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by ian bremmer
The war in Gaza continues, and there are reasons to believe it’s going to persist for a long time still.
There had been a lot of hope that Israel and Hamas would have made a breakthrough deal by now trading an extended (albeit temporary) cease-fire lasting some six weeks for the release of a significant number of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners. Just a week ago, it seemed likely that such an agreement would be reached before the start of Ramadan after Israel reportedly accepted the terms put forward by the United States, Qatar, and Egypt.
But with Ramadan now underway, the much-vaunted deal continues to be just out of reach. And there’s plenty of blame to go around.
Above all, Hamas now refuses to accept anything short of a permanent cease-fire and complete withdrawal of Israeli troops. The group has been emboldened by President Joe Biden’s warning to Israel that a ground incursion into Rafah absent a credible plan to protect civilians would cross a “red line” – the clearest reflection yet of the growing divide between Biden and the Israeli government.
Hamas is exploiting this rift, essentially daring the Israelis to storm a city where 1.5 million Palestinians are presently sheltering under dire humanitarian conditions with nowhere to go, just so it can weaponize civilian casualties and international outrage against them. By choosing continued fighting over a temporary cease-fire, it is putting Palestinian lives at maximum risk – as it has all the way through – to further delegitimize Israel, drive a wedge between it and the United States, and bolster its own political standing. Consider me shocked (not).
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, is doing what he knows best: trying to stay in power. What that means is not only that he has little interest in ending the (extremely popular) war – as he has all the way through – but also that he is more than willing to openly ignore, and even defy, Israel’s closest ally when politically expedient. Case in point: Netanyahu responded to Biden’s red line by declaring that Israel’s own red line is Hamas’ continued existence and promising to go into Rafah despite Biden’s opposition.
This was a rare instance in the war, however, when Netanyahu actually spoke for the entire Israeli war cabinet and the majority of the Israeli population rather than his private interests. Polls show that whether or not they like Bibi, and most of them don’t, the vast majority of Israelis do support the complete destruction of Hamas (whatever that means) and don’t want their military to stop short of achieving it (unrealistic as it may be). If that requires ground warfare in Rafah to take out all the organization’s remaining military capabilities, tunnels, and senior leaders, so be it. And if that comes at great loss of civilian life, creates tension with the US, and costs Israel more support on the international stage, well … that’s a price they’re willing to pay.
Accordingly, the expectation is that Israel will move forward with offensive operations in Rafah sooner or later. (Hamas no doubt is aware of that, which is partly why they continue to hold large numbers of hostages; after all, if they let them all go, what would be left to stop the Israelis from taking out their entire leadership?)
When the ground invasion happens, Biden will have no choice but to act on his red line, issued in response to mounting pressure from within his own party (not to mention blowback on the international stage) to distance himself from the Israeli government. But there’s only so much the president can credibly do given the bipartisan consensus – and his own personal support – for continued military aid to Israel no matter what … which, in turn, helps explain why the Israelis will go ahead with the Rafah incursion in the first place.
If I had to guess, the administration’s response will include a temporary pause in the delivery of some high-profile offensive weapons systems. But defensive systems like the Iron Dome won’t be affected, and the core US-Israel security relationship will remain unchanged. Progressives in Biden’s Democratic base will castigate the response as woefully insufficient … but that won’t stop Trump and most Republicans from seizing on the opportunity to claim Biden is abandoning a US ally American voters actually care about, dwarfing the damage from the botched Afghanistan withdrawal.
The domestic political impact of the pause on Biden will far outweigh its material constraint on Israel’s military capabilities, putting the president in an unenviable position. Everyone knows there is no credible risk to continued US military support for Israel. The fact that the Biden administration is having to airdrop humanitarian aid and deploy the military to circumvent a blockade being imposed by one of its closest allies makes it painfully clear that Washington has very little leverage over Israel’s actions … but no less responsibility for them in the eyes of much of the world – and many Americans at home.
That poses a serious and growing political challenge for the president in an election year … and a risk of wider radicalization worldwide, in an environment where Israel and the United States have lost the global information war and are becoming more isolated, with no easy way to contain the fallout.
Last time I wrote about the 2024 US election back in November, I rated the outcome of the rematch between President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump a coin flip.
Today, with eight months left until the votes are counted and as the most unwanted sequel since “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure” kicks into high gear, Trump is looking like the slight favorite to return to the White House in 2025.
There are several reasons why.
Biden is unambiguously behind in the polls
If you ask me, Biden is doing a reasonable-to-good job on policy. The post-pandemic inflation has been all but conquered. Unemployment has stayed under 4% throughout. Real wages are up, gas prices are down, and the stock market keeps hitting record highs. Violent crime is near 50-year lows. Oil and gas production is at all-time highs.
But most Americans disagree. Biden’s average job approval ratings have been hovering around 38-39% since October last year, reflecting a drop in support among young progressives who disapprove of his support for Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks. Biden’s approval is lower than any modern president’s at this juncture in a reelection campaign except for Jimmy Carter’s … and we know how that one turned out.
While head-to-head polling is less predictive than an incumbent’s job approval this far out, all recent national and swing state polls show Biden trailing Trump. Trump’s advantage is also clear when looking at top-issue polling. A Bloomberg/Morning Consult swing state poll (covering Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia – the closest states in 2020) last week asked voters which issues are “very important” to their vote in November. The top five issues were the economy, democracy, crime, immigration, and health care. Trump has sizable leads on who voters trust to handle three of five of these top issues, and he leads on secondary issues such as infrastructure, US-China relations, housing, and guns. He also leads on nearly every economic subcategory in the poll, including all cost-of-living issues, which are a major vulnerability for Biden.
Yes, polls can be and have been wrong before, and polling averages are still reasonably close. And fewer people are responding to polls than they used to — so we really should be careful with these numbers. Plus, Super Tuesday was only just yesterday, so until very recently many voters didn’t believe it’d really come down to Biden vs. Trump, meaning there is still a lot of room for polls to move as the campaign begins in earnest. A lot could and will change in the next eight months in an extremely volatile domestic and global environment. And of course, anything could happen on the health front for either of the two candidates.
But Trump’s clear lead in head-to-head matchups and Biden’s persistently low approval rating suggest Trump is currently the modest favorite in a close race.
SCOTUS helps Trump keep the focus on Biden
As I wrote in November, Biden and Trump are both historically unpopular candidates, meaning that whoever is the main character of the election is likely to lose. That’s why they’re each trying to frame the election as a referendum on the other.
Biden’s most obvious liability is his age (also a liability for Trump, to be sure), something he can do nothing to overcome. Moreover, as the incumbent president, he’s the go-to lightning rod for the national mood. All the things people believe are going wrong in this country (especially illegal immigration) – and even things that are going wrong abroad, such as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza – are his fault by default. The buck, after all, stops at the Oval Office. These weaknesses are not going away between now and November – if anything, they’re getting worse.
Trump’s biggest liability, meanwhile, is his unfitness for office. This is best captured by the 91 felony counts he faces in four separate cases – the first criminal charges ever faced by a US president … all of which now look unlikely to have any impact on the election. The one wildcard issue that could have seriously dented the Trump campaign, a federal criminal conviction before the election, became dead in the water last week when the Supreme Court agreed to hear Trump’s case for presidential immunity in his DC election interference trial. The court set oral arguments for the week of April 22 and issued a stay on proceedings in the trial until the court rules, effectively pushing the trial’s timeline – which was expected to start in the spring and run throughout the summer campaign – significantly back.
Coupled with the court’s unanimous ruling on Monday keeping the former president on the ballot nationwide (overturning a Colorado state court ruling that held he was disqualified based on Section Three of the 14th Amendment), this decision was a gift to Trump. The election interference case was the greatest political risk to the former president, reminding independent voters and moderate Republicans of Trump’s actions on Jan. 6. But even on the court’s expedited timeline, it now looks unlikely that the DC trial – the one case most likely to have brought a felony conviction against Trump – will begin before August (presuming the court denies the former president immunity, as most legal analysts think it will). With the trial expected to last 8-12 weeks, the odds of a conviction before November are now exceedingly low.
Polling shows that a guilty verdict in the Jan. 6 case would cost Trump significant support from independents and moderate Republicans. Taking that risk off the table neutralizes one of his campaign’s biggest vulnerabilities and helps Trump keep the focus on Biden. The remaining cases against Trump have limited electoral importance. The Florida classified documents trial is almost certain to be delayed, too. The Manhattan cases are widely seen by Republicans as nakedly political and therefore meaningless. While the Georgia case on election racketeering, in many ways the most serious of them all, has become politically fraught because of allegations of misconduct against the lead prosecutor.
Trump’s other major weakness in the past has been his inability to keep the campaign’s focus off himself. But so far, he looks to be running a remarkably disciplined campaign, staffed by veteran professionals who are keeping him on message and deploying him strategically throughout the primaries. Sure enough, his all-caps rants on Truth Social are still unhinged, and the signs of age-related mental decline are becoming more pronounced with each rally, but by and large, the craziness is either not breaking through into the mainstream media anymore or it’s already baked into voters’ assessments of him. To the extent that Republicans only need to run a good-enough candidate to beat an unpopular incumbent, Trump may be turning into that – with a generous assist from the Supreme Court.
Party unity, third parties also likely to benefit Trump
Trump and Biden’s ability to consolidate and mobilize their bases will be a major factor in November, and according to a New York Times/Siena poll released over the weekend, Trump is miles ahead of Biden on this front: 48% of Republican primary voters say they are “enthusiastic” about Trump, while only 23% of Democratic primary voters are “enthusiastic’ about Biden and 26% are “dissatisfied” with the president.
This split in the Democratic Party, fueled by concerns about Biden’s age and his response to the Israel-Hamas war, is evident in the president’s depressed approval ratings and eroding support with minority voters. Most critically, the NYT/Siena poll shows Trump is winning 97% of those who say they voted for him in 2020, while Biden is winning only 83% of his 2020 voters, 10% of whom say they will back Trump in November.
Third-party and independent candidates are also likely to play the biggest role in an election since 1992 amid high dissatisfaction with both Biden and Trump. While these candidates face an uphill battle to get on the ballot in the first place and have no chance of winning any states in November if they do, they can still play a spoiler in the handful of swing states that will decide the election.
Polling suggests that independent Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose campaign recently announced it had gathered enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in Arizona and Georgia, would take roughly the same number of votes from Trump as he would from Biden. By contrast, the far-left campaigns of Jill Stein and Cornel West are nearly guaranteed to reduce Biden’s vote share, drawing almost exclusively from dissatisfied progressives and minorities who would otherwise vote for the president or stay home. Recent national and swing state polls show Trump’s lead over Biden widening when third partiers are included, posing yet another headwind to Biden’s campaign.
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It’s been two years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, starting the deadliest conflict that Europe has seen in decades. And there are no signs that it is anywhere close to ending.
The numbers tell a grim story. By NATO’s best estimates, 70,000 Russians have died and 250,000 have been injured over the course of the war, comprising some 90% of Russia’s pre-war troops. Kyiv is highly secretive about battle losses, but its latest figures put the number of soldiers killed at 31,000 (almost certainly a significant undercount), with hundreds of thousands more injured. Meanwhile, Russia still occupies around a fifth of Ukrainian territory.
After a momentous 2022 where huge chunks of land changed hands, 2023 saw a fairly static line of control, with both sides failing to make decisive gains on the battlefield despite major losses of personnel and equipment. This year promises to look much like the last, with missile and drone strikes on each other’s homeland wreaking economic damage but continued fighting causing little meaningful change to the frontline as the conflict settles into a defensive struggle. Lower levels of Western military aid to Kyiv – especially from the United States – relative to 2022 and 2023 will hinder Ukraine’s ability to retake its land but not its ability to defend itself, despite Russia’s battlefield initiative and material advantage. Both governments’ ability to sustain the war over the coming year makes a cease-fire or negotiated settlement unlikely.
But we are at a turning point in the war’s trajectory. While the Ukrainians remain steadfast in their fight, America’s dysfunctional politics are making a victory for Ukraine look more elusive than ever. Everything now hinges on what happens in Washington in the next few days and weeks, where securing Congressional approval for Ukraine funding has become a much bigger political challenge than anyone expected. And the deeper we get into the presidential race (and the closer Donald Trump is to becoming the official Republican nominee), the less likely it is that Ukraine will receive any additional funding at all until after the November election.
Stalling US aid would put Ukraine’s defense at risk. US military support is vital to helping Ukrainian forces defend against Russian offensive operations and aerial attacks. It is also important for Ukrainian efforts to reconstitute their ability to launch future offensives. While failure to approve new funding would not completely cut Ukraine off from Western arms – it would still get weapons from European governments and from the US over the long run – diminished near-term delivery of artillery, air defense, and other items by the United States would severely limit its ability to maintain the frontline where it is for long, potentially setting the country on a path to defeat as soon as 2025. Where defeat means giving up more territory in Donetsk and possibly Kharkiv oblasts, weakened defenses against Russian missile and drone strikes against Ukrainian cities, and then being forced to accept a much more unfavorable cease-fire or settlement.
US pullback would increase the risk of escalation. Ukrainian leaders are likely to become more risk-acceptant in an environment in which Western governments are not delivering the military aid they need to sustain not just offensive but also defensive operations. That would mean a stepped-up campaign using drones, missiles, and covert operations to hit targets in Russia (including economically significant oil and grain export facilities) as well as Russian military positions in occupied Crimea, risking Russian retaliation. Ukraine’s ability to produce drones domestically means that it would still be able to conduct these kinds of attacks despite diminished Western support. For its part, Russia could see the decline in US aid as an opening to push its advantage, launching more aggressive offensive operations to capitalize on Ukraine’s weakened defenses.
Whether out of a sense of desperation or out of a sense of impunity, diminishing Western support for Kyiv would lead both sides to show less restraint and the conflict to escalate, raising the odds of unintended confrontation between Russia and NATO.
Diplomacy would remain as remote as ever. Opponents of additional US military support claim that cutting off aid to Kyiv would put pressure on President Volodymyr Zelensky to negotiate an end to the war – their stated aim. However, opinion polls in Ukraine show overwhelming support for a continuation of the war even if Western aid falls, with 92% of Ukrainians saying they would accept nothing short of a total Russian withdrawal from their territory including Crimea. Meanwhile, reports suggesting Russian interest in a cease-fire do not indicate any flexibility from President Vladimir Putin about the status of the territories under Russian occupation. Moscow’s insistence that Ukraine recognize those illegally annexed areas as sovereign Russian territory in exchange for peace is a non-starter for Kyiv, just as Kyiv’s insistence that Russia withdraw from all Ukrainian territory including Crimea is a non-starter for Moscow.
If Ukraine faces significant setbacks on the battlefield in the coming months due to reduced US aid, Ukrainian public opinion on territorial concessions could shift, and Zelensky’s calculations about talks may change accordingly. Knowing the Ukrainian people and their will to fight, I rate this as unlikely. But even if it came to pass, diplomacy would still require Russia to come to the table for constructive discussions – something that Putin will have little incentive to do as long as he has the military upper hand, Russia’s economy remains robust, Western support for Kyiv is waning, and Donald Trump has an even shot of winning the US presidential election. Russian dissident Alexei Navalny dying in a Siberian gulag earlier this month is a sign of Putin’s strength and confidence – not something that would happen if he were inclined to sue for peace anytime soon.
In short, cutting US aid to Ukraine wouldn’t bring an end to the war any closer. It would only make it easier for Russia to kill more Ukrainians – and embolden Putin to do the same to Moldovans, Latvians, and Poles in the future. Any suggestion to the contrary is wishful thinking at best, and Russian propaganda at worst.
As Israel threatens an offensive into Rafah, its regional nemesis Iran is pulling itself away from the brink of war – and may even welcome a cease-fire in Gaza.
Since an attack by one of its Iraqi proxies killed three American servicemen in Jordan on Jan. 28, Iran has been signaling its allies in the Resistance Front to cool it and avoid actions that might prompt retaliation from Israel or the United States.
The commander of Iran’s Quds Force, the elite branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, traveled to Iraq in January and ordered Iran’s allies there to hold off on attacking US forces. The pressure from their patron in Tehran seems to have worked, at least for now: Since Feb. 4, no US troops have been targeted in militia attacks. Iran has also told its closest ally, Hezbollah, to avoid provoking Israel at a time when tensions on Israel’s border with Lebanon remain high.
While the Houthis, Iran’s ally in Yemen, have continued their attacks on commercial shipping, Iran took a notable step to protect its own assets in the Red Sea. The Iranian observation ship, the MV Behshad, widely believed to be assisting Houthi targeting, has dropped anchor near a Chinese squadron in Djibouti and isn’t actively involved in Houthi operations anymore. There’s even been tentative signs that Iran’s enrichment of uranium has slowed a little – though Iran continues to enrich at a rapid pace, it doesn’t seem as interested in building a bomb as it once was.
Iran continues to talk tough, but actions speak louder than words. And for the moment at least, those actions seem geared toward keeping the Middle East conflict from spreading any further than it already has.
Though it’s hard to know for sure what’s going on inside the head of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, my bet is Iran’s moves are down to self-preservation and risk management. As is often the case, the leadership of the Islamic Republic is worried first and foremost about its own survival. While it’s made some gains from the crisis so far, Iran is now trying to avoid a bigger fight that could endanger its regional position and put more pressure on its own shaky domestic security.
Iran is winning – and wants to keep it that way
When Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Iran stood to benefit from its proxy sowing chaos.
The horrific attack pulled Israel into a domestic security crisis and bogged the Israel Defense Forces down in a war in Gaza from which it has yet to emerge. Iran is confident that Hamas will survive this war–battered, perhaps, but still present. Israel, on the other hand, will emerge badly damaged diplomatically and morally (if not also economically and militarily).
Iran is also happy to see progress on Israeli normalization with Saudi Arabia delayed or scuttled since the grand bargain was clearly aimed at containing the spread of Iran’s regional influence. For their part, Iran’s diplomats have loudly denounced Israel’s operations in Gaza and tried to leverage the crisis into closer ties to other Middle Eastern states. Meanwhile, its Resistance Front coalition has proven it can coordinate on grand strategy like never before. Iran’s allies have launched hundreds of attacks to signal solidarity with Hamas, and the Houthis have effectively closed the Red Sea to Western shipping.
On balance, then, Iran has been coming out ahead in this war.
But that balance could change if the conflict expands further. Iran talks tough, and its regional allies have grown bolder, but a conventional military conflict with Israel would not go its way – apart from its impressive array of ballistic missiles, most of Iran’s military is built upon Cold War-era hardware. Iran is well aware of the Israeli threat to Hezbollah, Iran’s largest and strongest ally. Should war break out along Israel’s northern border, Iran would feel obligated to step in and support its ally, risking more of its forces in a knock-down fight with Israel.
The same holds true for a fight with the United States. Iran wants to get the US out of Iraq and Syria and has backed a variety of militias and proxies to support that goal. These groups are chomping at the bit, but Iran – or, more specifically, Supreme Leader Khamenei – has always favored “strategic patience” and has been waiting things out, confident that gradual pressure will force the US out in time, without the need for a big, bloody fight.
Iran’s leaders are eager to keep the war from coming home
Tehran is wary of the conflict expanding due to the impact it would have on the home front. With the memory of the 2022 protest wave still fresh, the regime is anxious to keep a lid on domestic violence and instability, especially as a succession crisis could happen at any moment – after all, Khamenei is 84 years old, in poor health, and lacks a clear successor.
That doesn’t mean it has avoided the escalating crisis, which has grown in new and unexpected ways. A massive terrorist attack in Kerman in early January revealed gaps in the regime’s security apparatus, prompting it to lash out against its neighbors – including Pakistan, which it bombarded with missiles (Tehran and Islamabad made up quickly, fortunate given that Pakistan is a nuclear power). Public concern over security was further heightened following the deaths of US servicemen in Jordan. Iran’s media was filled with reports of impending US direct air strikes against Iran, Khamenei called an emergency meeting of the Supreme National Security Council, and the national air defense system was put on high alert. On Feb. 14, twin explosions shut down the nation’s largest pipeline, shutting off gas to millions. Reports confirmed that Israel was probably behind the attack.
Faced with the threat of escalation, Iran has pulled back
Faced with a potential escalation cascade, Iran’s response has been to pull back – a little, if not entirely – to avoid getting entangled in a bloody fight that could have consequences for its own domestic stability.
And it’s gotten some help from an unexpected corner: The United States, also anxious to avoid a bigger fight, has been working to contain the crisis. Following the attack in Jordan, President Joe Biden signaled that there would be US retaliation but waited a week to strike back, giving Iran plenty of time to withdraw its forces from Syria. Other US strikes – including a drone attack on an Iraqi militia commander in Baghdad and a cyberattack against the MV Behshad – have stayed within the escalatory threshold.
To be sure, the crisis is nowhere near over, and escalatory risks remain very much present. The Houthis continue to lob missiles at passing ships, and they have been upping their game to include drone submarines that are tougher to detect. The Iraqi militias may have stopped their attacks on US forces, but there’s no guarantee the pause will last. Tehran has proven it has influence over these groups and can issue orders to them, but it lacks control. If a Houthi missile hits a US warship, there’s not much Tehran can do to prevent a US retaliation and a spiraling conflict.
But Iran preferring restraint to escalation is still welcome news for a region – and a world – that could use some.
Former president and likely Republican nominee Donald Trump caused a ruckus across the pond over the weekend when he said that he would encourage Russia to attack any NATO member falling short on their defense spending goals (2% of GDP or more). Predictably, this got America’s European allies, most of whom were already pretty agitated about the prospect of a second Trump presidency, decidedly panicky.
It's easy to see why. During his first term in the White House, Trump repeatedly threatened to pull back from longstanding US security commitments to NATO as a lever to force European allies to shoulder more of the financial burden of their defense and to secure favorable trade concessions. His latest remarks are the first, however, explicitly encouraging Russia – a country openly hostile to NATO and currently leading a war of aggression in Ukraine – to attack other NATO members. Despite significant increases in defense spending since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, European allies are still largely dependent on US military capabilities to maintain credible deterrence. If Trump were to act on his threats at a time when war is raging on Europe’s doorstep, Ukraine’s prospects for victory are shrinking, and Russia’s expansionist appetite remains unsated, Europe would find itself in an unenviable position.
At the same time, there is a point beneath Trump’s threats. It is indeed the case that most of the largest NATO economies – including Germany, France, Italy, and Spain – have been underinvesting in their own defense for decades, confident that the “peace dividend” would last forever or else that they could free-ride on the US security guarantee indefinitely...despite continued pleas from US presidents of both parties for them to become more co-equal partners in European security. Yet they have been allowed to get away with this rather unacceptable state of affairs at their own peril, their consistent failure to invest in their own defense weakening NATO and emboldening Vladimir Putin as much as (if not more than) any Trump statement could.
In that sense, Trump’s escalating withdrawal/abandonment threats are important for both Europe and NATO in the long term, insofar as European leaders find them credible enough to finally start taking European security seriously. Asking them hasn’t worked. And the status quo is increasingly untenable to growing numbers of Americans.
Admittedly, the gambit is not without downsides. The threat of withdrawal/abandonment risks turning NATO, which has historically been widely understood as a strategic alliance in America’s own vital security interest, into a largely transactional arrangement. You may think transactional doesn’t sound so bad – they get something, we get something, everyone wins, right? But that’s not how military alliances and deterrence work. The moment it becomes clear that NATO is bound not by trust and shared interests but by quid pro quo, the security guarantee is rendered less credible in the eyes of adversaries (who know the US will not go to war to defend another country solely for money) and therefore less valuable for partners.
Most importantly, this assumes that Trump is playing hardball and just wants to leverage the US security guarantee to get the Europeans to pull more of their weight and to secure gains in other areas such as trade, much like he did in his first term. However, there are those who have worked with him, such as former national security adviser John Bolton, who believe that Trump doesn’t actually care whether NATO members increase their burden-sharing and is just looking for a pretext to abandon an alliance he has always seen as an inherently bad deal for America. According to Bolton, it's not a bluff, it’s not a negotiating tactic, it’s not even a shakedown: it’s his deeply-held policy stance. Big if true, as they say.
This would be the ultimate nightmare scenario for the Europeans, who have neither the leadership, the cash, nor the trust to fill the gaping hole left by the (de facto or de jure) withdrawal of the US security guarantee. Rather than galvanize the continent, political and military fragmentation would ensue. Some countries would try to “buy” bilateral security agreements from the Trump administration, while others would cozy up to Moscow instead. Yet others, such as the Nordic and Baltic states, would band together in regional security groupings.
The damage to European unity and security would be heavy. But so would the damage to America’s credibility and global standing.
When Olaf Scholz replaced Angela Merkel as Germany’s chancellor in 2021, hopes were high, in Germany and beyond, that a shift to new leadership might reinvigorate the nation at the heart of Europe. The remarkable Merkel had led her center-right Christian Democrats, her country, and the EU through a series of crises during her 16 years in power. Scholz rose to the top three years ago by casting himself as both a steady pair of hands in the Merkel mold but also as a center-left leader with a progressive view of Germany’s future. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Scholz surprised many with the boldness of his response. The “new era” he declared in Germany’s attitude toward Russia and the countries still trapped in its shadow defied his image as a skilled bureaucrat without a strong public voice or vision.
But as Chancellor Scholz prepares to visit Washington this weekend, he faces a rising tide of criticism back home. The German public mood has grown darker over the past year, mainly because the economy is limping, and inflation has taken a bite out of both consumers and industry. Workers are angry. Business leaders are frustrated. And the coalition Scholz formed to win power – an increasingly uneasy partnership of establishment socialists, ambitious Greens, and the fiscally hawkish, pro-business FDP – is wearing badly.
The poll numbers speak for themselves. In January, the government’s approval rating hit 17%, a record low. Scholz’s personal popularity hovered at 19%, the lowest mark for any chancellor in a quarter century. Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) and Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) aren’t faring much better. Recent polls show the current three-party coalition’s expected vote total has dropped from a combined 52% in 2021 to just 32%. By itself, Scholz’s SPD is attracting just 15% support.
The center-right opposition, the CDU-CSU alliance, now leads the polls with 30%-34% of support. But Friedrich Merz, Angela Merkel’s successor as CDU chairman, isn’t much more popular than Scholz. Instead, it’s the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, that’s making headlines. Noisy recent protests in dozens of German cities make clear that the popularity of the AfD’s increasingly radical, openly xenophobic, anti-European, and pro-Russian platform has its limits, and all other parties now represented in parliament have pledged never to partner with them. But nationwide polls show the AfD’s support has grown from just 10.3% at the 2021 election to between 19% and 22% today.
The state of play
Now come the elections. First, the SPD expects a beating in June’s European Parliament elections and a humiliation this fall in eastern German states considered strongholds of the populist right. Germany’s next national elections (for the Bundestag, parliament’s lower house) must be held no later than Oct. 26, 2025, and will most likely occur in September next year.
Perhaps Scholz’s biggest challenge will be managing his increasingly unwieldy coalition with the Greens and FDP through this gauntlet of political tests. Much of Scholz’s weak image comes down to open public criticism from his own finance minister, the FDP’s Lindner, who has accused Scholz of creating a dysfunctional welfare state. The Greens, unsympathetic to Scholz’s need to carefully manage the country’s energy transition as Germany moved to halt hydrocarbon energy imports from Russia, have accused Scholz of being soft on the fight against climate change. The Greens’ insistence on shutting down the last of Germany’s nuclear power plants last year made matters worse.
And if the SPD takes the expected beatdown in European elections in June, some within the SPD may begin pushing for a change in party leadership to rescue its chances of survival in power.
What might save Scholz?
Scholz and his coalition smell like toast. But 19 months is a long time, and much will happen between now and the next national elections in fall 2025. A return of Donald Trump to power and/or shifts on the battlefield in Ukraine could offer Scholz opportunities to rally Germans to their flag – and, by extension, to the incumbent government.
Scholz’s best hope lies not in some newfound strength or a new harmony within his coalition. It’s the weakness of others that might still save him. In particular, the establishment center-right CDU/CSU faces its own tough challenge. While offering a vision of a stronger and more self-confident Germany, the party must distance itself from the AfD, which remains anathema to many German voters, and Merz may not be the man for the job. He has already pandered to AfD voters with comments about Muslims, migrants, homosexuals, and the Green Party that were ham-handed at best and deeply offensive to many Germans, and he’s not immune to an internal party leadership challenge either.
The longer-term challenge
The biggest challenge for the SPD in coming years will be similar to the one faced by center-left parties across Europe: Voters are drifting away in all directions. Some of the party’s working-class voters have moved from blue- to white-collar jobs and now see their interests differently than they did a decade ago. Others have moved to the right in the face of rising numbers of foreign migrants. Many younger voters are moving toward the Greens or even to the populist left Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, which represents a mix of welfare state generosity and sharp limits on immigration. The SPD has seen its party membership rolls cut nearly in half since the year 2000.
It’s a complex problem for even a skilled political leader, and Olaf Scholz has yet to prove he’s up to the task.
Just as I and my Eurasia Group colleagues predicted in our Top Risks 2024 report, the Middle East war continues to widen. We said that the conflict would inevitably expand significantly beyond Gaza – and potentially into a larger-scale regional conflict – because there are simply too many actors and variables that the United States does not have the ability to constrain. That is why it ranked #2 on our list.
We’ve seen that risk play out with the ongoing harassment of commercial shipping in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Houthis, as well as the more than 150 attacks carried out by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria against American installations in the region since Oct. 7. The US has been unable to deter these actions to date, despite issuing stern diplomatic warnings, leveling economic sanctions, creating a multinational maritime task force, and even launching limited strikes on these groups’ military capabilities.
Washington’s deterrence strategy failed, in part, because these Iranian proxies (the so-called “Axis of Resistance”) can withstand significant retaliation, enjoy continuing military and intelligence support from Tehran despite operating relatively autonomously, and see only reputational and political upsides from drawing a fight with the Americans. In part, it failed because Tehran understands that President Joe Biden really doesn’t want a direct fight with the Islamic Republic (especially in an election year), and it has accordingly felt emboldened to give its proxies a longer leash without fearing a shooting war with the US that it absolutely does not want either.
Yet we are now meaningfully closer to precisely that outcome after a Tehran-sponsored militia launched a drone strike against a US military outpost along the Syria-Jordan border (Tower 22 near the Al Tanf Garrison) that killed three American servicemembers and injured at least 40 over the weekend. The first deaths of US troops under fire since the war started, these casualties are the nightmare scenario the White House has been dreading for months: an attack in the region that kills American military personnel and puts Biden under intense political and strategic pressure to retaliate forcefully. Indeed, long before it happened, senior officials in the administration described this very scenario to me as a ‘red line.’
So make no mistake, the White House will respond in short order. The question is whether it can do that in a way that successfully deters Iran and its proxies without risking an even deadlier spiral of escalation. And on that front, Biden’s options range from the ineffective to the extremely dangerous. Moreover, the death of US servicemembers in the Middle East will be a political drag on the president no matter how he responds.
While some of Biden’s Republican opponents are advocating for direct attacks on Iranian forces – in the mold of the Trump administration’s assassination of Qasem Soleimani in 2020 as retaliation for a series of similar Tehran-backed attacks on US personnel – I expect the potential for significant US fatalities or further attacks on US troops to keep his response more limited and incremental. That means US actions will come in steps, each more aggressive than the last, with each additional step calibrated to dial up the pressure on Iran while minimizing escalatory risks.
At a minimum, the initial US response will include increasingly frequent and aggressive strikes against militias in Syria and Iraq, targeting larger and more sensitive assets as well as Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel linked to these groups. Though direct kinetic attacks on Iranian soil are less likely, I wouldn’t be surprised if the US also strikes Iranian naval and intelligence assets located outside of Iran.
The other front to watch is US sanctions on Iranian oil exports, where Biden is under pressure to turn up the heat. But there’s little he can do without incurring major diplomatic and economic costs elsewhere. Expect marginally tightened enforcement of existing sanctions that stop short of targeting the final buyers of Iranian crude, most of whom are major Chinese refineries Biden is loath to sanction at a time when he is attempting to lower the temperature with Beijing and keep oil prices low ahead of the November election.
Will these measures be sufficient to stop Iranian proxies from hitting the United States? Maybe, just maybe, they’ll make them more cautious in their targeting. But color me skeptical. More likely, the militias in Iraq and Syria will absorb the forthcoming US strikes and intensify their attacks on US installations over the coming weeks.
When it becomes clear that his initial response has failed to deter (or provoked) further Iranian-backed strikes that will sooner or later cause additional American fatalities, Biden will have no choice but to move onto more aggressive actions such as direct targeting of IRGC leadership in Iran, overt strikes on Iranian military facilities, and – in a most severe scenario – material constraints on the purchase of Iranian crude. Any of these actions would trigger a strong Iranian response and bring the two countries much closer to direct confrontation.
To be sure, there are still good reasons why we should not expect this to become a full-fledged war between the US and Iran. Most important of which is that neither the Americans nor the Iranians want an all-out confrontation. The Iranians also don’t want to be on the wrong side of the Gulf States, with whom they now have functional relations after many years of largely cold (but occasionally hot) war. They certainly have no desire to ruin that and suddenly find themselves in a no-holds-barred fight against every major power in the region.
Still, the closer we get to tit-for-tat strikes between the US and Iran, the more likely accidents, miscalculations, and inadvertent escalations are to occur.
Implausible as it may sound, the likeliest way to de-escalate the conflict at the moment would be a breakthrough in the ceasefire and hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas, which are gaining momentum. Most Iran-linked militias claim that their strikes are in solidarity with the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, so it follows that efforts to bring an end to the fighting there could help contain the expansion of the conflict elsewhere.
Talks on Jan. 27 in Paris between intelligence chiefs and leadership from the US, Qatar, Israel, and Egypt were constructive, with Israel now willing to take a deal that they wouldn’t have considered a few weeks ago and regional brokers Qatar and Egypt working hard to try to get Hamas on board. The main points of contention remain the duration of the ceasefire – Israel insists on temporary, Hamas on permanent – and the number of hostages to be released – with Israel preferring they all be let go at once and Hamas favoring a tiered approach to retain leverage. Israeli domestic politics and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal calculations pose hurdles, too, but the pressure to deliver a deal – from both Washington and the Israeli public – is growing.
In the context of eroding US deterrence vis-à-vis Iran and a shrinking margin for error, that pressure is emerging as the most viable pathway toward limiting further regional escalation.