Two Wars, Countless Consequences
US Policy on Israel and Ukraine Could Make the World an Uglier Place
Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’ 2023 attack on Israel were brutal and unprovoked acts of aggression. Both Ukraine and Israel fought back hard, and the US rightly backed both Kyiv and Tel Aviv with diplomatic, economic, and most importantly military support. But as the wars unfolded a divergence in their trajectories became apparent, as did a divergence in the US approach to them. Put bluntly, US policy toward the wars in Europe and the Middle East could make war crimes and nuclear blackmail more common, to the detriment of US national security and global stability.
Under International Humanitarian Law (IHL), the body of law that addresses the legitimacy of a state’s decision to go to war, both Ukraine and Israel were justified in going to war against their aggressors. But IHL not only addresses the justice of the decision to go to war, but also just conduct in the war itself. In other words, IHL weighs in on why states choose to fight, and how they fight after they make that choice. Ukraine, fighting an adversary that poses an existential threat and uses war crimes as an instrument of military strategy, has been scrupulous in its adherence to IHL and Washington’s restrictions on use of American weapons. Israel, also fighting an enemy for whom war crimes are everyday business, but which does not pose an existential threat – Hamas may want to destroy Israel but lacks the power to do so - has been less mindful of IHL and the admonitions from the US to exercise restraint in its attacks on Gaza.
“Instead of rewarding Ukraine for its restraint and punishing Israel for its lack thereof, Washington has essentially done the opposite: its support of Ukraine has been halting and loaded with caveats, while its support of Israel has been essentially unrestricted.”
Instead of rewarding Ukraine for its restraint and punishing Israel for its lack thereof, Washington has essentially done the opposite: its support of Ukraine has been halting and loaded with caveats, while its support of Israel has been essentially unrestricted. The US has only recently – and still incompletely – started lifting restrictions on Ukraine that prohibit using US weapons to strike military targets inside Russia, and it continues to refuse to consider putting US forces on the ground in Ukraine, or even defend its airspace. This stands in stark contrast to US policy toward Israel, where American forces have actively participated in defending the country from missiles and drones and has imposed no restrictions on how Israel uses US-provided weapons.
Israel and International Humanitarian Law
Israel is fighting a terrorist organization that murders Israeli civilians and uses its own population essentially as human shields by operating among them. Hamas’s conduct is worse than Israel’s in every way, a fact the United Nations and the International Criminal Court (ICC) have de facto acknowledged by accusing the group of war crimes and issuing arrest warrants for Hamas officials. But the UN and ICC have also been highly critical of Israel. In June 2024 by a UN Commission of Inquiry that the Israeli military committed multiple violations of IHL in Gaza. Another UN report, this one from November, found Israeli methods in Gaza “consistent with genocide”. Also in November, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, accusing him of being “responsible for the war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare and of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”
Despite this, the US government has increased support for Israel, including shooting down Iranian missiles launched at it, and putting a US air defense system and soldiers to man it on Israeli soil. Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel and its defeat is essential for US and Israeli security. But how Israel defeats Hamas matters. Fighting terrorists does not excuse appropriating their methods. As Nietzsche famously said, “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”
Given the disdain for the UN and ICC in much of the US government, there is little chance their actions will influence US policy. In fact, the US Congress has floated a bill sanctioning the ICC for its indictment of Netanyahu. Whether or not the UN or ICC are impartial, their findings reflect a section of global public opinion, which has shifted sharply against Israel since the war in Gaza began. Both the Biden Administration and the Trump Administration know this: a leaked State Department memo concluded that Israelis are “facing major, possibly generational damage to their reputation” over what Biden himself called their “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza. Trump, in a rare instance of agreement with his predecessor, argued that Israel is “losing a lot of support” over its handling of the war in Gaza, characterizing its conduct as “a very big mistake”. Despite these conclusions, US military support for Israel continues unabated and essentially unrestricted.
US policymakers have framed their policies in these two wars as an attempt to prevent “horizontal escalation” of the war in the Middle East (keeping others, especially Iran, out of it) and an attempt to prevent both “horizontal and vertical escalation” of the war in Ukraine (keeping others out of it and preventing Russian nuclear use). But when the Middle East war expanded with Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the US joined in. When Russia expanded its war in Ukraine by deploying North Korean soldiers to fight on Moscow’s behalf, and by moving Russian nuclear forces to Belarus, the US did nothing.
“When the Middle East war expanded with Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the US joined in. When Russia expanded its war in Ukraine by deploying North Korean soldiers to fight on Moscow’s behalf, and by moving Russian nuclear forces to Belarus, the US did nothing.”
Washington’s efforts to prevent horizontal escalation of both wars failed. Despite - or perhaps because of - unconditional support for Israel regardless of its conduct in its war against Hamas, Israel expanded the war by attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities. These attacks may have been warranted by intelligence data, but if the US policy objective was to prevent the war from expanding, something Washington repeatedly claimed, they represent a policy failure. Washington’s reflexive support for Israel regardless of how it conducts its war does damage to the US reputation as a leading and law-abiding global actor, something American leaders have historically cared deeply about. And its acceptance of Russia’s horizontal escalation of that war sends the message that nuclear powers can play by a different set of rules.
Ukraine and the Nuclear Question
The US might claim its efforts to prevent vertical escalation (Russian nuclear use) in Ukraine have been successful. But this argument is weak. Russian nuclear use in Ukraine has always been an exceptionally low probability event because of its low military utility and high reputational and economic cost. Other countries are watching US self-deterrence in its support for Ukraine, and the lessons they are drawing make future nuclear proliferation and therefore nuclear use more likely. This becomes especially true if the Trump Administration forces Kyiv into a settlement that ratifies Russian territorial gains and leaves Ukraine without ironclad security guarantees – like NATO membership -against future Russian aggression.
“The US might claim its efforts to prevent vertical escalation (Russian nuclear use) in Ukraine have been successful. But this argument is weak.”
Why? Two reasons: first, any state that is confronted with a larger, aggressive neighbor and yet does not benefit from credible security guarantees (Ukraine’s position in February 2022) will conclude that obtaining nuclear weapons is the cheapest, most effective way to guarantee security. Next, US self-deterrence in the face of Russia’s almost-daily nuclear threats makes the point that a state does not need to use its nuclear weapons to benefit from them. In a war, threatening nuclear use can be a reliable way to deter intervention by third parties. So the lesson many observers are drawing is that nuclear weapons are effective in both preventing war and preventing its escalation once it has started.
In the aftermath of Russia’s invasion, a Ukraine left outside of NATO may decide that nuclear weapons are its only hope. Indeed, Ukraine was one of four former Soviet republics with nuclear weapons after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, but gave them up in 1994 in return for “security assurances” from the US, UK, and Russia. As it fights for its survival against one of the states that “assured” its security in 1994, Ukraine can be forgiven if it takes a “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me” attitude toward its security. Indeed, Ukrainian parliamentarians and even President Zelensky have hinted that giving up its non-nuclear status may be in the cards if Ukraine continues to stand alone against Russia when the current war ends. The contrast with the Middle East, where Israel’s enemies are not nuclear powers and therefore cannot make the types of threats Russia does, is instructive. Without “vertical escalation” to worry about, the US has been far more risk acceptant in its support for Israel (including, as noted earlier, putting boots on the ground).
“Iran and others are watching and drawing conclusions from Washington’s behavior in the Middle East and Ukraine.”
Iran and others are watching and drawing conclusions from Washington’s behavior in the Middle East and Ukraine. Whatever damage the recent US-Israeli strikes did to Tehran’s nuclear program, Iran’s rulers are likely to conclude that a renewed push for nuclear weapons is their only reliable security guarantee. If Ukraine and Iran go nuclear, they likely won’t be the last states to do so. Indeed, other states, including Poland, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan might decide that nuclear weapons are the optimal deterrent for the threats they face, especially if US unpredictability leads them to question the credibility of Washington’s extended nuclear deterrent commitments.
A More Violent, Dangerous World Ahead
US policy toward the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine needs a comprehensive overhaul. The artificial limits placed on Ukraine’s ability to fight an existential threat make it more likely that Russia will win its war of aggression. The immediate and long-term impacts of this on US security would be significant. First, a Russia that prevails in Ukraine would be a drastically more dangerous adversary than it is today. Winning the war in Ukraine would leave Russia “bruised, vengeful, and overconfident”. Believing he has outlasted the West, Putin would then be more likely to launch another, larger war, one the US could not opt out of. Indeed, that has been the pattern, from 2008 in Georgia, to 2014 in Ukraine, to 2015 in Syria, to 2022 in Ukraine.
“US policy toward the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine needs a comprehensive overhaul.”
In the Middle East, US support for Israel is in America’s national interest, but needs to be recalibrated to align with the threat Israel faces and its own conduct in the war against that threat. Reflexive US support for Israel’s military operations, despite credible evidence that Tel Aviv has disregarded key elements of IHL, undermines US criticism of Russia’s serial war crimes in Ukraine, and ultimately will degrade the rules-based international order the US has worked so long and hard to lead. A more Hobbesian future – with war more common, war crimes routine, and nuclear weapons in the hands of more states (and possibly non-state groups) – is not one that serves US interests. But is it one Washington may get if it fails to change course.
