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Israel’s geopolitical missteps in Gaza
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Back to the Middle East. We are now over a month of war between Israel and Hamas following the October 7th terror attacks. And frankly, it is not going all that well. What I mean by that is, it's an awful lot of carnage. It's an awful lot of political division around the world. And Israel, with the exception of a strong relationship with the United States, feels increasingly isolated. That's certainly in the message I was hearing from the Europeans over the last week, getting more and more uncomfortable as this war goes on. The Americans privately saying that to the Israelis, though publicly, certainly standing very, very strongly with them. And members of the Israeli cabinet increasingly believing that the pressure on them is going to grow significantly over the next few weeks as the war continues.
So is there anything else they could have done, right? Because I mean, if you're saying, well, this is really challenging, the fight and it's leading to enormous backlash and, you know, from the region and from the Global South and even from countries that are quite friendly and well-disposed to Israel, then what might you have suggested they do instead?
And here my view is, when you have enormous support from the West in particular, but also sympathies more broadly, following these horrible terrorist attacks on October 7th. And let's remember, I mean, this was civilians that were targeted, that were brutally murdered. This was not Israeli settlers who were fighting on the right. It certainly wasn't the military, was actually progressives on the left. It was the people that were most oriented to peace, were the ones that were gunned down and tortured and taken hostage by Hamas in Gaza. So if there was ever a time that the Israelis were going to have sympathy, it would be right after this. And my view is use that in the same way the United States did after 9/11. And they built a coalition of the willing with dozens of countries that were prepared to support them to go into Afghanistan, and specifically to take out Al-Qaeda. You build that coalition. There were countries, of course, NATO's allies, no surprise, the UK and France and Canada. But I mean, countries like Georgia were involved in sending people to UAE.
And this, I think, is an opportunity that the Israelis really did have. When French President Macron traveled to Israel, he said that they were prepared to join the fight against Hamas, join the fight on terror with the Israelis. The Americans, of course, immediately sending, you know, sort of troops to the region, as well as troops on the ground to act as advisors, a lot of intelligence support. I think you would have gotten significant support from the Germans in this environment, from the UK, in this environment. And the point here is that in the immediate weeks after the attacks, instead of massive bombing attacks and then a ground war instead, work first and foremost on a coalition, build multilateral support, heck, work with the Saudis. The Gulf states are strongly interested in working with Israel. They hate Hamas. They want the end of Hamas. They find, you know, this would be a dangerous movement that's much more aligned with their enemies. The Iranians. So Israel had a very strong geopolitical position and the ability to use it if their initial response was, “we're going to be stronger, we're going to build on all of this sympathy to have not just us fighting against Hamas, but everybody.”
Now, would that have constrained what Israel would have done? Would it have meant that they would have been more pinpoint in their bombing? It would have taken longer, that there wouldn't have been a ground war? Maybe so. But having said all of that, Israel is massively more capable militarily than Hamas is, and they have vastly better border security and they have incredible missile defense and they would have gotten more technological and military support from allies and friends all over the world following these attacks. I don't believe that there is an existential risk to Israel from Hamas. I don't believe there's an existential risk from anybody in the region in terms of military capabilities.
I remember when I was with Netanyahu once at a conference in Herzliya in Israel, and he came and spoke to some of us, a small group, I think it was 30 or 40 folks. And there were some investors in the room and he was talking. The first half of the meeting was all about how Israel was the best possible place to invest. And of course, had, you know, very high ratings in terms of credit and transparency and rule of law. And as a democracy in the region, all of these things. And, you know, everyone's nodding along. And then the second half of the meeting is how the Iranians need to be contained and how they represent an existential threat to Israel. And I mean, both of these things cannot be true at the same time, right? I mean, if you're saying that it's a fantastic place to invest, then it probably isn't really a place that other people can take out.
Israel, of course, has, though, unstated, a serious nuclear force, and they have massive military capabilities and incredibly well-trained Israeli Defense Force. Now, the point here is that, you know, Netanyahu took his eye off the ball, stopped paying attention to border security, undermined the Israeli defense Force's capacities as they were focused on the West Bank, took his eye off the ball on intelligence. But after October 7th, that was never going to happen again. The entire people, the entire country, with a massive additional number of troops being sent precisely to defend Israel. So I don't think it's credible to say that, if the Israelis didn't strike back massively within days and then engage in a massive ground war, that they were suddenly facing an existential further risk from Hamas. No, the risk came because the Israelis, who have every right to defend their borders, weren't doing so before October 7th and needed to do so after October 7th. There's no question that no one should expect Israel to be living next to a territory that is governed by Hamas. And they were going to need to take that leadership at a very least out and have vastly better security capabilities.
But that could be done at a time of Israel's choosing when they had built up much more multilateral support and when they were engaging not by themselves, but with others. And that was absolutely possible, certainly more possible than what we have today. The fact that the French government is saying that they're calling for a ceasefire, they certainly weren't doing that even a week ago. The Americans are privately, increasingly telling the Israelis that you're going to need to stop this relatively soon or the US will limit the military support that's being provided to Israel, three plus billion dollars a year. The fact that, you know, the Gulf states are having summits in the region, Israel's not a part of it. They're not being invited. They're working together. They're not condemning Hamas directly. This is a problem. And I think that, you know, at the end of the day, as much as everyone out there should have sympathy for the brutality that Israel was experiencing on October 7th and the 200 plus hostages that Hamas is still holding today. I mean, any human being has to have sympathy for Israel and for the Jewish people on the back of that.
It is a horrible, horrible thing. But the steps that they have taken geopolitically, the military steps they've taken on the ground, frankly, in my view, is weak in their position. The only thing that is going to ultimately cause an existential risk to Israel and to the Jewish people in Israel, is if they continue to fall into the trap that Hamas has played for them, has placed for them. And so far that appears to be, unfortunately, where they're going. So anyway, that's my view on all of this. I'm sure that nobody agrees with it 100%. But, you know, I promise to always give you my best sense and tell you what I think can be authentic with everybody. And I certainly hope that this doesn't continue to explode and that at the very least, we can keep the fighting itself contained to Gaza and that the humanitarian damage and devastation that we're seeing on the ground gets more limited going forward as opposed to continuing to expand.
I'm not hopeful. I don't expect it. I expect more violence from the settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank. And I even think that the northern front with Lebanon and Hezbollah appears to be opening up a little bit more. But that is certainly what none of us want. And we will see where we go from there.
That's it for me. I'll talk to you all real soon.
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The state of multilateralism: Shaky, fragile & stretched to capacity
Dr. Comfort Ero of the International Crisis Group has spent her career tackling the most difficult conflicts in the world, often exacerbated by severe environmental or social disasters. But as the climate crisis and war in Ukraine compound the forces pushing many fragile societies to the brink, she says multilateral institutions like the United Nations are not prepared to meet the challenge.
Faced with state collapse, food insecurity, and lack of governance, countries like Libya, Lebanon and Sri Lanka are not able to access the help they need to stabilize, build resilience and thrive.
“Countries are already facing difficult trend lines with a multilateral system that is shaky, that is fragile, that is already stretched to its capacity, not able to deal.” she said during a Global Stage livestream event at UN headquarters in New York on September 22, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
The discussion was moderated by Nicholas Thompson of The Atlantic and was held by GZERO Media in collaboration with the United Nations, the Complex Risk Analytics Fund, and the Early Warnings for All initiative.
Watch the full Global Stage conversation: Can data and AI save lives and make the world safer?
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UN chief: We must avoid the mistakes that led to World War I
Winston Churchill once said: "Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Those words ring as true today as they did in 1948. Churchill, who served in the First World War before he led Britain through the Second, knew all too well the miscalculations that presidents and prime ministers made leading up to the Great War.
A century later, the UN's top diplomat, Secretary-General António Guterres, fears that world leaders today are making the same mistakes that got us into WWI. In an exclusive interview for GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, Guterres explains what makes him so wary of this moment in geopolitics.
"We really need stronger and reformed multilateral institutions to be able to coordinate on what is becoming a multipolar world," Guterres tells Bremmer. "I would remind you that Europe, before the First World War, was multipolar. But because there was no multilateral governance institutions at the European level, the result was the First World War."
Watch the full GZERO World interview: UN Chief on mounting global crises: "Hope never dies"
Watch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld and on US public television. Check local listings.
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Joseph R. Biden, Jr., President of the United States of America, addresses the 77th session of the General Assembly at the United Nations headquarters, September 21, 2022.
What to watch at the UN General Assembly
New Yorkers, get ready for terrible traffic, because the big show is in town.
World leaders are about to start pouring in for the United Nations General Assembly’s high-level session, the annual global event where leaders from countries great and small gather to have their say about the world’s toughest issues. (Though sometimes they use the moment to suggest the US president is Satan or to share their views on the JFK assassination).
The sleek mid-century modern architecture, massive cubist murals, and vast diversity on display can give the event a bit of a sci-fi vibe, but the scale of problems makes it hard to feel Star Trek-esque techno-optimism. Here’s a quick breakdown of the biggest issues for this “UNGA” as politics nerds call it:
The War in Ukraine and Global Hunger. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has confirmed he will speak in person in New York. Also in likely attendance: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. There’s sure to be some careful choreography to prevent a spontaneous meeting, but the UN also wants to bring the two sides together to renew the Black Sea grain export deal, which Russia ditched back in July.
When Russia pulled out it put severe pressure on food prices, particularly for low-income countries in Africa that rely on Ukrainian grain. It doesn’t help that the World Food Program is suffering a budget shortfall that could force it to cut food aid to 24 million people — forcing the world into a “doom loop” of hunger.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer he would continue leading talks with Turkey, Russia and Ukraine to revive the deal, but set expectations low in the short term.
Sustainable Development Goals in rough shape. Way back in the halcyon days of 2015, every single UN member state agreed to a set of 17 development benchmarks to achieve by 2030 that would help fight climate change while also fostering economic growth. Halfway to the deadline, the UN’s own report on the progress paints a bleak picture.
Progress on half of the targets is insufficient, and another 30% have stalled or even regressed. The number of people living in extreme poverty, for example, is rising for the first time in a generation and is on track to reach 575 million by 2030.
Secretary-General Guterres said that fixing this is UNGA’s “most important objective,” but not everyone is convinced about the U.N.’s credibility on climate. Former U.S. Vice President and climate activist Al Gore tore into what he called the “capture” of UN negotiations on climate change by the fossil fuel industry. You can see Gore’s point: The United Nations’ next big climate change conference will be held in Dubai, led by oil magnate Sultan Al-Jaber.
Can the Security Council be fixed? Probably not. There will be lots of talk about updating the Security Council’s membership to reflect the world as it is in 2023, rather than as it was at the end of World War Two, when it was created.
U.S. President Joe Biden expressed support for reforming the body last year, possibly adding countries like Brazil, India, and Japan to reflect their importance in world affairs.
There is precedent for expanding the council, as 4 non-permanent seats were added in 1965. The issue with any attempt to reform is the same, though: any permanent member can veto any resolution before the council. Should Russia or China feel adding a member would be against their best interest — and if China’s rivals India and Japan are in play, they likely would — the whole thing gets squashed.
Where’s Xi Jinping? The Chinese President, Xi Jinping, won’t attend, and neither, reportedly, will his top diplomat Wang Yi. Instead, China is sending Vice President Han Zheng, whose role is mostly ceremonial.
That could complicate US hopes to firm up details about hosting a Biden-Xi summit later this year. It also hints at some possible rudderlessness behind the scenes in China’s foreign ministry following the disappearance and public dismissal of former Foreign Minister Qin Gang.
The upshot: Hope never dies. Corralling nearly two hundred countries toward consensus on any given subject, much less ones as thorny as climate change and the invasion of Ukraine, is a daunting and often thankless challenge — but one that would be all the harder without multilateral fora like the United Nations.
Ahead of the gathering, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed cautious determination in his interview with Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer.
“Hope is the thing that never dies, but it will not be easy,” he said. “We are in an era of escalation, not an area of easy solution.”
Is Modi's India a friend or foe to the US?
What is an ally? How is it different from a strategic partner? At what point does a shared interest between two nations bloom into a full-fledged alliance? Those questions are at the heart of the DC-Delhi relationship.
So, is India a US ally? Based on the pomp and circumstance surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to Washington in June, the answer seems obvious, right? They love us! We love them! End of story. Right?
Ian's guest today, award-winning Indian journalist and Washington Post columnist Barkha Dutt, has some tough love to share: Sorry America, India will never be your ally. "India's hardwired from inception, as an independent country," Dutt tells Bremmer, "to be what what used to be called non-aligned, and what India's foreign minister now calls multi-lateralism ... India is asserting her moment in time."
On the other hand, both nations share a common interest in countering a rising China. So how does Dutt square that circle? Tune in to “GZERO World with Ian Bremmer” on US public television starting this Friday, July 7, to watch the full interview. Check local listings.
Biden's UN speech avoids China mention; US lifts travel restrictions
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week with a look at US President Biden's UN General Assembly speech, eased US travel restrictions, and Canadian PM Trudeau's election gamble.
How did President Biden's first address to the United Nations General Assembly live go?
It was okay. I thought it was very notable that China was not directly mentioned at all. So my mother used to say, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. Did say that the US didn't want to be in a "Cold War". That's notable, because a lot of people out there are pushing in that direction in the US and in China. Certainly it was all about multilateral leadership. The Americans want to do more. We want collective leadership. We care about values. We care about democracy, but increasingly not seen as credible by a number of Europeans, as well as by the developing world, particularly when it comes to Afghanistan, COVID, and climate. Can't just say the words, have to have a pathway to get there. It's getting more challenging for the Americans. This is a tough UNGA meeting.
The US is to lift pandemic travel restrictions. What will happen after that?
Well, thank God we're finally doing that. In November, if you're vaccinated, you can come to the United States. It's like 550 days that the Europeans weren't allowed to come to the US. And I understood why we put that in place at the beginning, but with sort of COVID cases expanding directly in the United States and people getting vaccinated all over the place, we need to be able to travel again. It's important. And frankly, it was the Paris dust-up and the withdrawal, or the recall of the ambassador that got the Americans to move more quickly. So thanks to Paris for that. Usually this stuff is just symbolic.
Did Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's election gamble pay off?
Well, sort of. I mean in the sense that he had an election and he got the same exact result that they had before, minority government does extend his term. So that's useful from his perspective. They spent/wasted 600 million Canadian dollars on it, which is nothing compared to the United States. In Canada, that's considered to be kind of crying foul. A lot of people didn't want the election. And I don't think policies are going to change one bit, but I do applaud the Canadians for having an election where nothing happened. If only that could happen in the United States.
Does the UN have any actual authority?
76 years after the United Nations was founded, amid an unending pandemic and growing climate and refugee crises, today's UN Secretary-General António Guterres has stark words for member nations: "In our biggest shared test since the Second World War," Guterres says, "humanity faces a stark and urgent choice: a breakdown or a breakthrough." But if something as immediate and catastrophic as a deadly pandemic can't spark a renewal of global cooperation, then what can? On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer explores the question: if the United Nations doesn't have the authority to force its members to take drastic measures to avoid global catastrophes, what is it actually good for? (Quite a lot.)
Watch this episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer: UN Sec-Gen: Without trust, catastrophe awaits
Is the US abandoning NATO in Afghanistan?
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here. Welcome to your week. Got a Quick Take for you. Wanted to talk a little bit about Afghanistan. The United States has announced, and not for the first time, that we will be leaving, ending the 20-year war. Detractors calling it The Forever War, and with good reason: it is the longest war that the United States has in its history ever fought, spending over a trillion dollars conservatively. Estimated well over 2000 American servicemen and women dead, over 40,000 Afghan civilians dead, and well over 70% of Americans want out, want to end the war. So you can understand why President Biden wanted to make that decision. You understand why former President Trump wanted to make that decision.
There was a thoughtful interagency process in the United States, and I will say that given gains made by the Taliban on the ground in Afghanistan, presently at the peak in terms of territorial expansion over the past years, there was a feeling among those advising Biden, that there was not a lot of confidence that the present levels of military engagement on the ground was sufficient to prevent the Taliban from taking over and the Afghan government from collapsing over the course of a Biden administration. So in other words, the decision being put to him really wasn't about: do you want to stay or do you want to leave? It was more, do you want to leave or are you prepared to expand, to have another surge of American and other troops to help ensure that the Taliban doesn't actually take over the country? And the answer, in relatively short order, was no.
I want to be clear, I'm personally glad that we're able to leave. This has been enormously painful and expensive and dangerous process. It feels unending. We killed bin Laden. We degraded Al Qaeda. Those were the proximate goals for the war, but the idea of building up the Afghan government and leaving stability was always a much taller order than the United States appeared to have stomach for and would have been an immense challenge, irrespective of how much resource the Americans put on the ground.
But I am worried that we're leaving our allies in the lurch and I want to dig into that a little bit. I mentioned that there was a thoughtful interagency process inside the United States of whether the Americans would stay or go, but that was not a discussion had with American coalition partners in NATO who have been shouldering the majority of the burden in the war in Afghanistan heretofore. The coalition together has more troops on the ground than the United States. They've lost, they've suffered more casualties than the United States. And perhaps most importantly, many of them have much bigger domestic concerns about radical Islamic terrorism - think about France, for example, think about Germany, think about the U.K - than the United States, where today terrorism is mostly domestic, homegrown, and it's mostly white nationalist.
We told them we were leaving and they better get on board, and of course, publicly they are, because if the world superpower and their ally is out, then, well, what choice do they really have? But they're really not happy about that and I've had that conversation with a number of allies at this point who are basically saying, "Look, there's no way for us to maintain our presence if the Americans aren't there. There's no way for us to continue economic support given how corrupt the local government is, because if the Americans aren't there on the ground overseeing that process. There's no way to make sure the money's going to where it needs to go. It's going to be wasted." So the view is that this goes from a relatively robust process to one that really falls apart in short order, and the likelihood the Taliban takes over in the coming months to years goes up.
Now, again, I'm not saying that I think that should make this Forever War continue for 10, 20, 30 years. But I do believe that the United States owes it to America's allies to engage in that discussion collectively before we make a decision. I get the point that the Quad is the shiny new object. The United States is much more concerned about China than it is about what's happening on the ground in Afghanistan. The Japanese are seen in many ways as the most critical ally in that regard. First head of state visit to the United States was indeed Prime Minister Suga. They have been underprioritized for a long time, I would argue, appropriately so. Third largest economy, largest economy in the world, allied with the United States and really need the Americans. I get it.
But America's most durable alliance, as much as it is outdated in geographic orientation, still is very strong, we're very trusted partners and that's NATO. And most trusted partners of America around the world remain a part of NATO and are contributing more to NATO over time. We should stay committed, we should stay seen to be committed. First, that means the decision making process on something that is in the interest of the United States to leave, maybe we need to compromise more because of the interests of our allies. We certainly want to work with them more closely. And also, since they're going to be bearing the brunt if the Taliban takes over, they're going to bear the brunt if radical Islamic terror becomes more of a threat to their homelands, then the United States in advance of that, needs to be working collectively with them to help ensure that our fight on counter-terrorism with them is prioritizing their needs to a greater degree.
I think that we have to be willing to admit that Biden as a president, his administration is much friendlier to the allies on balance, is liked, is preferred by most, almost all of the allies on balance. But privately, a lot of the allies are saying that American unilateralism remains, in substance, if not in form on a bunch of key issues, and this was one that I think we booted a bit.
So it's difficult, right? This is not necessarily a quick post tweet to talk about all of these issues because there's a lot going on. I can understand why everyone around this has been deeply conflicted. There are no good answers, certainly. But I think we might've been able to do this one a little bit better. Anyway, that's a bit for me. Everybody be safe. Avoid fewer people, at least if you're in the U.S., and increasingly Europe, they're getting up to speed on vaccine rollout too very quickly, and I'm glad to see it and hopefully the rest of the world soon, soon, soon. Talk to y'all. Be good.
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