There's not much left of an international order
Leadership guided by a moral compass doesn't seem to be forthcoming
The fact that Israel was caught off-guard by the assault Hamas launched over the weekend shakes assumptions throughout the world about the extent to which we can be confident about an environment of security. For a few years, a consensus had been forming that Israeli-Palestinian animosity was fading in influence as a factor in Middle East dynamics. This view was given impetus by the 2020 Abraham accords between Israel and Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, as well as more recent progress on a thaw in relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Hopeful voices saw the emergence of a Sunni-Jewish bloc that would serve as counterweight to Iran’s hegemonic designs.
Such optimism is obviously now shattered. The longer this war continues, the more an age-old pattern will emerge in which unified understanding of what Israel must do will give way to calls for a ceasefire, spurred by the inevitable accounts of destruction wrought on Gaza.
The European Union has already exhibited a sign of disarray with its reversal, within hours, of its stance on continued Palestinian aid.
Creeping ennui usually sets in among supporters of the aggressed-upon party the longer a war lasts. We’re seeing it now regarding Ukraine. While Trumpist and Neo-Trumpist voices in the United States cast aspersions on US support for Ukraine from the outset, elements in the American body politic not necessarily motivated by the striking of a pose are wondering how much funding and weaponry is prudent for the nationto keep providing. European nations are also showing signs of wavering. It doesn’t help that the Russian bombing of a Ukrainian grocery store and cafe, in which over 50 people were killed was overshadowed by the Hamas attack on Israel, coming just days prior.
In a moment of simultaneous disruptions to stability in regions around the globe, developments such as China sending 32 PLA aircraft and nine vessels from the navy toward Taiwan in a 24-hour period in late August ought not to be overlooked. That move was in response to a $500 million US arms sale to Taiwan. Again, few nations see any scenario other than a massive dictatorship breathing down the neck of a representative democracy with a free-market economy, but it vies for the world’s attention with many other situations.
Recent coups in Gabon and Niger may have been the result of boiled-over frustrations with corrupt dynasties in those nations, but, as is always the case with coups, the question looms as to what comes after the military takeovers, and, more significantly, what the regional implications will be. The US State Department is giving lip service to working with the Economic Community of West African States to get Niger back on a democratic basis, but it seems to lack much substance.
From a moral standpoint, the United States and the West generally ought to be forthrightly cultivating global consensus on these situations, but, with an ineffective degree of consensus within the West, it’s not really equipped to do so. There’s not a lot of ambiguity in the way these flare-ups have occurred, but the world seems less equipped to prevent or handily resolve them than it has for a long time.