-Analysis-
PARIS — Love in the Time of Cholera is the title of a novel published in 1985 by Colombian Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The book written about the current dilemma facing the Democratic Party in the U.S. could be titled War in the Time of Elections.
War is ablaze in the Middle East less than a month before a momentous U.S. presidential election.
By pushing his advantage on the ground and extending the war to Lebanon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not only seeking to stay in power as long as possible, he seems to be behaving like a master billiards player, always thinking two shots ahead, with a central aim to help carry Donald Trump back to the White House.
Any hint of gratitude for Joe Biden and his vice-president turned candidate to succeed him, Kamala Harris? None seems to be holding back the Israeli Prime Minister. It’s as if “Bibi” intends to punish the hand that (very largely) saved him.
Why is he doing this? To what extent does this episode serve as a magnifying glass for judging the place and role of the U.S. in the world?
In order to answer those questions, we need to start with a likely hypothesis. Between the perceived price of groceries, opposition to immigration and the question of abortion, there isn’t much room left for foreign policy in the motivations of most American voters.
Turning point?
“It’s the economy, stupid!”. Despite his victory in the first Gulf War, George H.W. Bush was defeated by Bill Clinton in 1992 because of so-called “pocketbook” issues.
What will happen in 2024? Could the Middle East crisis be for Kamala Harris what it was for Jimmy Carter in 1980: a decisive blow. The nascent Islamic Revolution in Iran, and even more so the failure of Operation Eagle Claw to free diplomats held hostage in the U.S. embassy in Tehran, led to the election of Ronald Reagan.
Is Israel in the role of history’s gas pedal: the protégé destabilizing the protector?
Could it be that the fading Islamic Republic is playing the same role today as it did in 1980? This time, with Israel in the role of history’s gas pedal: the protégé destabilizing the protector?
It was through the Middle East that the fledgling American republic discovered the charms of international politics, in its fight against the Barbary tribes (today’s Maghreb) in the early 19th century. Two centuries later, might the most visible sign of its impotence — relative or absolute? — also be coming from the Middle East?
A “shattered” American strategy
In 1967, at the time of the Six-Day War, America took over from France as Israel’s privileged ally and supporter. A role that continues to this day, despite Washington’s desire to “extricate itself” from a region where it seems to receive nothing but trouble.
Its unfortunate past military adventures in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, its own sudden abundance of oil and shale gas resources, the rise of China (the only rival “worthy of the name”), are all leading America to want to distance itself from the Middle East.
The hope is to delegate the region’s security issues to its allies, in particular the unlikely pairing of Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Hamas’ determination to put the Palestinian question back at the heart of the region’s political chessboard — in the most barbaric way possible — and Israel’s massive retaliation, revealing Iran’s singular weaknesses, beyond even those of its protégés, have in a way “shattered” the American strategy. Isn’t Iran too weak diplomatically (or politically) for its military strength?
In his best-known book The Strategy of Conflict, the 2005 Nobel Prize winner in economics, Thomas Schelling, put forward the strategy of the weak against the strong in the nuclear age. It’s not clear that Benjamin Netanyahu has read Thomas Schelling.
But the Israeli Prime Minister, behaving like the most cunning of American politicians, was able, like a spider spinning its web, to encircle Joe Biden in a series of traps — and he fell into them all. Part victim of his personal sentiment — he belongs to a fundamentally pro-Israeli generation — and his determination not to fall back into the errors of his predecessors, and to keep his distance from the Middle East, Biden seems to have allowed himself to be constantly manipulated by “Bibi”.
A gift to Trump?
The Israeli Prime Minister, sensing the unique opportunity presented by the electoral calendar in the United States, has stepped into the breach like an unruly pupil, taking advantage of the fact that the teacher’s back is turned.
Can Biden still manage to “pull Netanyahu by the ear,” as Ronald Reagan did to then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1982, when the latter would not allow Yasser Arafat to leave Lebanon and take refuge in Tunis? Can he “twist his arm,” as U.S. Secretary of State James Baker did to Yitzhak Shamir in 1990, under George H.W. Bush?
But isn’t this just a gift to Donald Trump, who will be able to present himself as Israel’s only true friend in its fight against barbarism?
Never has the United States shown so much weakness towards Israel.
Traditionally, 70% of the Jewish electorate in the United States votes for the Democratic Party. What will happen this time? Conversely, if he persists in his support for Israel — sometimes critical, but generally unwavering — Biden risks losing the most radical votes in the Democratic Party. Could even a marginal percentage of these votes fail Kamala Harris on November 5? And in some of the seven key states in the presidential race?
America undecided
In any case, never since it became the “great protector” of the Jewish state has the United States shown so much weakness towards Israel.
Ensuring the state’s security and guaranteeing its right to exist is one thing. Not resisting “Bibi” when he promises Beirut the fate of Gaza is quite another.
It is the very moment when America appears most indecisive — both externally and internally — that its presidential election seems most decisive.
