On its website the Israeli think tank The Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security has published an article by Udi Levy entitled “Is the United States really against HAMAS?”, which notes that “the United States’ inability to organize an effective campaign to counter Hamas funding, despite its declared intentions, is a sign of Washington’s loss of financial leverage.” Sanctions, once successfully applied against territorial organizations and individual states are no longer working. The large scale abuse of sanctions has led Washington’s opponents to develop countermeasures and learn how to circumvent the restrictions. The decrease in the effectiveness of its financial leverage, coupled with its unwillingness and, more recently, inability to engage in military confrontation, undermines the US credibility in the Middle East, and, in the present author’s view, gives it the reputation of a dog whose bark is worse than its bite.
Even within the expert community in Israel, a country that is fully dependent on US military and financial aid, there is a sense that Washington’s position in the Middle East is weakening, and that the prestige of the once omnipotent “world policeman” has dramatically declined. This view has been clearly expressed by the writer Dr. Ehud (Udi) Levy, who served for more than 30 years as an intelligence officer in the IDF and other agencies, specializing in countering terrorist financing and the tracing of funds. In 1996, he was appointed as the IDF representative to the Counter Terrorism Bureau of the Prime Minister’s Office, and served as deputy to General Meir Dagan, head of the special committee for combating the financing of terrorism in the Prime Minister’s Office. In 2003, following General Dagan’s appointment as head of Mossad, Dr. Levy was appointed head of the Economic Warfare Division, directing both domestic and multilateral international operations and depriving terrorist organizations and WMD programs of billions of dollars in funding.
The plans and aspirations of the US to play a decisive role in resolving the most complex and oldest Arab-Israeli conflict have not brought the hoped-for results and have turned out to be a total failure. The USA’s clumsy and ill-considered policy of seeking to bring the countries of the Global South round to its side has been completely discredited. Increasingly, media around the world are criticizing the inability of the officials in the Biden administration, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, to direct the foreign policy of what was once the global hegemon For example, in January The New York Sun published a much discussed article under the attention-grabbing headline “American Withdrawal From Afghanistan Inspired Hamas Attack on Israel” by Dovid Efune, the newspaper’s publisher and one of its columnists.
The publication quotes Ali Maisam Nazary, one of the leaders of Afghanistan’s National Resistance Front, who claims that the chaos currently prevailing in the Middle East and Hamas’ attack against Israel are two links in the same chain and are directly related to the hasty and inept flight of US troops from Afghanistan. “The abrupt withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan … has markedly fueled radical jihadist movements, igniting a renewed era of terrorism both regionally and globally.” The West’s unprecedented level of confrontation with Iranian proxy forces, without success, is also the result of ill-considered decisions by Washington and its less than professional officials.
According to many commentators, Hamas’ successful attack on Israel, the ensuing Houthi activism in defense of the Palestinians and the unsuccessful American response in Yemen, are all links in a chain that has its origins in the Biden administration’s ill-considered policy in Afghanistan. The inglorious retreat of the Western military contingent in August 2021 led to the flourishing of the Taliban movement, as well as the activation of 21 other Afghan territorial groups. The chain reaction, one could say, has affected the entire Middle East region and will have a negative impact on the countries and peoples of that region for a long time to come. Where, one might ask, is the peace and prosperity that the US promised Afghanistan when it descended on that country with all its military power and might? One can only pity the Afghans and sympathize with their highly negative attitude to the Americans during the 20 years when they endured US occupation and control, with all its humiliations, especially when in the end it did not bring them any benefit.
The inglorious American withdrawal inspired other international “terrorist” organizations and their sponsors, and these began to undermine and destabilize the Middle East, demonstrating to their opponents that they are able to resist the US-rules based international order. As Ali Maisam Nazary put it, and this is a common view in Afghanistan, the Hamas attacks were planned in order to demonstrate that non-state groups are able to threaten the existence of entire nations and peoples. Because of the failure to bring peace to Afghanistan and the American decision to place power in the hands of the Taliban, with its history of violent terrorist attacks, the US is now in conflict with the rest of the world. After all, many people have now come to understand that the US has brought neither peace nor prosperity to such Arab countries as Syria, Libya, Iraq or Yemen. What is more, now the US is supporting Israel’s bloody war against civilians in the Gaza Strip, supplying Israel with advanced weapon systems and huge amounts of money, and protecting it on the international stage.
At the end of January the Chinese English language newspaper Global Times published an opinion piece entitled Everyone Should Wake up to US’ Blame Game in Red Sea, Ukraine crises. In the editorial the US politologist and historian James Smith looked at American policies in the Red Sea region. He quite rightly considers that Washington is now in a state of conflict and de facto war with the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The cause of the conflict, the author of the editorial argues, is a failure of the US to push for a ceasefire and peace negotiations in Israel, which has resulted in tensions and instability in the Middle East, particularly in the Red Sea region. Moreover, this conflict has been going on for decades, and successive US administrations have paid lip service to its solution while in reality supplying Israel with finances and armaments, and political support on the global stage. It is quite natural that, as in the case of the war in Ukraine, unleashed by the West and NATO against Russia, in the crisis in the Middle East the “smart Americans” are trying to find a third country to blame for what is happening. However, the reality is that in the two situations mentioned above, US foreign policy is not only completely inconsistent with the goal of achieving peace, but, moreover, the White House is not even trying to develop a balanced settlement that takes into account the terms proposed by the mediators.
The complete collapse of the declining hegemon’s policy is clearly illustrated by the impending departure of US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, which has spawned various theories as to the reason for her unexpected resignation from the State Department. But one thing is quite obvious, and this is recognized by many experts, that the resignation is linked to the failure of the US’s “anti-Russian” stance and the entire American “Project Ukraine.” Her more than 35 years’ experience in the US State Department under various administrations is far more impressive than that of the current Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. And he himself hastened to pay tribute to Nuland’s accomplishments and solemnly escorted her from the State Department straight into the history textbooks and annals of diplomacy. He mentioned her service under six presidents and ten secretaries of state, and argued that in her last post in the Joe Biden administration, she had embodied the desire to restore “America’s global leadership.” The main task Nuland worked on in recent years, he said, was the “strategic defeat” of Russia and “helping Ukraine to stand on its own feet democratically, economically and militarily.”
But it is clear that Nuland will end up not in the history books but on the ash heap of history. The policy associated with Nuland – because it was, she who was the central figure who pursued the Russophobic agenda – has now failed. She was the focal point of anti-Russian sentiment and policies in the United States, especially in the context of Ukraine. While she could not exactly be described as an ideologue, she was certainly the coordinator of these policies and is thus closely linked to them. And in letting her go, the State Department failed even to make a show of gratitude. In fact, this is a good lesson to pro-American politicians: if the Americans are so unceremonious to their own officials, it is only natural that they care even less about the servants who they merely make use of for a while.
Undoubtedly, and this is evidenced by numerous facts, American foreign policy is driven by the desire to preserve its vanishing hegemony at any cost, rather than to achieve peace, stability and equilibrium. Unlike during the Cold War, the US is not willing to compromise with states that it sees as rivals and adversaries. On the contrary, Washington pursues its maximalist goals, doing all it can to preserve the outmoded unipolar system of international relations, even though by doing so it is promoting the growth of strategic competitors. Nor was the US willing to compromise with Russia on NATO enlargement, which would have helped ease tensions in relations between the two countries and end the Ukrainian conflict. Instead, the White House mistakenly set out to use the crisis as an opportunity to inflict a strategic defeat on Moscow in order to eliminate a competitor and destroy Russia’s economic integration with Europe. But this is unlikely to help the slowly dying hegemon retain its power and might – the time of the US and its unilateral policy, which serves its own interests alone, is now over.
Viktor Mikhin, corresponding member of RANS, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”