The US, a world leader on Ukraine, is now isolated over Gaza

Days of intense negotiations have allowed the Biden administration to avoid vetoing the United Nations Security Council’s defense of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

But abstaining from a resolution aimed at allowing more humanitarian aid to reach Gaza only limited the damage to America’s standing in the world as the country becomes an increasingly lonely protector of Israel.

The outcome was a relief to US officials who were loath to exercise America’s veto in Israel’s defense for what would have been the third time since Hamas’s attacks on October 7. Withholding a 13-0 vote may seem better than a veto — which President Biden has said should be reserved for “rare, extraordinary situations” — but it still may not help the image of America abroad.

It is one reason that, as the year draws to a close, the United States finds itself diplomatically isolated and on the defensive.

That isolation marks a dramatic reversal in international perception of the Biden administration: For much of the past two years, top U.S. officials led what they saw as a courageous crusade to unite the world against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Biden and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken were praised at home and abroad for uniting allies under the banner of American leadership, invoking basic principles of international law and human rights.

“Putin’s invasion has been a test for centuries. A test for America. A test for the world,” Biden boasted in his State of the Union address in February. “Together we did what America always does at its best. We led. We have united NATO and built a global coalition.”

With the United States representing Israel’s interests at the United Nations, endorsing its goal to destroy Hamas and supplying it with ammunition, much of the world views the Biden administration as enabling an indefensibly deadly Israeli military campaign, which President Biden himself has mentioned. “indiscriminate bombing.”

Coalition building on behalf of Ukraine has transitioned to crisis management over Gaza. The United States is now at odds with close allies like France, Canada, Australia and Japan, all of whom voted in favor of Friday’s U.N. resolution and earlier this month for another resolution calling for a ceasefire fires in Gaza. The United States vetoed that resolution, on the grounds that a ceasefire would allow Hamas to regroup and attack Israel again.

Human rights groups — who for months applauded U.S. efforts to hold Russia accountable — are now denouncing the United States for its support of Israel, which many of them accuse of committing war crimes in Gaza.

Israel accuses Hamas of entrenching itself among civilians and says it is taking unusual steps to limit the number of civilian casualties. The Health Ministry in Gaza says the death toll there is more than 20,000, although it is not known how many of those are civilians.

Senior Biden officials who found a clear purpose in the project to unite Europe against Russia privately admit that the past few weeks have been difficult as the US supplied and defended an Israeli campaign that has caused so much suffering and global outrage. “These past few months have been heartbreaking as you see the suffering of men, women and especially children in Gaza,” Mr. Blinken said at a news conference on Wednesday.

“No US official likes this situation right now,” said Richard Gowan, an expert at the United Nations for International Crisis Group, a conflict prevention organization.

Compounding concerns is the fact that bad blood toward Washington over its role in the Gaza conflict could complicate other diplomatic objectives for the United States, at least in the short term.

“We are isolated,” said Barbara Bodine, a former career diplomat and ambassador who is now director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. She warned that the United States had lost the global goodwill it had earned through its response to Russian aggression. “For too many friends and allies, this was in stark contrast to our response to Ukraine,” she said.

Biden officials adamantly deny that there is any contradiction between their confrontation with Russia and their defense of Israel. In each case, officials say they are standing up for the victim of a brutal and unprovoked attack. Mr. Blinken often cites Israel’s “right to defend itself,” a phrase he has also applied to Ukraine. He has also said separately that the Russian invasion and the October 7 Hamas attacks were moments for “moral clarity” around the world.

It is not the first time that the United States has appeared isolated in its defense of Israel, especially at the United Nations, where successive American administrations have often pushed back on what they see as reflexive anti-Israel sentiment. Commenting on Friday’s U.S. vote, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield noted that the Security Council has yet to condemn the original Hamas attacks.

In a sign of how important Friday’s vote was for the Biden administration, Mr. Blinken played an unusually large role in the negotiations, even as Ms. Thomas-Greenfield pressed her U.N. colleagues. A senior administration official said Mr. Blinken worked on the phone with numerous Arab officials, including three calls each with the foreign ministers of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

“It took many days and many, many long nights of negotiations to get this right,” Ms Thomas-Greenfield said, praising the resolution for offering “a ray of hope in a sea of ​​unimaginable suffering” by a UN coordinator for Gaza. staff.

When asked on Wednesday about American isolation, Mr. Blinken showed no concern and said the United States continues to “unite countries around the world” to support Ukraine, building partnerships to strengthen the U.S. position against China, and lead global efforts on food. insecurity, artificial intelligence and clean energy.

When it comes to Israel and Gaza, he said, “countries across the region, as well as countries around the world, want to work with us and look for American leadership in this crisis – even countries that may not be talking to us on certain issues agree. that have come forward.”

But much of the world sees things differently — especially, Ms. Bodine said, countries in the so-called “global south” that are not closely linked to major powers like the United States, China or Russia. Many of these countries, including South Africa and India, never saw the U.S. emphasis on Ukraine in the heroic terms that much of Europe did, Ms. Bodine said.

“Much of the global south did not feel that their conflicts and problems were generating the same level of attention and action,” she said. When Mr. Biden and other U.S. officials subsequently appeared to greenlight a massive Israeli military response on Oct. 7 “without guardrails,” she added, “it painfully confirmed for many in the south the sense that there were two sizes were measured.’

Bad blood over Gaza would make it harder to win support from those countries, especially for pro-Ukrainian resolutions, Crisis Group’s Mr. Gowan warned.

That’s great news for the Russian government.

“The Russians relished this moment and took every possible opportunity to talk about US double standards,” Mr Gowan said. “Ultimately, the Russian strategy works, because everyone outside the United Nations sees that Russia stands up for international law – and the US against it.”

Speaking at the United Nations in September last year, Mr Biden said members of the United Nations Security Council should only use vetoes under “rare, extraordinary situations to ensure the council remains credible and effective”. At the time, Russia had cast seven veto votes since the start of his presidency.

The United States is still a long way from that figure. But it was certainly on the minds of Biden administration officials as they scrambled to avoid their third Gaza-related veto in as many months.

That outcome, Ms. Bodine said, “would have been devastating.”