With Israel-Gaza war, America’s Middle East policy has gone up in flames
- The US’ miscalculation was to seek to normalise relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel to counter Beijing’s geopolitical moves in the region. But this forced Hamas into desperate action
- As global concerns spread and domestic opposition grows, the US is being shaken to its foundations
Few had expected this, including US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. Eight days before the attack, Sullivan had listed the positive developments in the Middle East that were allowing America to focus on other regions, declaring: “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”
Yet America’s Saudi-Israeli normalisation scheme has come disastrously unstuck.
If, the logic goes, Washington pulled off something big in the Middle East, it would kill several birds with one stone.
Last but not the least, the grand rapprochement between Riyadh and Tel Aviv would so substantially and symbolically improve Israel’s security standing that President Joe Biden would certainly look to benefit by gaining more support for his re-election campaign from the Israel lobby.
Sullivan appeared confident in a White House press briefing last week, saying: “The United States is capable of supporting Ukraine in Europe, of supporting our allies in the Indo-Pacific, and of supporting our close ally, Israel, in its hour of need. And we believe we have the resources, tools and capacities to be able to effectively do that.”
The seriousness of the issue does not stop here. For years, Washington has been accused of allowing the Blob – its foreign policy establishment – and the Israel lobby to hijack policy by relentlessly leaning on Moscow and unreservedly supporting Tel Aviv. Voices of dissent sounded like outcries from the periphery of the country’s politics.
But last week, anti-Israeli statements were made on behalf of around 30 Harvard student groups, an unprecedented development that prompted the university’s former president, Lawrence Summers, to tweet: “In nearly 50 years of Harvard affiliation, I have never been as disillusioned and alienated as I am today.” A new dimension is emerging that may add to the spreading worries in America that this nation is being shaken to its foundations.
Terry Su is president of Lulu Derivation Data Ltd, a Hong Kong-based online publishing house and think tank specialising in geopolitics