A gradual retreat into strategic passivity led to the world’s spinning suddenly out of control.
‘How did
you go bankrupt?” Bill Gorton asks Mike Campbell in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun
Also Rises.”
“Two
ways,” Mike replies. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
Suddenly,
the Biden administration faces a massive and complicated crisis in the Middle
East. Missiles and warplanes streak across the skies above Gaza. Saudi Arabia
bitterly criticizes Israel’s response to the Hamas atrocities, and much of the
Arab and Islamic world has exploded in rage against the Jewish state. Mobs
rampage through the streets, and American diplomats take shelter amid protests
outside U.S. embassies from Baghdad to Beirut. Iran threatens Israel with more
attacks, and Hezbollah is keeping pressure on Israel’s northern border.
President
Biden’s decision to fly to Israel showed energy and courage. But more is
needed. As I wrote in my last column, Mr. Biden has yet to grapple with the
painful truth that America’s core problem in the Middle East is the march of an
unappeasable Iran toward regional power regardless of moral or human cost.
That is
not the only thing Mr. Biden and his team don’t seem to have grasped. The
Middle East firestorm is merely one hot spot in a world spinning out of
control. The success of Hamas sent waves of excitement through jihadist groups
and terror cells in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and beyond. Riots in
France, a shooting in Belgium, anti-Semitic marches in Berlin and other
uprisings across Europe point to a resurgence of radicalism. Africa, where
feeble governments have lost the ability to control jihadist groups across
swaths of territory, and where Russia’s Wagner Group supports many corrupt and
violent military regimes, is bracing for more terror in more parts of the
continent. The war on terror is plotting its comeback even as the Cold War
between the U.S. and the revisionist powers heats up.
As Hamas
put a torch to the Middle East, Russia’s Legislature revoked its ratification
of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and ended limits on missile
technology sales to Iran. Mysterious disruptions to a gas pipeline and
telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea continue.
Flying
to Beijing, President Vladimir Putin toasted the growing friendship between
Russia and China and celebrated a historic high in their bilateral trade. Trade
between the two countries has roughly doubled since Mr. Putin’s original 2014
invasion of Ukraine.
Trade
between Russia and North Korea also has flourished. National Security Council
spokesman John Kirby said last week that North Korea has delivered more than
1,000 containers of military supplies and weapons to Russia. What does
Pyongyang want in return? “Fighter aircraft, surface-to-air missiles, armored
vehicles, ballistic-missile production equipment, or other materials and other
advanced technologies,” Mr. Kirby said. With Russian Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov currently visiting North Korea, he and his hosts will have plenty to
talk about.
China is
also getting frisky. In the past two years, there have been more than 180
documented cases of People’s Liberation Army planes harassing American
aircraft, the Pentagon said this week. That exceeds the number of such
incidents in the entire preceding decade. More ominously, China’s pressure on
Taiwan continues to grow. The number of Chinese military aircraft flying
sorties into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone rose from 380 in 2020 to
more than 1,700 in 2022. China has also increased the number of fighter jets
and bombers (including bombers capable of delivering nuclear weapons) venturing
close to the island. On one day last month, more than 100 Chinese military
aircraft flew missions near Taiwan, with 40 entering the air defense
identification zone.
Why are
so many actors challenging American power in so many parts of the world?
Because the U.S. is losing its power to deter. Like Mike Campbell’s bankruptcy,
the erosion of deterrence usually begins gradually and ends suddenly.
Emboldened by American failures to respond effectively (as when Mr. Putin
invaded Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, when President Obama failed to enforce
his “red line” in Syria, or when China built and militarized artificial islands
in the South China Sea), our adversaries gradually lost their inhibitions and
dared to challenge us more directly in more damaging ways.
Mr.
Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine in defiance of direct American warnings was a
major step. Iran’s support for Hamas’s strike on Israel is an even bolder
attack on the American order. If President Biden’s response to Hamas and its
patron Iran fails to restore respect for American power, wisdom and will, our
enemies everywhere will draw conclusions and take steps that we and our allies
won’t like.
As Mr.
Biden analyzes his options and the support he is prepared to offer Israel, he
needs to remember that the world is watching. Strategic passivity as deterrence
erodes is a recipe for escalating crises and, ultimately and sometimes quite
suddenly, war.