ADAM GALLAGHER
A March 25 Security Council cease-fire resolution highlighted once again the vast gap between the US and China on Israel’s war on Gaza. US officials were quick to note that the Biden administration considered the resolution “non-binding” – which China quickly contradicted, pointing to the UN charter.
Nearly six months into Israel’s war on Gaza, US policy in the Middle East is not only damaging its interests in the region but providing substantial geopolitical benefits to China, despite Beijing’s lack of substantive engagement to foster peace. In Washington, competition with China is generally considered the principal US foreign policy challenge. But US Middle East policy is undermining this strategic priority.
In a recent interview, a State Department official who resigned over US policy toward Gaza asked why support for Israel seen as more important than “very significant priorities” such as competition with China, protecting human rights and dealing with climate change.
If Washington is serious about competing with China, it must reconsider and refashion its relationship with Israel and, accordingly, its broader posture in the Middle East.
As in the case of the war in Ukraine, Beijing is pleased that Washington is devoting so much attention to the war in Gaza, leaving less bandwidth to focus on flashpoints in the Indo-Pacific such as Taiwan and the South China Sea. But it’s within the broader geopolitical struggle for influence that the war in Gaza has been a boon for China.
Beijing has been content to sit back and let the U.S. alienate itself from the dozens of non-Western countries that are harshly critical of Israel’s war on Gaza. China has not engaged in a serious effort to broker peace. But it has sought to align itself with countries such as South Africa and Brazil by calling for a two-state solution, refusing to condemn Hamas and supporting efforts to secure a cease-fire.
In doing so, China “has taken advantage of global anti-Israeli sentiment … to elevate its own standing in the global South,” argued Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Following the International Court of Justice’s initial ruling on South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, an editorial in Chinese state media said, “The orders should also prompt some major countries to stop turning a blind eye to what Israel is doing in Gaza” – an obvious reference to the US.
After the US vetoed a December Security Council resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire, China’s UN Ambassador Zhang Jun expressed “great disappointment” in the US veto. Submitted by the United Arab Emirates, that draft resolution had nearly 100 co-sponsors, including China, demonstrating where much of the international community stands. “All this shows once again what [a] double standard is,” Zhang said.
The “double standard” charge resonates with many countries outside the West, particularly in light of Washington’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Washington has vociferously condemned Russian violations of international law in Ukraine, with the Department of Justice even charging Russian military personnel with war crimes.
Meanwhile, Washington has said that Israel has not breached international law, despite the killing of nearly 200 humanitarian aid workers, assaults on medical facilities and limiting of desperately needed aid. Surely the Biden administration decision finding Israel in compliance with a national security memo stipulating recipient countries of US weapons must not be violating international law or blocking humanitarian aid will further roil Global South countries that see this hypocrisy.
China had already been expanding its influence in the Middle East before the October 7 terrorist attack. Indeed, many observers believe the primary reason the US is still pushing for an Israel-Saudi normalization agreement is to pull Riyadh more firmly into Washington’s orbit and away from Beijing.
In the last year alone, China brokered rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran; added Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iran and Egypt to the BRICS bloc; and deepened business ties across the Middle East, particularly the Gulf. Now, it is exploiting the Gaza crisis to bolster its role in the region. When Arab foreign ministers went on a tour of Security Council countries in November in a bid to end the Gaza war, they chose to go to China first.
The shocking, dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza has yet to compel the Biden administration to rethink its approach to Israel-Palestine and the broader region. The situation in Gaza today should be more than enough reason for the US to reconsider its longstanding, unwavering support for Israel and broader militaristic policy in the region. But it also comes down to a matter of hard geopolitical interests: the US approach to the conflict in Gaza is undermining its ability to compete with China on the global stage.
Conditioning aid to Israel and resetting the US-Israel relationship is in line with US interests would be strategically shrewd. More broadly, the US should reconsider its military posture in the region. Even before the war in Gaza, US troops in the region have been subject to a barrage of attacks – and for what? Beyond resetting the US-Israel relationship, military retrenchment could be a good first step in helping repair America’s battered image and restoring relationships with key regional players, which would advance the United States’ interests in its competition with China.
Adam Gallagher is a foreign policy analyst and writer covering US foreign policy in the Middle East and geopolitics. For more of his writing and analysis, follow him on LinkedIn.
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