Can the US afford the global backlash for supporting Israel?
It is hard to ignore that the US political culture is in turmoil, and the rest of the world is giving it a side-eye while observing its development. The recent assassination attempt of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, the series of foreign policy blunders under the Biden administration, and a few months earlier, widespread campus unrest across the United States, echoing the activism of the 1960s during the height of the Vietnam War; all seems to indicate strong resentment against the US establishment.
However, these are not merely sentiments limited to the American public. The rest of the world too held the same views. While the US establishment might try to resist this fact (to their detriment) the rest of the world can no longer afford to bat an eye to the US being complicit in the genocidal atrocities in Gaza, notably through its recent $95 billion military and foreign aid package, and consistent vetoing of UN resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
The US has not only greenlighted the transfer of a new $2.5bn weapons package, comprising bombs and fighter jets, to Israel, but it goes a long way to violate its own law to serve Israel’s interest. The Leahy Laws (passed in 1997) state that money from the Pentagon “may not be used for any training, equipment, or other assistance for a foreign security force unit” if there is “credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.”
These US weapons and financial aids have played a key role in helping the Israeli military perpetuate its assault on the people of Gaza — in which the International Court of Justice has recently ordered Israel to “prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide.” Given all of these actions, it’s evident that the United States’ handling of the conflict in Gaza has significantly eroded its perception of credibility and neutrality, particularly among non-western nations.
But should the American establishment care about how the world views them? They should, especially if they know what’s at stake for them. The American establishment should be wary that the world order is gradually shifting and the US is not as influential as it used to be.
The US is already losing its influence in the Middle East since its military withdrawal in 2011. From Syria to Yemen, North Africa, and elsewhere, the United States has struggled to find a clear strategy, even while the government’s much-touted pivot to East Asia has yet to take shape, let alone yield tangible diplomatic results.
The recent setbacks in 2021, when the US military had to withdraw from Afghanistan after a twenty-year occupation, and after the Taliban took over Kabul, further illustrate this point.
Even the most recent effort to promote normalization between Israel and Arab countries through the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), aimed at isolating China and Iran while strengthening its hold over the region, is now experiencing setbacks post-Oct 7, 2023. Israel’s bombardment of the Palestinians in Gaza has frozen this process and the US will then have to bear the strategic loss of this initiative.
The recent polls done in November 2023 suggest that the percentage of Arabs who believe America has a positive role in the war amounts only to 7%. By contrast, the percentage of Arabs who say that China has a positive role in the conflict included 46% in Egypt, 34% in Iraq, and 27% in Jordan. Positive views of Russia are even higher; the percentage of those who believe that Russia has a positive influence neared half—averaging 47% among the public surveyed (except in Palestine).
If the US establishment is serious about maintaining its strategic influence in the MENA region in the long run, especially with the rise of a new hegemon like China and Russia, then they should be alarmed and more sensitive to the sentiments on the ground, especially with the recent and tragic developments in Gaza today.
But here is another bitter truth pill that the US establishment needs to swallow: the outcry against the devastation in Gaza isn’t solely originating from MENA nations, it reverberates across the entirety of the Global South. The Global North wrongly perceived the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as a regional issue confined to the Middle East. However, beyond Western spheres, the Palestinian dilemma evokes sentiments that many in the US and Western Europe struggle to grasp.
Many countries of the Global South saw Israel as a European settler-colonial project forcibly imposed on the Arab population of Palestine. In Latin America and Africa, there exists considerable sensitivity towards racist settler-colonial states that perpetrate violence against indigenous communities. For many of them, the Palestinian struggle embodies resistance against Western neo-colonialism, with the US often at its core.
In Africa, Latin America, and Asia, numerous individuals are rallying against the support of Israel by the US and other Western powers. The decision of five Latin American countries (Belize, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, and Honduras) to suspend diplomatic relations with Israel or recall their ambassadors, coupled with renewed insistence from the region to ´delink´ with US dollars in the global economy, underscores this anti-imperialist stance.
The US’s blind support for Israel’s war against innocent civilians in Gaza also stands at odds with its stance in the war in Ukraine, further exposing its hypocrisy and dampening its fragile credibility. The majority of countries in the Arab world, Africa, and other non-Western regions remained unconvinced by the US and Europe’s arguments for imposing severe sanctions on Russia in defense of the so-called “rules-based order.”
Many recognized the blatant double standard in Western governments, particularly the US, advocating for global condemnation of Russian aggression while simultaneously supporting and financing Israeli violations of international law. Now, the challenge for the US to garner international support against Russia or any other adversary of Washington would be considerably greater, given the Biden administration’s unwavering backing of Israel’s offensive in Gaza.
The “unipolar” world that has centered the US is slowly turning into a thing of the past. And the sooner the US casts aside its hubris and comes to terms with the fact that the world is now gradually shifting towards multipolarity, the sooner they ought to realize that the loss of US credibility can only spell trouble for the country in the long term.
Imran Mohd Rasid is a Research Correspondent for the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies (IAIS) Malaysia, based in Istanbul. He is also completing his post-graduate studies in Political Science and International Relations at Ibn Haldun Universitesi.