Given what is believed to be the largest military operation in Israel’s modern history the land invasion of the Gaza Strip to eliminate Hamas’s main base of terrorism the possibility of interference by “external” powers or institutions is very limited.
The ineffectiveness of U.N.is proverbial, for example, but only reflects a long process of disintegration of the international order, causing wars like those of Ukraine it’s from Gaza (but not only) “suddenly” expose and accelerate them. The relative “balance of power” between the major powers, anchored by the dominance of the United States over the past twenty years, has disappeared.
The president Joe Biden In his recent address to the nation, he proposed a return to the “exceptionalism” of American foreign policy (“Beacon of the World”). But how realistic is this risky stance in the current Middle East?
The actions of Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken contradict the strategic mission of the region by the United States in a selffocused Europe and the stance of China and Russia. Photo: Miriam Alster/EFE
It has been fifty years since an American Secretary of State (was Henry Kissinger) negotiated the end of the Yom Kippur War in hectic trips to the region, as Israel was about to destroy the military strength of its main enemy, Egypt. The “Agreement” eventually came to be seen as a classic of the realist view of international relations, based on balancing the interests of the great powers.
The acting foreign minister repeated the same trips in a situation that reflects, above all, the strategic abandonment of the region by the United States, an inwardlooking Europe and the brutal challenge of “revisionists” China and Russia. Tony Blinken visited “friendly” regional powers with alliances and their own game with the “revisionists” and also in relation to the main enemy of the US, Iran.
The worsening conflict in the Gaza Strip has little chance of being neutralized by actions from powers outside the Middle East. Photo: Hannibal Hanschke/EFE
And a “fundamental ally” Israel that for decades has brought American foreign policy to its interests, rather than the other way around. Israel understands that its survival depends entirely on military superiority and an iron fist in the territories it has occupied since 1967. It assumes that fait accompli, such as the impossibility of the twostate solution and even the eventual annexation of the West Bank, would be swallowed in one way or another by the Arab population and governments and supported by the Americans.
So far, it is the “dynamics” or “inherent logic” of the regional conflict that is pulling external powers along, and not the other way around. In the current context, there seems to be no one capable of formulating the famous “balance of power” that would mean pursuing a political vision for the Middle East conflict, without which history lacks the “definitive” military solutions cannot last.
Nice ending in the jungle.