Rarely have trends reversed themselves with such lightning speed. Until last Saturday, the received US wisdom on the Middle East saw a pattern of détente and reconciliation – Sunni Arab states normalizing with Israel, Saudi détente with Iran, US informal arrangements restraining Iran nuclear activities—undoing years of turmoil and conflict. Today, the Israel-Palestinian conflict in the Gaza War looks instead more likely to spread to the West Bank and southern Lebanon than end soon, engulfing a major US ally with consequences for America and the world. If the US gets more directly involved in the fighting, it could reverse what had been seen as the desire by the Trump and Biden administrations to retrench from the region in favor of greater focus on China and, with the Ukraine war, Russia.
Hamas’ unprecedented and well-planned attack on Israel, the bloodiest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust –1200+ dead, and 2700+ wounded Israelis—has created a new zeitgeist, with the successes of the US’s Abraham Accords strategy upended and their future put in doubt. Israeli ties with six Arab countries and efforts to normalize Israeli-Saudi ties are on hold and in unchartered waters. Widespread pro-Palestinian responses in the region and across the Islamic world, including Indonesia, the largest Islamic state, highlight Israel’s dilemma. Responses to the attack – or a lack thereof – will also impact what had been a stable Israeli-Russia relationship, with Israel taking a low profile on Ukraine, but getting little from Russia in response to the attack.
While Tehran appears to have been not directly involved in the Hamas attack even while giving it annually $100 million in aid and military training, hints of Hezbollah gearing up suggests, more ominously, that the Hamas attack will fit nicely into an enduring Iranian strategy to blow up regional stability and integration efforts via proxies. Biden’s quiet efforts to restrain Iran’s nuclear program and the recent hostage deal will now become political liabilities heading into the 2024 US presidential race.
The Biden administration is considering sending a 2nd Carrier task force, the USS Eisenhower, to the Eastern Mediterranean – a show of force to deter others from joining the conflict that along with rushing ammunition to Israel are likely the harbinger of a deepening US presence and involvement in the Middle East. This decision will have strategic and political consequences for the US. With the US on the hook for continued security for Europe against Russian aggression and promises of more military and economic assistance for the Ukraine war, the Administration is being dragged away from its top strategic priority – China. It now looks like everything, everywhere, is blowing up at once. This predicament also hints at the shortcomings of the Pentagon’s approach to the defense industrial base, as allies Israel and Ukraine vie for supplies. The Hamas war will likely increase growing GOP skepticism about more aid for Ukraine.
Geopolitically, the war illuminates a growing informal alignment between China and Russia (neither condemned the Hamas attack) and Iran that could create new US vulnerabilities if the war in Ukraine or China’s assertive military actions around Taiwan and the East and South China Seas escalate.
As with the Ukraine war, many Global South countries have condemned violence but blame Israel for the root causes—namely, its longtime occupation of Palestinian territories. This replicates what happened with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where many in the Global South condemned the Moscow’s military tactics but agreed with Russia that years of NATO aggression had left it with few options. If the world was trending towards a bipolar split before this, the Hamas attack will have deepened it even more.
Where does it go from here?
For Israel, there are no good options. Israel had largely stabilized Gaza, allowing 19,000 Palestinians to work in Israel. Now it faces the need to entirely eradicate Hamas as a political and military force. That may mean its offensive will result in an occupation of Gaza from which it left in 2007 – a situation almost certain be unstable and violent. At some point, pressures for a ceasefire will arise. Turkey and Egypt are probably the best positioned to mediate but Russia and China have also offered their help.
Israel appears less likely to be able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, as happened in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Its reputation as a watertight security titan has been damaged and even as the Israeli Defense Forces are likely to overwhelm Hamas and takeover a leveled Gaza City, they will now have to occupy. Over time, as after other episodes of Intifada, Palestinian resistance can be expected to start up again. At this point, Israel may face the prospect of an endless Battle of Algiers-style urban guerrilla conflict with more Palestinian casualties than Israeli ones, but with no end in sight to the fighting.
Politically, Bibi Netanyahu has formed a National Unity War Cabinet, closing at least temporarily the deep divisions created by the rightwing Likud coalition’s judicial reform, but there will be many scores to settle after the war dies down. After similar failures in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, an Israeli Commission investigated Golda Meir, a far more popular prime minister than Bibi. As a result, she resigned. While Netanyahu has proved to have nine lives, there will undoubtedly be a commission investigating the intel and military preparedness failures, which may spell the end for Bibi and perhaps a national unity government at least until the next elections.
The Gaza war may reverberate loudly in Washington. The US intel Community also was caught flat-footed by the October 7 attacks, unlike its highly praised performance in anticipating and tracking Putin’s war on Ukraine. US intel failures have often resulted in more funding for the intel community, but the Congressional hearings—potentially public—could be bruising for the CIA and National Security Council whose director, Jake Sullivan, just last month stated that the region was “quieter today than it has been in two decades.”
Biden’s already historically low polling numbers will come under even more pressure, clouding his reelection chances in 2024. Before the war, there has been a growing GOP minority, opposed to more aid with Ukraine. If Ukraine’s counter-offense stalls, more in Congress may question the “whatever if takes” White House commitment to Ukraine. Washington may pit aid to Israel and Ukraine against each other. More broadly, the war and Iran’s backing for it are becoming loud Republican talking points and may provide more grist for 2024 campaign rhetoric seeking portray Biden incompetence. Trump is already blasting Biden for his perceived softness on Iran, which Trump asserts led to the Hamas attack.
For some time, the belief has been since the War on Terror was shelved and the US and NATO left Afghanistan that the state-on-state competition was the name of the global affairs game. Terrorist groups haven’t gone away, but our focus shifted. Welcome then to a world in which not only states matter but also terrorist groups, drug rings, arms dealers and organized crime. This is a world of polycrises with many actors involved.
Robert A. Manning is a distinguished senior fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy project.
Mathew Burrows is the Program Lead of the Stimson Center’s Strategic Foresight Hub.
The ‘New’ New Middle East and its Global Consequences
By Mathew Burrows • Robert A. Manning
Grand Strategy
Rarely have trends reversed themselves with such lightning speed. Until last Saturday, the received US wisdom on the Middle East saw a pattern of détente and reconciliation – Sunni Arab states normalizing with Israel, Saudi détente with Iran, US informal arrangements restraining Iran nuclear activities—undoing years of turmoil and conflict. Today, the Israel-Palestinian conflict in the Gaza War looks instead more likely to spread to the West Bank and southern Lebanon than end soon, engulfing a major US ally with consequences for America and the world. If the US gets more directly involved in the fighting, it could reverse what had been seen as the desire by the Trump and Biden administrations to retrench from the region in favor of greater focus on China and, with the Ukraine war, Russia.
Hamas’ unprecedented and well-planned attack on Israel, the bloodiest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust –1200+ dead, and 2700+ wounded Israelis—has created a new zeitgeist, with the successes of the US’s Abraham Accords strategy upended and their future put in doubt. Israeli ties with six Arab countries and efforts to normalize Israeli-Saudi ties are on hold and in unchartered waters. Widespread pro-Palestinian responses in the region and across the Islamic world, including Indonesia, the largest Islamic state, highlight Israel’s dilemma. Responses to the attack – or a lack thereof – will also impact what had been a stable Israeli-Russia relationship, with Israel taking a low profile on Ukraine, but getting little from Russia in response to the attack.
While Tehran appears to have been not directly involved in the Hamas attack even while giving it annually $100 million in aid and military training, hints of Hezbollah gearing up suggests, more ominously, that the Hamas attack will fit nicely into an enduring Iranian strategy to blow up regional stability and integration efforts via proxies. Biden’s quiet efforts to restrain Iran’s nuclear program and the recent hostage deal will now become political liabilities heading into the 2024 US presidential race.
The Biden administration is considering sending a 2nd Carrier task force, the USS Eisenhower, to the Eastern Mediterranean – a show of force to deter others from joining the conflict that along with rushing ammunition to Israel are likely the harbinger of a deepening US presence and involvement in the Middle East. This decision will have strategic and political consequences for the US. With the US on the hook for continued security for Europe against Russian aggression and promises of more military and economic assistance for the Ukraine war, the Administration is being dragged away from its top strategic priority – China. It now looks like everything, everywhere, is blowing up at once. This predicament also hints at the shortcomings of the Pentagon’s approach to the defense industrial base, as allies Israel and Ukraine vie for supplies. The Hamas war will likely increase growing GOP skepticism about more aid for Ukraine.
Geopolitically, the war illuminates a growing informal alignment between China and Russia (neither condemned the Hamas attack) and Iran that could create new US vulnerabilities if the war in Ukraine or China’s assertive military actions around Taiwan and the East and South China Seas escalate.
As with the Ukraine war, many Global South countries have condemned violence but blame Israel for the root causes—namely, its longtime occupation of Palestinian territories. This replicates what happened with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where many in the Global South condemned the Moscow’s military tactics but agreed with Russia that years of NATO aggression had left it with few options. If the world was trending towards a bipolar split before this, the Hamas attack will have deepened it even more.
Where does it go from here?
For Israel, there are no good options. Israel had largely stabilized Gaza, allowing 19,000 Palestinians to work in Israel. Now it faces the need to entirely eradicate Hamas as a political and military force. That may mean its offensive will result in an occupation of Gaza from which it left in 2007 – a situation almost certain be unstable and violent. At some point, pressures for a ceasefire will arise. Turkey and Egypt are probably the best positioned to mediate but Russia and China have also offered their help.
Israel appears less likely to be able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, as happened in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Its reputation as a watertight security titan has been damaged and even as the Israeli Defense Forces are likely to overwhelm Hamas and takeover a leveled Gaza City, they will now have to occupy. Over time, as after other episodes of Intifada, Palestinian resistance can be expected to start up again. At this point, Israel may face the prospect of an endless Battle of Algiers-style urban guerrilla conflict with more Palestinian casualties than Israeli ones, but with no end in sight to the fighting.
Politically, Bibi Netanyahu has formed a National Unity War Cabinet, closing at least temporarily the deep divisions created by the rightwing Likud coalition’s judicial reform, but there will be many scores to settle after the war dies down. After similar failures in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, an Israeli Commission investigated Golda Meir, a far more popular prime minister than Bibi. As a result, she resigned. While Netanyahu has proved to have nine lives, there will undoubtedly be a commission investigating the intel and military preparedness failures, which may spell the end for Bibi and perhaps a national unity government at least until the next elections.
The Gaza war may reverberate loudly in Washington. The US intel Community also was caught flat-footed by the October 7 attacks, unlike its highly praised performance in anticipating and tracking Putin’s war on Ukraine. US intel failures have often resulted in more funding for the intel community, but the Congressional hearings—potentially public—could be bruising for the CIA and National Security Council whose director, Jake Sullivan, just last month stated that the region was “quieter today than it has been in two decades.”
Biden’s already historically low polling numbers will come under even more pressure, clouding his reelection chances in 2024. Before the war, there has been a growing GOP minority, opposed to more aid with Ukraine. If Ukraine’s counter-offense stalls, more in Congress may question the “whatever if takes” White House commitment to Ukraine. Washington may pit aid to Israel and Ukraine against each other. More broadly, the war and Iran’s backing for it are becoming loud Republican talking points and may provide more grist for 2024 campaign rhetoric seeking portray Biden incompetence. Trump is already blasting Biden for his perceived softness on Iran, which Trump asserts led to the Hamas attack.
For some time, the belief has been since the War on Terror was shelved and the US and NATO left Afghanistan that the state-on-state competition was the name of the global affairs game. Terrorist groups haven’t gone away, but our focus shifted. Welcome then to a world in which not only states matter but also terrorist groups, drug rings, arms dealers and organized crime. This is a world of polycrises with many actors involved.
Robert A. Manning is a distinguished senior fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy project.
Mathew Burrows is the Program Lead of the Stimson Center’s Strategic Foresight Hub.
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