Stephen Walt: Good News, Bad News
In the first post today I quoted Doug Macgregor speaking about well known foreign policy realist, John Mearsheimer. Of course, for many Mearsheimer is best known as the lead in a duo with Stephen Walt, another foreign policy realist who was the co-author with Mearsheimer of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. For those wondering what Walt’s views are on the current diplomatic debacle of the American Empire, I came across a new article by Walt at Foreign Policy:
The World Won’t Be the Same After the Israel-Hamas War
The Middle East’s latest war will have widespread geopolitical effects.
What I’ve done below is excerpt theme sentences and a few paragraphs to give the overall shape of Walt’s views. The good news, as you’ll see, is that Walt doesn’t think WW3 is imminent. Of course, there are others who think it began with the start of the war on Russia, so YMMV. It may be a dispute over words. The bad news is that Walt thinks that, regardless, the widespread geopolitical effects will prove quite negative for the American Empire. The article itself is fairly lengthy, so it’s a tribute to Walt’s cogent writing style that I was able to summarize it in this fashion and so briefly:
Will the latest Gaza war have far-reaching repercussions?
I don’t think we are on the brink of World War III; in fact, I’d be surprised if the current fighting leads to a larger regional conflict. I don’t rule this possibility out entirely, but so far none of the states or groups on the sidelines (Hezbollah, Iran, Russia, Turkey, etc.) seem eager to get directly involved ... these efforts succeed. But even if the war is confined to Gaza and ends soon, it is going to have significant repercussions around the world.
To see what these broader implications may be, it is important to recall the general state of geopolitics just before Hamas launched its surprise attack ... the United States and its NATO allies were waging a proxy war against Russia ... The war was not going well ...
The United States was also waging a de facto economic war against China ...
In the Middle East, the Biden administration was trying to pull off a complicated diplomatic bank shot: It sought to dissuade Saudi Arabia from moving closer to China by extending some sort of formal security guarantee to Riyadh and perhaps allowing it access to sensitive nuclear technology, in exchange for the Saudis normalizing relations with Israel. ... critics had warned that ignoring the Palestinian issue and turning a blind eye to the Israeli government’s increasingly harsh actions in the Palestinian territories risked an eventual explosion.
Then came Oct. 7.
For starters, the war has put a monkey wrench in the U.S.-led Saudi-Israeli normalization effort ...
Second, the war will interfere with U.S. efforts to spend less time and attention on the Middle East and shift more attention and effort farther east in Asia.
In short, the latest war in the Middle East is not good news for Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, or any other country that is facing growing pressure from China.
Third, the conflict in Gaza is a disaster for Ukraine.
It’s bad news for the European Union, too. ... the war in Gaza has rekindled European divisions, with some countries backing Israel unreservedly and others showing more sympathy for the Palestinians ... The longer the war goes on, the wider these fissures will grow. These divisions also underscore Europe’s diplomatic weakness, if not irrelevance ...
Bad news for the West, but this is all very good news for Russia and China. From their perspective, anything that distracts the United States from Ukraine or East Asia is desirable, especially when they can just sit on the sidelines and watch the damage pile up. ...
Looking further ahead, the war and America’s response to it are going to be millstones around the necks of American diplomats for some time to come. There was already a sizable gulf between U.S. and Western views on the Ukraine crisis and the attitudes of many in the global south, ... Israel’s overwhelming response to Hamas’s attacks is widening that gulf, ...
That sympathy will only increase the longer the war goes on ...
Finally, this unhappy episode will not burnish America’s reputation for foreign-policy competence.
OT: Vivek is fire breathing tonight at the debate. I don't waste my time watching but I saw clips. Tells the moderators that Haley is Dick Cheney on three-inch heels. Her rapid blinking tells me he stung her. Can't stand her, Christy or Scott. Also says gop is a party of losers. Update. Haley criticizes Vivek for being on tik tok. He says that's where younger voters are and that Haley's daughter has a tik tok account. She says that he's scum. Score another for Vivek.
A cogent summary of the millstones around the necks of Blinken, Nuland, and Sullivan. May even rope in William Burns too.