World War III

[LITTLEREDDOT]

Many said World War III has already started.

World War III is already here​

Historians will look back with confusion as to how idiotic the leaders of this time were
By BRANDON J WEICHERTFEBRUARY 23, 2023
Print

US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin have fumbled into a new world war. Photo: AFP / Mikhail Metzel / Sputnik
This past week will be remembered by most historians – if anyone is lucky enough to live through this Age of Self-Destruction – as the point of no return for the Russo-Ukrainian war.
The world was treated (more like tormented) by dueling presidential speeches, one from the sclerotic US President Joe Biden, who journeyed to Kiev to reassert his undying support for Ukraine, the other by the surly Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Neither speech was particularly reassuring. Biden promised his Ukrainian wards an additional US$500 million in US taxpayer support for the besieged Ukrainians.

Shortly after his speech, the Pentagon hinted that it might stop slow-walking its promised (but as yet to be delivered) M1A2 Abrams main battle tank to the waiting arms of the desperate Ukrainian defenders and simply hand over the MBTs that are already in America’s warehouses (something that the Pentagon had resisted doing when the Biden administration made its initial announcement that it would, in fact, be sending the vaunted MBTs).

Understanding Putin’s speech​

The other speech came from Putin, who spoke for a whopping two hours on Tuesday evening, in which he reiterated his commitment to total victory over Ukraine and how the United States was ruled by “satanists” and “pedophiles.”
Unsurprisingly, most Western media outlets simply refused to cover the speech. Those few that did were openly derisive. The speech certainly was Castro-esque in its loquaciousness and was tinged with quasi-religious accusations against the West that would make most Iranian mullahs blush, but there was substance in Putin’s words.
He not only signaled that his commitment to the conflict was as strong as ever, but that he was escalating it, in response to what he viewed as an American escalation.
In fact, Putin issued his first significant threat toward the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO): He told his American rivals that they were to remove their offensive long-range weapons systems in Ukraine, otherwise Russian forces would begin directly targeting those systems.

A HIMARS missile launch. A combination of networked data and high-precision missiles has forced Russia to half its offensive in order to pivot to counter-battery missions. Photo: Asia Times file photo
Here is a red line that NATO and the Americans should think twice about crossing.
You see, these systems will be used by Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia. And while Ukraine certainly has a right to defend itself, the fact that it is doing so with capabilities that it only has thanks to the Americans means that the United States and NATO are now – in the eyes of Putin – direct combatants.
He said as much in his speech when he said the Americans will bear the responsibility for these actions should Russia be attacked by such systems.
What’s more, should these weapons systems be targeted by the Russians, one can anticipate that Americans will die. After all, just as with Russian S-400 emplacements in Syria, the American long-range systems are undoubtedly staffed or maintained at least partly by Americans.
Plus, there are likely American forces operating covertly in and around these long-range weapons systems, so we can expect that the Russian targeting of these systems and their surrounding environs will result in multiple American casualties.

The key takeaway from these two speeches that were delivered hours apart from each other is that there is now no hope for a peace deal.

Speeding toward nuclear war​

Putin made the shocking announcement that Russia was withdrawing from the Obama-era New START Treaty, which limited the number of tactical nuclear weapons that both the United States and Russia could have.
Of course, the New START Treaty did confer several decisive advantages on to the Russian side when the deal was signed by former president Barack Obama and former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev (with Putin’s blessing).
Still, Russia has a long history of supporting a coterie of arms-control agreements with the Americans going back to the heady Cold War days.
For Putin to pull Russia out of an agreement of which he was a vociferous defender should raise hairs on the backs of the necks of Washington policymakers. Yet all these statements have done is to harden Washington’s zeal in blindly supporting its Ukrainian proxy.

Putin’s decision to withdraw from the treaty speaks to the depths that he is willing to go to ensure that he wins this war. Thus compromise is not possible at this rate. The only thing that would make a peace deal tenable for Russia would be if its military were decisively defeated.

Peace activists wearing masks of Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden pose with mock nuclear missiles in front of the US Embassy in Berlin on January 29, 2021, in an action to call for more progress in nuclear disarmament. Photo: AFP / John MacDougall
While the Russians have certainly taken heavy losses, Ukraine has also taken significant losses lately. Unlike the Ukrainians, the Russians can afford to keep sending hundreds of thousands of their people into the meat grinder until they simply attrit the Ukrainians; until Russia’s larger forces bleed Ukraine’s forces dry in the field – and then surge over their corpses. This, at least, appears to be the general Russian plan.
If necessary, Putin will deploy tactical nuclear weapons to ensure that his forces can accomplish this herculean task.

No turning back​

The Ukrainians have made their intentions clear since before the conflict erupted a year ago: Kiev wants the complete restoration of Crimea and, eventually, eastern Ukraine.
That too is a red line that if crossed will likely trigger Moscow into risking nuclear war. Russia cannot lose its naval base in Sevastopol. If it does, it ceases being a major power, as it is isolated away from the vital Black Sea region.
The West is living in a pure fantasy if its so-called leadership thinks that Putin will simply sit back and watch this unfold. That was the point of Putin’s long-winded speech. The war isn’t ending. There will be no negotiated settlement (at least not one any time soon, or one that favors the Western side).
For his part, Biden made clear that he was not only going to continue his support for President Volodymyr Zelensky’sgovernment of Kiev. Biden further tweeted upon his departure from Kiev that he had “left a part of his heart” there.
How nice.
Biden is so committed to the Ukrainian cause that he has thus far refused to respond adequately to the major chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio, which has been dubbed by many critics of Biden as “America’s Chernobyl.”
Biden has instead lavishly doled US tax dollars out to a foreign country, Ukraine, instead of fellow Americans suffering in that disaster zone – in what is likely the run-up to his re-election campaign for president.
If that doesn’t show you how far Biden is willing to go for Ukraine, I don’t know what will.

No peace in our time​

Beijing is now getting involved more directly on the side of Moscow, meaning that Russia will have greater maneuvering room at a time when the West desperately needs the Russians to be isolated.
Why would Russia seek peace if the war is turning in its favor, as it is?
Rather than a deal being hatched, another world war is at hand, made possible by the combined arrogance and ignorance of both Western and Russian leaders, who’ve miscalculated from the very beginning to the ultimate end of this conflict.
Just as with the First World War, of course, there will be no victors here.
If it plays its strategic cards right, though, the Communist Party of China will benefit greatly from seeing its two greatest strategic competitors, Russia and America, devour each other over a senseless border dispute in southern Europe (which is why Beijing is likely supporting Russia in its fight in Ukraine).

Chinese President Xi Jinping on a large screen during a cultural performance as part of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China on June 28, 2021. Photo: AFP / Noel Celis
Historians will look back with confusion as to how idiotic the leaders of this time were. They will note that the two speeches of the Russian and American presidents on the one-year anniversary of the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war was the moment in which the conflict truly became a world war.
What’s more, they will wonder how a people blessed with so much could have been so irresponsible as to throw it all away for a petty dispute.
Face it, there will be no peace in our time. The recent speeches made by Biden and Putin, as well as the increasing involvement of China in the Ukraine conflict, mean that war is our lot – and this war is not one that the West can easily win.

Brandon J Weichert is a former US congressional staffer and a geopolitical analyst. On top of being a contributor at Asia Times, he is a contributing editor at American Greatness and The Washington Times. Weichert recently became a senior editor at 19FortyFive. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy, and Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon. More by Brandon J Weichert

 

[LITTLEREDDOT]

How the Iraq war bent America’s army out of shape​

As it exhausted itself battling insurgents, China re-armed​

The Economist

An explosion rocks Baghdad during air strikes during the invasion of Iraq on March 21, 2003. PHOTO: REUTERS

MAR 22, 2023


The Iraq war began on March 21, 2003, when Baghdad’s night sky lit up with American guided bombs and tracer fire.
“This will be a campaign unlike any other in history,” promised General Tommy Franks, the cigar-chomping commander of the United States Central Command (Centcom). “A campaign characterised by shock, by surprise… and by the application of overwhelming force.”
America’s air-and-ground assault quickly overwhelmed Iraq’s hapless armed forces. But in the years that followed, it overwhelmed the American military, too, leaving it bent out of shape for the accelerating competition with China.
The American-led coalition conquered Baghdad in just over three weeks, a remarkable display of raw military power against what was then the world’s fourth-largest standing army.
But in the years that followed, America was sucked into a campaign of nation-building and counter-insurgency against armed groups, including Sunni jihadists, disaffected members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and Shia militants.
Mr Barack Obama, then President, pulled American troops out in 2011, only to send many back after Islamic State, an Al-Qaeda splinter, tore through northern Iraq and Syria in 2014. Around 2,500 American troops remain today.
These campaigns put an enormous strain on America’s army. For the first six years of the war, the number of American troops in Iraq rarely fell below 120,000.

At the peak of “the surge” in 2007 – a spike in troops to combat a raging insurgency – the number was far higher. And as Iraq wound down, the war in Afghanistan ramped up: 98,000 troops were deployed there at that conflict’s peak in 2011.
Mobilisation on this scale required implementing what many soldiers called a “backdoor draft”: a stop-loss policy of forcing soldiers to extend their service. Between 2002 and 2008, more than 58,000 soldiers were affected.
The intense pace of operations had a wider impact on American forces, as a paper published in 2009 by the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a think-tank, warned. By 2007, the share of army recruits with high-school diplomas had fallen to 79 per cent, the lowest level for 25 years.

A growing number of volunteers were being given waivers for criminal records, obesity or other issues. In 2006, there were more than 34,000 people with “moral waivers” serving in the American armed forces, more than a fifth of all enlisted soldiers.
Those in the field were run ragged. Instead of deploying one unit in every three, allowing time for recuperation and training, the army was forced to deploy one in every two.
Army trucks worked at 10 times their peacetime rate, the Abrams tank was flogged six times as hard and the Chinook helicopter three times, all in harsh desert conditions that resulted in frequent breakdowns and shortened the lifespan of the equipment.
Worse still, all of that came at a crucial period for America’s global position. In the decade prior to its invasion of Iraq, China’s military spending roughly doubled. In the decade that followed, it quadrupled.
Meanwhile, America frittered away extraordinary resources. The cost of military operations in Iraq since 2003 runs to more than US$800 billion (S$1.07 trillion) on a conservative estimate, and into the trillions on more expansive measures.

The problem was not just profligacy. For more than a decade, despite a much-touted effort by the Obama administration to effect a “pivot” of American strategy to Asia and the Pacific, America’s armed forces devoted the bulk of their intellectual and organisational efforts to the irregular warfare they faced in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Officers gained combat experience, to be sure. But they were feted for writing manuals on counter-insurgency, rather than pondering tank battles in Europe or naval warfare in Asia.
“A vast number of navy and marine officers could be trusted to explain the intricacies of every street in Baghdad,” says Mr Eric Sayers of the American Enterprise Institute, another think-tank, and a former consultant for Indo-Pacific Command, America’s military command for Asia, “but far fewer came to know much at all about the military and diplomatic geography of maritime South-east Asia.”
Special forces prioritised assassination and abduction over traditional sabotage and raiding. Air superiority was taken for granted, and air defences were neglected.
The war caused a “crushing aircraft readiness crisis” in the air force “from which it has yet to recover”, says Mr Mark Montgomery, a retired rear-admiral.
Tank skills atrophied. “Over the last nine years of doing irregular warfare, we have eviscerated the Armour Corps to the point of its extinction,” lamented Mr Gian Gentile, then a serving army colonel, in 2010, exaggerating only slightly.
Mr Gentile questioned whether armour, artillery and infantry could still work together in what America calls brigade combat teams.
China watched and learnt. Though the People’s Liberation Army was awed by the speed and decisiveness of America’s thrust to Baghdad, it carefully noted America’s reliance on large bases, secure logistics and assured access to satellites.
It methodically invested in tactics and capabilities – like ballistic missiles, anti-satellite weapons and cyber warfare – designed to puncture this American way of war.
“Many of these reforms have been bred out of the American experience in Iraq,” noted a report by the Centre for a New American Security, a think-tank, in 2008 (one of the authors was Mr Kurt Campbell, who now serves as President Joe Biden’s top Asia official).
Even after then President Donald Trump’s national defence strategy of 2018 formally reoriented America’s armed forces to the threat from China, a shift largely endorsed by the Biden administration, the Pentagon was slow to shed this legacy.
It had proved unwilling “to fully come to grips with the reality that its principal competitors are no longer regional threats such as the Iraqs and Yugoslavias of the world”, wrote Mr Chris Dougherty, one of the authors of that strategy, in 2019.
“The erosion of US military advantage vis-a-vis China and Russia was a symptom of this infection.”
This is slowly beginning to change. The war in Ukraine has sharpened the Pentagon’s focus on high-intensity warfare. It is shifting from brigades to larger divisions, and is now training Ukraine in the sort of combined-arms warfare that was neglected for years.
It is also rebalancing resources. On March 14, the Pentagon projected a cut of US$5 billion to Centcom’s budget and a reduction of more than 6,000 of the command’s troops.
A Pacific Deterrence Initiative to bolster bases and air defences in Asia now exceeds US$9 billion, more than the defence budget of Thailand or Indonesia.

American preparations for a possible war over Taiwan look more serious than ever.
But these efforts were delayed by years.
The “diversion of attention is a cost we are still paying and only time can help resolve”, says Mr Sayers. Many Asian allies remain unconvinced that America can break old habits.
“For much of the past two decades, Washington’s focus on the Middle East has reduced military readiness, distorted force-structure priorities and, until recently, left the joint force ill-equipped and unable to prepare adequately for high-end military competition with a peer adversary,” concluded a scathing assessment of Asian security trends published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank, in June.
A war that was waged in 2003 partly to awe adversaries and cement American military primacy has left long-lasting scars on the victor.

 

[blackmondy]

WW3 already began in Feb 2020 when tiong-cock released the Wuhan virus worldwide.

 

[laksaboy]

WW3 started with Covid.

 

[LITTLEREDDOT]

Putin says Russia to station nuclear weapons in Belarus, first time since 1990s​

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow would not be transferring control of the arms to Minsk. PHOTO: AFP

Mar 26, 2023

MOSCOW - Russia will station tactical nuclear weapons in neighbouring Belarus, President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday, marking the first time since the mid-1990s that Moscow will have based such arms outside the country.
Mr Putin made the announcement at a time of growing tensions with the West over the war in Ukraine and as some Russian commentators speculate about possible nuclear strikes.
Mr Putin told state television that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had long raised the issue of stationing tactical nuclear weapons in his country, which borders Nato member Poland.
“There is nothing unusual here either: firstly, the United States has been doing this for decades. They have long deployed their tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of their allied countries,” he said.
“We agreed that we will do the same – without violating our obligations, I emphasise, without violating our international obligations on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.”
Mr Putin did not specify when the weapons would be transferred to Belarus.
“Tactical” nuclear weapons refer to those used for specific gains in the battlefield.

Russia will have completed the construction of a storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus by July 1, Mr Putin said, adding that Moscow would not actually be transferring control of the arms to Minsk.
The US State Department and the Pentagon did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
Russia has stationed 10 aircraft in Belarus capable of carrying tactical nuclear weapons, he said, adding that Moscow had already transferred to Belarus a number of Iskander tactical missile systems that can be used to launch nuclear weapons.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, nuclear weapons were deployed in the four newly-independent states of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
In May 1992, the four states agreed all the weapons should be based in Russia and the transfer of warheads from Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan was completed in 1996. REUTERS

 

[oliverlee]

Let's go and fuck biden's shrivelled ass

 

[syed putra]

I thought democrats are peaceful anti war liberal types.

 

[tanwahtiu]

WW3 started with Covid.

HK riot... virus bio war is to stop HK riot...

If China send military troops in to HK, give US a chance to start hot war and invade HK...

Bio war take 2 years to end... US start Taiwan war over chips.... wait for China to start war and US invade Taiwan...

Ukraine war created to contain US to bankrupt US and low in arm stocks... this lead to nuclear war coming next...

China will continue to harass Taiwan to get real war trainings and test fire power in SCS for more years to come.

Then BRICS will drown US finance with deloraize to render Oil petrol dollars obsolete....

What's next.... psst if you like my bullshit click the like button...

 

[LaoHongBiscuit]

which country safer now?

 

[LITTLEREDDOT]

From defence to offence​

The three steps on America’s ladder of military escalation​

Could America be dragged back into another Middle East war?​

The Economist

A US Army Terminal High Altitude Area Defence launching station in Israel in 2019. PHOTO: AFP

OCT 27, 2023

To paraphrase an observation attributed to Leon Trotsky, you may not be interested in the Middle East, but the Middle East is interested in you. After a decade of tapering down its military presence in the region, America is back with a huge display of force.
In the past few days, two fighter squadrons have flown in. They follow the deployment of two aircraft-carrier strike groups, multiple air defence systems and much aid to Israel. More units have been told to prepare to deploy.
America’s goal is to deter attacks on American interests, on Israel and to a degree on its Arab allies. But what if deterrence fails? The daunting possibilities range from attacks against American soldiers to strikes on shipping in the Persian Gulf and rocket attacks that overwhelm Israel’s air defences. Under what circumstances would America’s forces then be used? And could it be dragged into a deeper Middle East war of the kind its leaders hoped would never happen again after the hell of the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Those questions are both uncomfortable and all too real. Attacks on American interests have been proliferating even as Israel’s invasion of Gaza has been delayed. Between Oct 17 and 24, there were 13 strikes on American and coalition forces in Iraq and Syria by drones and rockets, the Pentagon says. They came from “Iranian proxy forces and ultimately from Iran”. Such activity has been fairly common in recent years. But these strikes are significant because they break an informal truce that had held in recent months.
America’s verbal warnings have become fierce. “If Iran or its proxies attack US personnel anywhere, make no mistake: we will defend our people, we will defend our security, swiftly and decisively,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the United Nations on Tuesday. A day later, leaders from the militant groups Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad met in person in Beirut, pledging to “achieve a real victory for the resistance”.
If America has to use force, it has a wide range of options. The USS Gerald R. Ford, in the Mediterranean, is its most advanced carrier, commissioned only six years ago. With more than 75 aircraft and electromagnetic launch gear, it can maintain a high tempo of sorties. The Nimitz-class USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, steaming to the Gulf, carries a similar range of air assets. Both carriers are escorted by up to five destroyers with Aegis air defence radars and missile interceptors that could be used to protect Israel and the Gulf states.
They augment some 30,000 American military personnel in bases in the region, which are being bolstered by 2,000 marines. More marines may come. Bahrain is the home of the Fifth Fleet, and the biggest airbase is at Al Udeid in Qatar. America is supplementing its ground-based air defence with Patriot and Thaad (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) missile batteries. The latter have a long-range radar system that can peer deep into hostile territory.

How might these forces be used? There are probably three sequential rungs on America’s ladder of escalation: intelligence gathering, defensive action and offensive action.
Start with intelligence gathering, which is already under way. The carriers are massive information-collecting platforms. The Gerald R. Ford has four EA-18G Growler electronic warfare planes, four early-warning E-2D Hawkeyes and various helicopters and drones. Just as Nato aircraft are active in the Black Sea, hoovering up intelligence for Ukraine, American planes are probably flying up and down the coasts of Lebanon, Israel and Gaza, gathering signals that are then relayed to the Pentagon, the Israel Defence Forces and, perhaps, Arab allies.

If deterrence fails, the next rung on America’s ladder of escalation is defensive action, which is still relatively easy to justify to the American public. There is already one example: On Oct 19, a navy destroyer intercepted missiles fired from Yemen, apparently by Iran-backed Houthi rebels targeting Israel. The Pentagon revealed at a press conference on Tuesday that it has assessed these missiles as having ranges in excess of 2,000km.


America is already augmenting Israel’s Iron Dome air defence system, which faces the threat of between 130,000 and 150,000 Hezbollah rockets and missiles. On Tuesday, America said it would send two more Iron Dome batteries to Israel. Were Israel’s own air defence systems to be overwhelmed, it is likely America would augment them with its own carrier-based and land-based interception systems, though these would only be economical against larger and longer-range missiles, rather than against short-range rockets, which can be brought down more cheaply using other means. America’s navy could accompany commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf, and if necessary, defend it against missile or drone attacks.
After defensive action comes the third rung of the ladder – offensive action – a bigger and much more controversial step to take. The White House and Pentagon will be keen to avoid this, but their hands may be forced: Having signalled it will respond to attacks, America may need to follow through to maintain a reputation for delivering swift retribution.
Offensive action taken in retaliation for attacks on American forces is the easiest kind to justify. There are 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 Americans embedded with Kurdish fighters in Syria. In 2021, American fighter bombers hit facilities used by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for drone strikes on American personnel.

It is fairly easy, however, to envision scenarios in which American offensive action goes further to respond to attacks on allies rather than on Americans. If Israel’s air defences were overwhelmed, it is possible that America might attack Hezbollah positions in Lebanon. America could also retaliate against attacks on Gulf allies. After Iran-backed attacks in 2019 on oil firm Saudi Aramco, which briefly shut down 5 per cent of world oil production, Saudi Arabia was outraged that America did nothing. This time might be different.
There are more rungs on the ladder beyond intelligence, defence and basic offence. But they are ones that America will be even more reluctant to climb.

Most experts believe that Iran does not want a direct war with America. Mr Emile Hokayem of the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank reckons that assuming Iran does not see the current situation as “the Big One” – an existential fight for the Iranian regime – it will calculate that Hezbollah is too valuable an asset to waste when any element of surprise has been lost. America will probably avoid direct attacks on Iran (unless Iran enters the conflict directly itself) in order to keep further escalatory options in reserve. If American forces were to strike first, the Iranian regime might believe it had nothing left to lose.
By deploying so much force, America hopes it will be able to avoid using it. Yet, as Mr Hokayem puts it, deterrence is difficult if you do not know exactly where the red lines are of the people you are trying to deter. Those of Iran and Hezbollah are the hardest to spot. Would Israel be crossing an Iranian red line if it carried out a protracted ground offensive in Gaza? And might there be a level of Israeli strikes on targets in southern Lebanon that would provoke Hezbollah to respond more fully?

It is a measure of President Joe Biden’s concern for how quickly things could spiral out of control that the White House has demanded a “contingency” plan for evacuating up to 600,000 American citizens living in Israel and Lebanon. The American public, still traumatised by the deaths of thousands of Americans in campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, will dislike one thing more than anything else: sending large numbers of soldiers to the Middle East. The odds of that are low, but not zero. It turns out, there may yet be another chapter in the forever wars. © 2023 THE ECONOMIST NEWSPAPER LIMITED. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

 

[LITTLEREDDOT]

The overstretched superpower​

America could face wars in the Middle East, Ukraine and Taiwan.​

The Economist

US President Joe Biden delivering an address to the nation from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on Oct 19. PHOTO: REUTERS

Oct 28, 2023

Three days after Hamas fighters swarmed across the security fence of the Gaza Strip, killing more than 1,400 people and kidnapping about 220 more, the USS Gerald R. Ford, America’s most modern aircraft carrier, arrived in the eastern Mediterranean, accompanied by its fleet of warships.
A second carrier strike group, led by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, is sailing to the Middle East, presumably to move closer to Iran. Aircraft and air defence systems are being dispatched to the region, and troops are being readied, too.
It is a striking demonstration of the speed and scale with which America can deploy military power far from home. The show of force sends two messages. To Iran and its proxies: Stay out. To Israel: You are not alone. American forces may yet be ordered into action amid signs that the war could spread. Israel is girding itself for a ground operation; violence in the West Bank is intensifying; and exchanges of missile and artillery fire between Israel and Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia militia allied with Iran, presage a possible second front (see map).
On Sunday, Mr Lloyd Austin, America’s Defence Secretary, warned of the “prospect of a significant escalation” against American forces. Three days earlier, an American warship in the Red Sea shot down cruise missiles and drones aimed at Israel by the Iranian-aligned Houthi militias in Yemen. American bases in Iraq and Syria have also been coming under attack by rockets and drones, presumably fired by other Iranian proxies. “This is the most dangerous moment since the Cold War,” argues Dr Matthew Kroenig of the Atlantic Council, a think-tank in Washington. “If Iran and Hezbollah get involved, America may feel compelled to respond. And does China then see an opportunity to try something against Taiwan?”
United States President Joe Biden is thus turning into an unlikely wartime president. He was not exaggerating when he told Americans in a recent televised address that the world was at an inflection point. When America acted to help Ukraine resist Russia’s invasion, many asked whether it had the wherewithal to deter a looming Chinese assault against Taiwan. The question is all the more acute now that America also seeks to defend Israel. In Mr Biden’s view, helping friends is not only possible but necessary. “American leadership is what holds the world together,” he declared. “American alliances are what keep us, America, safe.”
Yet academics debate whether and when the “unipolar” world, in which America bestrode the globe after the Cold War, reverted to a “bipolar” one, in which America is challenged by China rather than the Soviet Union; or whether it is already a “multipolar” world. Harvard academic Joseph Nye defined national power in three dimensions: military, economic and “soft power”, that is, the ability, among other things, to co-opt others to do your bidding.
In military terms, America remains a colossus (see chart). Economically, the world is bipolar in a way it never was during the Cold War, with China’s economic output somewhat smaller than America’s at market exchange rates, and surpassing it at purchasing power parity (though Americans remain far richer than the Chinese). Soft power is harder to measure, but it is probably fair to say the world is more multipolar, says Dr Kroenig.

That said, in the Middle East, America is still the “indispensable nation”, a concept popularised by the late Madeleine Albright, a former secretary of state. It is the only country willing and able to mediate between regional leaders and shape events. That includes securing the opening of a (still inadequate) humanitarian corridor in Gaza. “The phone in Beijing didn’t ring. The phone in Moscow didn’t ring. But the phone in Washington has been ringing off the hook,” notes Dr Ivo Daalder, formerly America’s representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
Set against that central role, though, is the fact that three Arab leaders – King Abdullah of Jordan, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas – have been frosty towards Mr Biden. He had been due to meet them in Amman on Oct 18, after visiting Israel. But a day earlier, a blast in the grounds of a Gaza hospital killed scores if not hundreds of Palestinians.
Palestinians say the carnage was caused by an Israeli strike; Israel said it was the result of an errant Palestinian missile. Mr Biden seemed to give Israel the benefit of the doubt (and later said more firmly that it was not responsible). The Arab leaders did not. They cancelled the summit after Mr Abbas declared three days of mourning and returned home. Just then, America looked like the dispensable power.

Not where he would start​

In office, Mr Biden’s priority has been revitalising the American economy. He borrowed the protectionist mindset of his predecessor, Donald Trump, and added large doses of subsidies and industrial policy to promote, among other things, green technology and the manufacture of semiconductors.
Gratifyingly, the American economy has outperformed that of its rich-world peers. He hoped such policies would reduce social and political polarisation. He also hoped they would fortify America in its contest with China. Describing the era as one of “competition in an age of interdependence”, Mr Biden’s National Security Adviser, Mr Jake Sullivan, says foreign and domestic policies are more interconnected than ever, for instance in efforts to restrict China’s access to advanced technology.
Abroad, Mr Biden sought to revitalise alliances that Trump had either neglected or threatened to undo. He renewed the New Start agreement with Russia, limiting long-range nuclear weapons, as part of his effort to establish “a stable, predictable relationship” with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Above all, Mr Biden’s foreign policy meant doing much less in the Middle East, a region that had consumed the energies of many an American president. He sought to end the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan. He promised to restore the nuclear deal with Iran, which then President Barack Obama had signed in 2015 and Trump abandoned in 2018, to contain the danger of a nuclear Iran. Mr Biden initially said Saudi Arabia should be treated as a “pariah”. He reverted to America’s longstanding support for the “two-state solution”, that is, the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, though he put little effort into it.
Much of this has gone awry for Mr Biden. Far from being stable and predictable, Mr Putin invaded Ukraine and information exchanges under New Start are suspended. America’s chaotic departure from Afghanistan allowed the Taliban to return to power instantly. In the Gulf, meanwhile, China took the plaudits for the restoration of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, appearing to fill a vacuum left by American indifference.

An Israeli soldier transporting a 155mm artillery shell near a self-propelled howitzer deployed at a position near the border with Lebanon in the upper Galilee region of northern Israel on Oct 18, 2023. PHOTO: AFP

Changing focus​

Mr Biden flew to the Saudi city of Jeddah in July 2022 to make up with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The President could not persuade the de facto ruler of the world’s biggest oil exporter to help moderate oil prices; instead, Saudi Arabia cleaved to a production deal with Russia to keep prices high. Moreover, he set a high bar for the normalisation of relations with Israel that Mr Biden hoped to bring about: concessions on the Palestinian question; a mutual-defence agreement with America; and uranium enrichment at home to counterbalance Iran’s nuclear programme. Often, team Biden fell back on benign neglect. “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades,” declared Mr Sullivan – just days before Hamas’ onslaught.
America’s allies around the world, especially in Asia, ask two seemingly contradictory questions, says Dr Kori Schake of the American Enterprise Institute, an American think-tank. First, will American resources and attention be diverted to the Middle East? Second, will America’s resolve in one or other crisis fail? “If we allow the security of Europe to be destabilised by Russian aggression, or allow Israel to suffer a terrible terrorist attack, they will believe that we don’t care about any other problem,” she argues.
America’s reliability as an ally comes down to both credibility and capacity. Given America’s many alliances, academics have long debated the importance of credibility: Does a failure to live up to obligations to one ally affect commitments to others? America’s abandonment of the war in Vietnam, for instance, did not much damage its will to defend Western Europe. The West went on to win the Cold War.
These days, the question is whether America’s pell-mell departure from Afghanistan undermined American credibility and encouraged Russia to invade Ukraine. General (Ret) Tod Wolters, a former military commander of Nato forces, suggested in 2022 that it had been one of several factors. But Mr Sullivan insists that, in fact, leaving Afghanistan “improved our strategic capacity” to respond to the invasion of Ukraine and the threat to Taiwan.
As for military capacity, America must supply weapons to Ukraine, Taiwan and now Israel. That raises doubts about whether its defence industries can meet their needs as well as its own. In general, America sends different weapons to the three countries, but some demands overlap. For instance, 155mm artillery shells are in short supply, and America is reported to have diverted a consignment intended for Ukraine to Israel. The war in Ukraine has shown how big state-on-state conflicts consume vast quantities of munitions. War games suggest that, in a war over Taiwan, America would quickly run out of the long-range anti-ship missiles that would be most useful in repelling a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Such problems can be solved with time and money, but both are in short supply because of America’s polarisation and congressional paralysis. Republicans, especially those of Trump’s “America First” tendency, have grown ever more sceptical about supporting Ukraine in its war. And Congress, unable to pass Bills since the removal of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Kevin McCarthy, on Oct 3, got a new one, Mr Mike Johnson, only this week.
Mr Biden hopes cross-party sympathy for Israel will unblock things. He has asked Congress for a massive US$106 billion (S$145.2 billion) in supplemental national security spending. He seeks to pre-empt future divisive votes on Ukraine by allocating US$61 billion in military and economic aid to the country, to tide it through America’s febrile 2024 election season. To make it more palatable, he has wrapped it in other spending that Republicans should find more appealing, including US$14 billion for Israel; US$2 billion for military equipment transfers in the Indo-Pacific (probably to Taiwan); nearly US$12 billion in various measures to strengthen the processing of migrants on the southern border; and US$3 billion for the submarine defence-industrial base.
“Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common: They both want to completely annihilate a neighbouring democracy,” declared Mr Biden. Yet Israel’s war is different from Ukraine’s in several respects. One concerns international perceptions. America helps Ukraine in the name of the United Nations Charter, the inviolability of sovereign borders and human rights. In defending Israel, America is backing a country that breaches international law by building Jewish settlements in occupied territories, rejects statehood for Palestinians and stands accused of imposing collective punishments on Palestinians, if not committing war crimes, in its bombardment and siege of Gaza.

Middle East rules​

Whereas the Western allies are almost united in defence of Ukraine, they are split on the question of Palestine. A UN Security Council resolution calling for “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting in Gaza was supported by France and 11 other countries, but drew an abstention by Britain (alongside Russia) and was vetoed outright by America, on the ground that it did not recognise Israel’s right to defend itself.
A second factor is America’s own role. In Europe, it is acting at arm’s length, sending weapons, intelligence and money to Ukraine, but not troops. In the Middle East, it is deploying its own forces to protect Israel from attack by Iran and its allies. Mr Biden’s embrace of Israel is sincerely felt – Mr Biden calls himself a Zionist – but is also an attempt to influence and restrain Israel. “If Biden’s hugging strategy works in delivering a more calibrated Israeli response, people will see it as Biden’s special flair,” says Mr Emile Hokayem of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a British think-tank. “If it does not work, America is going to be seen as a warring party.”
Regional dynamics add a further element. Arab states are ambiguous. Many detest Hamas, as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood that challenges their rule, and have made peace with Israel, or have tacit relations with it. Yet when Palestinians fight, these countries are compelled to champion the Palestinian case. Having taken in successive waves of Palestinian refugees, they don’t want more. Indeed, they fear Israel secretly wants to resolve its problem by pushing out more Palestinians.

Smoke and fire rise from a levelled building as people gather amid the destruction in the aftermath of an Israeli strike on Gaza City on Oct 26. PHOTO: AFP
The crisis in Gaza, notes Mr Hokayem, has shifted attention back to Palestine after years of American efforts to ignore it, or to solve it from the “outside in”, that is, normalising relations between Israel and Arab states and only then dealing with the Palestinians themselves. Yet the endgame in Gaza is being left intentionally blank. Israel insists Hamas must not rule Gaza again; America says Israel must not occupy it again. Neither says what the alternative might be. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, moreover, has done his utmost to sabotage Palestinian statehood. After Hamas’ onslaught, he, and many Israelis, will be even more convinced that it poses a mortal danger.
American officials readily admit they don’t have a strategy for the “day after”. The two-state model, says Mr Hokayem, “was a preference, not a policy”. If a solution seems impossible, it is only in part because of the inherent difficulty of reconciling two nationalist imperatives, Israeli and Palestinian, on the same hallowed land. It is also “the cost of American retrenchment”, says Mr Hokayem. “It is more difficult for America to come back into the game having been outside for a long time.”
China and Russia may offer no substitute for America’s diplomacy, but they will be more than happy to see American discomfiture and will play up the claims of American double standards. Ahead of his visit to Washington this week, Mr Wang Yi, China’s Foreign Minister, described Israel’s actions as “beyond the scope of self-defence” and did not mention Hamas.
The impact of the crisis may be more tangible among some “swing states”, says Mr Richard Fontaine of the Centre for a New American Security, a think-tank in Washington. These are countries that are “multi-aligned”, and for whose allegiance America, China and Russia compete ever more intensely. Saudi Arabia may demand a higher price from Israel and America if it is ever to follow its Gulf neighbours, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, in establishing formal ties with Israel.
Turkey, an equivocal ally of the West in the Ukraine crisis, could turn more hostile. Though he has tried to patch up relations with Israel, and condemned the killing of Israeli civilians, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hosts Hamas leaders and has sharpened his denunciation of Israel’s response as “amounting to genocide”. Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, inevitably sympathises with Palestinians. Though India thinks of itself as non-aligned and a friend of anti-colonial movements, it has expressed solidarity with Israel, feeling sympathy for it as a fellow victim of Islamist terrorism.
South Africa sees Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as akin to apartheid. African countries, more broadly, feel America either ignores conflicts on their continent – such as the war in Sudan – or is hypocritical when it comes to human rights. They regard America not so much as indispensable as absent. Many fear Mr Biden will not keep his promise to visit Africa in 2023.
Countries of the Global South have also been courted more avidly by big powers. Though critical of Russia’s invasion, they do not want to be trapped in a new Cold War. America has been trying to woo them through such things as boosting the lending capacity of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and creating a global infrastructure fund to compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). But it has a long way to go. On the same day as Mr Biden was in Tel Aviv, 20-odd leaders were in Beijing for a BRI summit hosted by China’s leader Xi Jinping.
A day later, in a televised address, Mr Biden made the case for America as the world’s “essential nation”. In Europe and the Indo-Pacific, his administration has acted nimbly, knitting existing alliances more tightly and creating new partnerships, helped by the aggression of Russia and China. In the Middle East, though, America is more alone in its defence of Israel, and more liable to lose friends and partners than win over new ones. © 2023 THE ECONOMIST NEWSPAPER LIMITED. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.