For 20 months, the Biden administration has sought to morally defend Russia by condemning its brutal war against Ukraine for the indiscriminate killing of civilians.
The argument found favor in much of the West, but less so in other parts of the world, where the war was viewed more as a great power conflict and there was reluctance to engage in sanctions or otherwise isolate Russia.
As Israel now bombs Gaza, killing more than 4,300 people since October 7, the Biden administration’s unwavering support risks creating new headwinds in its efforts to win over global public opinion.
In a speech in the Oval Office on Thursday, President Biden linked American support for Ukraine and Israel, describing both nations as democracies fighting enemies determined to “utterly destroy” them. Russia has invaded and sought to annex Ukraine, while Hamas, the group that controls Gaza and denies Israel’s right to exist, staged a terrorist attack that killed at least 1,400 people in southern Israel.
But Israel’s counterattack on Gaza, its threats of a ground invasion, and America’s tight embrace of its most important Middle East ally have drawn cries of hypocrisy regardless.
Such allegations are not exactly new in the Middle East conflict. But the dynamics of the twin crises go beyond Washington’s desire to rally global support to isolate and punish Russia for invading its neighbor.
The Middle East region is increasingly becoming a new front in the battle for influence in the Global South – the collective name for the developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America – pitting the West against Russia and China.
“The war in the Middle East will drive a growing wedge between the West and countries like Brazil and Indonesia, key swing states of the global South,” said Clifford Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group, a New York-based risk assessment organization. “This will make international cooperation in Ukraine, as well as the enforcement of sanctions against Russia, even more difficult.”
President Biden repeatedly linked the wars in Ukraine and Gaza in a rare prime-time address from the Oval Office on Thursday. Photo credit: Tom Brenner for The New York Times
President Joko Widodo of Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country which does not recognize Israel, condemned the “ongoing injustices against the Palestinian people.” The Gaza war would only make the global situation worse, he said, threatening higher oil prices after the Ukraine war had already slowed wheat exports.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva criticized US arms sales to Ukraine as “encouraging” war, but blamed both sides for the conflict and offered mediation. As president of the United Nations Security Council, Brazil this month drafted a humanitarian ceasefire resolution for Gaza that also specifically condemned “heinous terrorist attacks by Hamas.”
After the United States vetoed the resolution because it failed to mention Israel’s right to self-defense, Brazil’s ambassador to the United Nations, Sérgio França Danese, expressed frustration. “Hundreds of thousands of civilians in Gaza can no longer wait,” he said. “Actually, they waited far too long.”
Arab leaders – including Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud – criticized what they called double standards in their speeches at the peace summit in Cairo on Saturday .
“Anywhere else, the attack on civilian infrastructure and the deliberate starvation of an entire population of food, water and basic needs would be condemned and accountability enforced,” King Abdullah said. “International law loses all value if it is implemented selectively.”
Palestinians have criticized Western capitals for failing to express outrage over the bombing of Gaza, just as they have called Russian rocket attacks on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure “barbaric” and “crimes against humanity.”
Tents in Khan Younis, south of Gaza City, for Palestinians displaced by bombing. Credit…Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times
When war first broke out in Ukraine, Palestinians were thrilled by the tough stance taken by Western capitals toward one country’s occupation of another country’s land, said Nour Odeh, a Ramallah-based Palestinian political commentator. “But it seems that occupation is only bad when the people who aren’t on your side are doing it.”
In some ways, the Gaza conflict was a boon for the Kremlin, as it pushed the Ukraine war into the background and burnished Russia’s image in the Middle East and the Global South. In recent years, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin has sought to restore some of the Soviet Union’s lost influence in the Middle East by intervening militarily in the civil wars in Syria and Libya. He has significantly strengthened ties with Iran, a country that Israel views as a national security threat.
Russian support for Hamas was seen as an extension of those efforts, with Mr. Putin comparing the siege of Gaza to the World War II siege of Leningrad, a sacred Russian symbol.
China is also seeking to expand its influence in the Middle East, having recently brokered a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore ties. Russia and China refused to condemn Hamas. Instead, they criticized Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, particularly its decision to cut off water and electricity to Gaza and the number of civilian deaths there. They have called for international mediation and a ceasefire before Israel considers its war to have fully begun.
The Palestinian cause has long flourished in the global South, so the Gaza war has only increased resentment in Africa, Asia and Latin America that the West is treating Ukraine as a special case because it is a European war. They denounce spending money on arming Ukraine while ignoring international development goals.
There is a perception that the West “cares more about the Ukrainian refugees and the suffering of the Ukrainian civilians than we do when they suffer in Yemen, in Gaza, in Sudan, in Syria,” said Hanna Notte, a Berlin-based Eurasia resident -Analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
This illustrates why the West has failed to convince countries like India and Turkey to support sanctions against Russia. Given the situation in Gaza, these efforts are unlikely to be successful any time soon.
“It’s a big headache for Western diplomats because they’ve spent a lot of time this year trying to charm the global south,” said Richard Gowan, the UN director of the International Crisis Group. “We have seen that support and interest in Ukraine among UN members has waned over the course of this year.”
Search for victims after a Russian missile attack in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine. Some critics believe that the West views the Ukraine war as a special case because it is being fought in Europe. Photo credit: David Guttenfelder for The New York Times
In Europe, much of the discussion took place on social media, where some commentators lambasted Europe as hypocrisy for its different approaches to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, while few politicians made direct comments.
Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that most of the world perceived a double standard in Western policy regarding the two wars. “Whether rightly or wrongly, this is something we have to deal with,” he wrote.
There are now signs that this is happening. Josep Borrell Fontelles, the European Union’s top diplomat, said in a speech to the European Parliament on Wednesday that cutting off water supplies was a violation of international law, regardless of where it happened. “It is made clear that depriving a besieged human community of basic water supplies – in Ukraine and Gaza – violates international law,” he said.
Some analysts suggested that hostility to Western policies in Ukraine should be taken as a given in certain parts of the world, but that it could still be addressed tactfully.
During the Cold War, the United States often faced a hostile bloc of nonaligned nations as well as the Soviet Union and its allies and still prevailed, said John Herbst, former U.S. envoy to Ukraine and diplomat to Israel and the occupied territories, currently at the Atlantic Council.
The Gaza conflict could make it “somewhat more difficult, but by no means impossible” to win support for Ukraine, he said.
Israel’s goal of uprooting Hamas is probably too ambitious, he said, but it could significantly weaken Hamas’s military capability. The United States will face a short-term blow in global public opinion because of its support for Israel, but that will likely fade over time, he predicted, and should not deter Washington from continuing to advocate for Ukraine.
“We should explain that what Moscow is doing in Ukraine is dangerous for all nations, because if the kind of international order that the Kremlin and Beijing are pursuing becomes the international order, that means that all small, comparatively weak “States that would do this would be at the mercy of their larger neighbors,” Mr. Herbst said.
Vivian Yee contributed reporting. Sheelagh McNeill contributed to the research.