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"The Times" warns of a Third World War: Israel-Hamas war risks escalation

2023-10-23 09:07:37Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

"The Times" warns of a Third World War: Israel-Hamas war risks

If history at its worst is “one damn thing after another,” then the news can feel like the same damn thing. We have all seen at least some of the horrific images of the worst attack on Israel since 1973.

Most of us realize that, in its response to terrorist atrocities committed by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad against Israeli civilians — including children and even infants — Israel risks being absorbed into Gaza and then struck north by Hezbollah.

Analysts see the Israel Defense Forces' nightmare of a "unification of arenas" — including the West Bank — could stretch the IDF to breaking point.

The less reflective focus on what is now conventionally described as a "colossal intelligence failure" stemming from the fact that the Mossad and Shin Bet were once omniscient.

The obvious question is how much of a role Iran played in orchestrating this attack on Israel. The less obvious question is why the United States has sent not only two aircraft carrier strike groups, but also two cabinet secretaries (of state and defense) to the region in the absence of evidence of direct Iranian involvement. The difference between news and history is that, as historical events unfold, it is easy to pin down the first-order consequences of any action and much more difficult to distinguish the second- and third-order consequences – even though these are sometimes much more gave me.

Nowhere in the world is this more true than in the Middle East. And my guess is that future historians will be more interested in the real intelligence failure in Washington than the largely imagined one in Jerusalem. Fifty years ago, almost to the day, Egyptian and Syrian forces, supported and armed by the Soviet Union, launched the 1973 Yom Kippur War against Israel. The news at the time was dominated by the dramatic ebb and flow of events on the major battlefields along the Suez Canal and in the Golan Heights, closely followed by the frantic efforts of Henry Kissinger, newly promoted to the post of secretary of state, to negotiate a truce.

However, the second-order consequences only became clear later—namely, that Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat's real motive was to achieve a lasting peace with Israel based on respect, not contempt, for his Arab neighbors; and that Kissinger's primary objective was to end the influence of the Soviet Union in the Middle East. It took two weeks after the initial Arab offensive for the third-order consequences to emerge. Kissinger had underestimated the willingness of Saudi ruler King Faisal to impose an oil embargo on the US and other countries that supported Israel, including Canada, Japan and the Netherlands.

The quadrupling of the price of crude oil dealt a hammer blow to the world economy, greatly exacerbating the already serious problem of inflation and turning it into stagflation. Oil producers, suddenly flush with dollars, discovered the true extent of their power. The hubris produced in Tehran led in just five years to the fall of the Shah in the Islamic Revolution, the disastrous consequences of which we all – but especially Israelis – continue to endure. Distinguishing the second- and third-order effects of this crisis, half a century later, is not easy. One way to understand their potential magnitude is to ask whether former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, writing in Foreign Affairs before the attack on Israel, is right that: “The United States now faces threats more serious for their security than in decades. "Never before has it faced four allied antagonists at the same time – Russia, China, North Korea and Iran – whose collective nuclear arsenal could in a few years be nearly twice its size."

The problem, Gates argued, is that at a time when events demand a strong and coherent response from America, "the country cannot provide one."

I have argued for five years that the United States and its allies already find themselves in a new cold war, this time with the People's Republic of China. I have argued for a year and a half that the war in Ukraine is roughly equivalent to the Korean War during the first Cold War, revealing an ideological and geopolitical divide between the countries of the "Rimland" (the Anglosphere, Western Europe, and Japan) and those of Eurasian "Heartland" (China, Russia and Iran plus North Korea). And I've been warning since January that a war in the Middle East could be the next crisis in a cascade of conflicts that has the potential to escalate into World War III, especially if China seizes the moment — perhaps as early as next year – to impose a blockade on Taiwan. Now that the Middle East war has indeed broken out, what direction will history take?

First, let's dispel suspicions of Iranian collusion. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are funded by Tehran, as is Hezbollah. There are already units of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps all over Syria ready to help Hezbollah against northern Israel. Besides pursuing its ultimate ambition to wipe Israel off the map, Tehran's secondary goal was to destroy or at least disrupt the imminent Saudi-Israeli rapprochement. It was successful. The Saudi media has quickly focused on condemning the "Israeli occupation" as the cause of the conflict and condemning Israel's "collective punishment" of Gaza.

Second, it wasn't just Israel that suffered an intelligence failure last weekend. Egypt's Intelligence Minister, General Abbas Kamel, says he personally told Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu just ten days before the attack to prepare for "something unusual, a terrible operation," according to The Times of Israel. One can speculate why Netanyahu, now head of a government of national unity, ignored these warnings (although he denies receiving them). But it was the Biden administration that was blind — at best. Just a week before the Gaza attacks, national security adviser Jake Sullivan was telling an American audience: “The Middle East region is calmer today than it has been in two decades. . . the amount of time I have to spend on the crisis and conflict in the Middle East today, compared to my predecessors back on 9/11, is significantly reduced.” Perhaps it would be advisable to spend a little more time.

What does the US do now? It is hard to believe that Team Biden will be as effective as Kissinger was in 1973. By sending the two carrier groups, they are seeking to prevent Hezbollah – in other words, Iran – from opening a second front against Israel from Lebanon. But it is not clear that American deterrence will succeed, any more than it succeeded against Russia in February 2022. Iran's proxies in Yemen and Iraq have already threatened to target American military bases in the Middle East if the United States interfere.

The Iranians certainly detect Washington's reluctance to be drawn into a war against Iranian forces in Lebanon and Syria. Regional experts at the state department will remind their bosses that Israel was horribly blockaded in Lebanon in 1982 – and that more than 200 US service personnel were killed in a terrorist attack in Beirut the following year. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the US was complacent about the threat posed by Iran and its proxies. I believe this was a consequence of the Biden administration – and especially its special envoy for Iran Robert Malley (now under investigation by the FBI) ​​– going too far in its efforts to revive the nuclear deal reached with Iran by President Obama. . Had they spent more time focusing on Iran's collusion with Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, and less time listening to pro-Tehran influencers, they might have been less surprised by recent events.

What about America's European allies? The reality is that they are much less united than for Ukraine. The EU is by far the biggest aid donor to the devastated Palestinian Authority. On Monday, the European Commission's neighborhood commissioner, Oliver Varhelyi, tweeted that the commission would suspend all aid to the Palestinians. However, Varhelyi, who is Hungarian, soon had to withdraw after failing to consult member states, nine of which officially recognize Palestine as a state. Three others – Ireland, Luxembourg and Denmark – reportedly requested a reference to de-escalation in the EU's official statement in response to the attacks.

In any case, the Europeans think they have their hands full with the war in Ukraine, about which there is more consensus. However, it will be more difficult than one might assume to keep the two wars separate. Russia is already indirectly involved in the Middle East crisis through its presence in Syria, including the air defense systems it has there. Russian propaganda is already trying to sow discord between Kiev and Jerusalem. And there will be at least some competition between Ukraine and Israel for supplies of certain types of munitions, particularly guided bombs and 155mm artillery shells.

The connection of the Middle East conflict to Ukraine – as well as other conflicts – depends on two things: the extent of collusion between the "axis of ill will" and the extent of American resolve. There is reason to fear that the first will be significant, and the second not. For those who weren't paying attention before, it should now be clear that there are two distinct fifth columns within the West: the populist charlatans on the far right as well as the Stalinist left that downplays Putin's war crimes and a combination of idiots useful and Islamic sympathizers on the left who exalt the terrorists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad as freedom fighters against Israeli colonization.

There are also powerful economic and political forces driving the U.S. toward some kind of "pacification," particularly the perception that American voters care more about their domestic economic situation than about new "permanent wars"—a favorite term. of isolationists on both sides of the political spectrum. As Joe Biden's handling of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has made clear, nothing worries the American president more than that he might inadvertently stumble into World War III. The irony is, of course, that it was appeasement and the failure of deterrence that led the West into World War II.

I have argued since Biden's election that we risked re-running the 1970s. Today, I fear more and more that we may be re-running the 1930s. If Israel discovers that it cannot face a three-front war in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, and turns to the United States for military assistance against Iran, we will have reached one of the hinges of history. The future of the world will turn on him.


Në përputhje me standarded JTI

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