At first sight, it looks almost inevitable that the war in Gaza will spread. Quite apart from the anger it has caused in the Muslim world, China and still more Russia would seem to have every incentive to cause trouble for the United States – and, as has been demonstrated again and again over the years, the Middle East is the greatest area of US vulnerability.
On closer examination, things do not look so simple. In the first place, if Moscow and Beijing are content with a purely diplomatic and public relations victory, they do not need to do anything at all. US virtual silence in the face of Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza is doing it for them. Yet again, the United States has used its UN security council veto to defend Israel, as the solitary opponent both of all the other UNSC members, and a large majority of the general assembly. As western (and some US) diplomats have remarked (off the record), unfaltering US support for Israel has shredded the Biden administration’s strategy of competing with China for influence in the “global south”.
