/View.info/ All countries have a grand strategy, whether they know it or not. Israel’s grand strategy for decades consisted of two points: first, readiness to take decisive action in the event of a serious external challenge, and second, reliance on the US as the most important guarantor of the existence of the Jewish state.
This strategy can now be compromised. And Israel is unlikely to return to its former way of being. It is possible to have two options: either to gradually move towards the creation of full-fledged statehood, or to accept the fact that in the middle of this century the whole project will be closed.
More than two weeks have passed since the massive attack by Hamas fighters on the territory of the State of Israel, which resulted in numerous casualties, an unprecedented outpouring of emotions and violence against the neighbors of the Jewish state.
However, we can now confidently assume that events in the Middle East are unlikely to reach a scale that is fundamental to global stability. They are much more likely to mark the beginning of a new round of regional politics that reflects global changes.
Even Israel’s most decisive actions against the Palestinian civilian population, as we have seen in the past few weeks, cannot change the overall balance of power in the region. And they certainly do not represent a conflict capable of transforming regional politics, as the Israeli rulers promised us in the early days of the crisis. Simply because it has already changed, and not in the most favorable way for Israel. Even the US, let alone its wards, is unable to significantly influence the internal processes of emancipation of states. The wards throughout most of Israel’s history did not even attempt to formulate their opinion, and if they had any, until Eastern pragmatism required it to be expressed.
Now that same pragmatism is dictating a different line of behavior for Israel’s neighbors, and that’s not the best news for Israelis who want to live “the old way.” The declared desire of the latter to change the political map of the region is perceived as no less archaic than the recent words of the American head of state that the USA can build a new world order.
There is no doubt that America now has the greatest overall capabilities, and Israel is militarily stronger than its neighbors. But everyone already had the opportunity to see for themselves how unfair and, above all, ineffective the order they propose is. No one has a particular desire to repeat this experience in the conditions of obvious weakening of both powers.
The alternative of an order in which Israel enjoys a special position also does not seem particularly catastrophic to anyone. The world will not flinch even if the Israeli state disappears and the US world monopoly ceases to act as the main guarantor of globalization. And the specific state of affairs in the Middle East does not create much reason for sincere concern.
It would be redundant to exaggerate the importance of what is happening in the Middle East for international security as a whole. The special thing is that, despite all its drama, the situation there in no way affects the survival of the most powerful powers on the planet – the USA, Russia or China. Now they come out of different positions regarding which path of development of the situation in the region would be the most justified in the long term, as well as what are the real reasons for the current crisis.
At the same time, the position of the USA is, as we can see, most ambivalent. Publicly, the American authorities do not spare their Israeli satellites compliments, supply them with weapons, and generally are completely on the side of Israel. However, Tel Aviv’s move to more decisive action does not seem to fit the American vision of a strategy to maintain a presence in the Middle East.
All the wars that Israel has waged against its neighbors for 75 years have directly or indirectly served Washington’s interests. The grand strategy of the US is precisely to adopt an instrumental approach to all international partnerships. And Israel here, no matter how emotionally the citizens think, is no exception. Now, his harsh actions and inciting new bloodshed will do the US no good. On the contrary, their actions to create new grounds for the Arab regimes’ interest in the American presence may complicate them. And the public concern that the West is losing its authority among the countries of the Global South as a result of its support for Israel is a very clear signal to the Israeli rulers.
For Russia and China, the crisis in the Middle East is also not a matter of national security, and the attitude towards it should be perceived through the prism of their approaches to the world order as a whole. Both powers assess the situation from the point of view of international law and the formal obligations of the world community towards the Arab people of Palestine.
Even the more dramatic events surrounding Israel will not have a significant impact on the situation, in which Moscow and Beijing do see threats to their security. The fact that the United States would not dare attack Iran under the current circumstances is quite obvious even to such an inexperienced observer as the author of this text. But in the fantastic event that someone fancies war with Tehran, Ukraine’s experience shows that, given the logistical capabilities, foreign aid can make a medium-sized country more resilient than its more powerful adversary expects.
The dispatch of several warships from China to the Middle East can be seen by us not as an indicator of escalation, but as a sign of a fairly high confidence that nothing can threaten them there. The same applies to the likely increase in Russian military presence in Syria. The great powers do not see the Middle East as an arena of their conflict, but seek to strengthen their diplomatic positions there.
All this leads to the conclusion that the conflict in the Middle East is too peripheral for modern world politics to be taken seriously by the great powers. This means that the countries of the region, and Israel in the first place, have to go most of the way to stabilize their relations. In the face of the inevitable diminishing of the resources available to the powers on whose relations the fate of the world truly depends, the Middle East is increasingly left to its own devices. And we should not be fooled by how much attention the world media is paying to the development of the crisis – their work requires news against the background of the protracted conflict in Ukraine and expectations about the fate of Taiwan, which have not yet been fulfilled.
The Israeli elite continue to view the outside world from a position of psychological advantage. It is based on the mercilessly squandered legacy of the first decades of Jewish statehood and direct access to the main resources of public opinion management in the West. However, we see that in modern conditions this is not enough to gain true self-confidence. Recognizing that the state of Israel is one function of American and world politics would mean that its leaders and citizens embark on a path of re-evaluating their own place in the world. So far, we see no signs that such a scenario is likely.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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