OPINION
THOMAS L.
FRIEDMAN
Seeing the Big Picture in Two Big Wars
Nov. 2,
2023, 12:01 a.m. ET
Thomas L.
Friedman
By Thomas
L. Friedman
Opinion
Columnist
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/opinion/israel-gaza-hamas.html
Step back
far enough, and you can see exactly what is driving so much geopolitics today:
Ukraine is trying to join the West. Israel is trying to join a new Middle East.
And Russia and Iran have teamed up to try to block both.
Unfortunately,
the new G.O.P. House speaker, Mike Johnson, is either too inexperienced or too
ideological (or both) to see this (or to care). He is pushing a budget that
would help Israel better defend itself but would deprive Ukraine of essential
U.S. economic and military assistance to beat back Russia’s onslaught.
And he’s
conditioned even the $14.3 billion the administration wants to send to Israel
on President Biden agreeing to strip the same amount from funds added to the
Internal Revenue Service so it could better collect taxes from cheaters.
(Attention, Israel lobby: Do not go along with that game. Next time, aid for
Israel will be tied to extreme G.O.P. positions on abortion or guns.)
Thank
goodness Johnson was not the speaker during World War II; he and his myopic
members might have pressed to fund the war against the Germans in Europe but
not against the Japanese in the Pacific. Or they would have agreed to
Lend-Lease assistance for the allies only if President Franklin Roosevelt would
eliminate the I.R.S. altogether. More guns, more butter, no taxes and two
fronts.
If it
sounds like an utterly incoherent worldview that would undermine the American
global leadership that has shaped a world we’ve thrived in for the past
century, it’s because it is. And if it feels as if House G.O.P. leaders are
small thinkers in a big time, it’s because they are. They are shameless,
shameful and dangerous. Please do our country a favor and audition for Fox News
on some other issue.
Because
this IS a big moment — comparable to 1945 or 1989.
If Ukraine
is able to escape Russia’s grasp and eventually join NATO and the European
Union — with its formidable army, agricultural exports and technology prowess —
it would be a giant boost for a Europe whole and free. And if Israel can be
maneuvered back to the bargaining table for a two-state solution with the
Palestinian Authority — to pave the way for normalization between the Jewish
state and Saudi Arabia — it would be a huge boost for a new, more pluralistic
Middle East built around Palestinians, other Arabs and Israelis focused on
strengthening their people’s resilience for the future and not their resistance
to each other and to the West.
If these
tectonic shifts can happen, the post-post-Cold War world has a far greater
chance to handle other global challenges, like climate change, than if these
shifts are stymied.
But you
don’t need to speak Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Russian or Ukrainian to understand
that Iran-backed Hamas launched its war to stymie the Saudi-Israel
normalization and prevent Tehran from being isolated and that Vladimir Putin
launched his war to stop Ukraine from expanding a Europe whole and free and
prevent Moscow from being isolated.
Russia
under Putin and Iran under its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have a
lot in common, argued the Russia expert Leon Aron, the author of “Riding the
Tiger: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the Uses of War.” “Both leaders have nothing
to offer their people other than quasi-religious wars which enable them to stay
in power by keeping their countries either at war or primed for war,” he told
me.
And both
leaders are gunning for other countries whose aspirations are the antithesis of
Russia’s and Iran’s poisonous core regime identities. “Ukraine proves that
there can be a Slavic, Orthodox country, very close to Russia ethnically — yet
free, democratic and thriving, with a Western political and economic
orientation and not needing a state of war with the West or to be a police
state like Belarus or a military dictatorship like Russia,” Aron said.
Meanwhile,
normalization of relations between the Jewish state and Saudi Arabia, the
birthplace of Islam, would very likely pave the way for normalization between
Israel and the most populous Muslim country in the world, Indonesia, as well as
Malaysia and maybe later even Pakistan. It would prove that Jews and Muslims
aren’t destined to be forever in conflict and can revive the not always
harmonious — but often harmonious — relations their communities enjoyed
throughout much of history before the Palestinian conflict.
As I said,
nothing would have isolated Iran more.
And Hamas
knew that if Israel was able to normalize with Saudi Arabia on terms that would
satisfy the more moderate Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and bring it
significant financial advantages and more legitimacy, the Hamas Gaza
resistance-forever model would have been totally isolated. So Hamas launched
this war knowing it would bring death and ruin not only to many Israelis but
also to many more of its own innocent civilians. Disgusting. Iran knew the
same.
All of this
has created a huge opportunity for Putin. He welcomed a Hamas delegation to
Moscow last week, and he has an expanding relationship with Iran underway; Iran
is supplying Putin with drones and missiles to kill Ukrainians, in return for
cybertechnologies, advanced aircraft and possibly antiaircraft equipment for
Tehran. It’s a win-win-win for Putin. By helping Iran fuel the flames of a war
between Israel and Iran’s Middle East proxies, Putin knows he is forcing the
U.S. to send more spare parts, Patriot missiles and 155-millimeter artillery
shells to Israel instead of Ukraine. And if that flow of arms to Kyiv is then
cut off by Johnson and the House G.O.P., all Putin needs to do is count the
days until Donald Trump is re-elected and Ukraine is his — or so he probably
assumes. Plus all the instability drives up oil prices!
While
Republicans play dangerous games with military and economic aid, here are the
two things that U.S. military officials tell me they are worried about: They
believe that the Israelis want to take just Gaza City, where the core of Hamas
military and manpower infrastructure is, and then use that as a launching pad
for more tactical attacks on Hamas’s leadership and rocket launchers in the
rest of Gaza — without occupying it all. But Israel’s military advance is
already encountering a common challenge in urban warfare: You get stalled in
the alleyways and then call in air power to blow away the enemy and anyone else
nearby, leading to significant civilian casualties. The U.S. cannot ignore or
defend that strategy for much longer, U.S. officials say.
Second, the
U.S. still sees a giant hole in the heart of Israel’s strategy: Who will govern
Gaza if and when Hamas is evicted? The only likely possibility is the
Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, in the West Bank. But the only way those
Palestinian leaders will assume that role is if Israel permits their
capabilities to grow — provided they get their act together — and if Israel is
seen as advancing a two-state solution. But the current government of Benjamin
Netanyahu is dedicated to annexing the West Bank.
So it looks
as if Israel’s army is reoccupying Gaza to eventually turn it over to some kind
of legitimate Palestinian Authority — while Israel’s extreme right-wing
politicians and settlers are working overtime to delegitimize that authority
and drive Palestinians out of the West Bank. This is a strategic contradiction.
Israel actually needs a wartime peace process with the Palestinian Authority.
The cold
hard truth is this: Israel cannot get out of Gaza and sustain Western support
without a credible Palestinian partner to govern there, and Ukraine cannot
sustain Western support unless it makes substantial gains against Putin’s army
this winter or decides that’s impossible and agrees to some kind of dirty deal.
That is, some kind of territorial compromise with Putin in return for a NATO
security guarantee and a pathway to the European Union. No Western leaders are
ready to say that out loud to Kyiv, but they all know it and believe it:
Western support for Ukraine cannot and will not be there for an endless war of
attrition.
That’s why
today America must help Israel and Ukraine to blunt the Russia-Iran axis in
their theaters. But the morning after their wars, Israel and Ukraine are going
to have to face some very hard choices. Because while we may write big checks
to both today, they will not be blank checks. Each will come with an expiry
date and require some very painful political decisions very soon — as they
should.
Thomas L.
Friedman is the foreign affairs Opinion columnist. He joined the paper in 1981
and has won three Pulitzer Prizes. He is the author of seven books, including
“From Beirut to Jerusalem,” which won the National Book Award. @tomfriedman
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