34,000 total, and Israeli claims of having killed some 14,000 Hamas fighters, the ratio of military to civilian deaths is less than 1:2. This is lower than the 1:4 rate during parts of the American campaign in Iraq, and much lower than the 1:9 which the United Nations has stated as characteristic of urban fighting. In other words, every death is tragic, but the rate of collateral damage in Gaza is considerably lower than in comparable situations elsewhere. It appears that the Biden administration intends to hold Israel to a humanitarian standard met nowhere else, including by American forces. This leaves open the question as to why the U.S. is establishing a standard of humanitarian protection which it is itself unlikely ever to meet should it have to deploy military force anywhere in the future.
As far as democratic values are concerned, American founding documents established the core and complementary principles of human equality and self-governance. The aspiration to promote human dignity and democracy has been central to American foreign policy at least since the country's entry onto the world stage during the First World War. It is therefore in principle not controversial if the American approach to the Middle East conflict has quickly recurred to the idea of self-governance and the Palestinians’ “legitimate aspirations for self-determination.” The democratic telos is incontrovertible. Yet Secretary Blinken reverted to this familiar goal precisely at a point in time in the current conflict where there is no plurality in support for a two-state solution in either Israel or the West Bank and Gaza. After October 7 the vast majority of Israelis are deeply suspicious of a Palestinian state from which a similar attack could be launched, while Palestinian public opinion is similarly dubious about an independent Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel. Nor however, is there enthusiasm for a single binational state.
It is, however, not just a matter of the administration’s poor timing in its promotion of a Palestinian state. Little thought appears to have been given to the nature of the state that the Biden administration wants to bring into existence: Who will be the leader? Will there be elections (which would likely lead to a Hamas government)? Will there be guarantees of equal rights for women and a free press, or will this become an “illiberal democracy?” Most relevant to U.S. national interests is the question of the foreign policy of this anticipated Palestinian state. Will it be aligned with the U.S. or will it become a base for Iran–or Russia or China? Can we guarantee that it will be more like Jordan and less like Syria? Even in the midst of its idealistic pursuit of democracy, Washington would be foolish to ignore the potentially tragic ramifications of rash political decisions for American interests and influence in the region. In 1979, the Carter administration facilitated the end of the Shah’s regime in Persia, imagining that the Islamic Revolution meant to bring democracy, but it ended up with a regime that remains a sworn enemy: hopefully, Washington will not repeat that mistake in Palestine.
The situation in Gaza remains volatile, as do the associated politics in Jerusalem, Washington, and around the world. At this particular moment in the conflict, the administration's threat to withhold American military support from Israel–or perhaps just some support–can lead to various outcomes. Israel may be forced to accept defeat with continued Hamas supremacy in Gaza or even a Palestinian state in which Hamas plays the role that Hezbollah does in Lebanon. Alternatively, Israel may achieve its goals without American weapons, with the side effect of demonstrating the limits of Washington’s influence. A further possibility might entail negotiations, leading to a frozen conflict as elsewhere on the perimeter of Russian-dominated regions. In any case, the situation in Gaza highlights the larger conceptual issues at stake: the imperative of great powers to lead, the indispensability and simultaneous complexity of alliances, and the tragic tension between values and power that can, at best, be managed but never fully resolved.
