One year after 10/7: Israel’s alliance with a weakened America brings dangerous consequences

“It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal,” said the late Henry Kissinger to William F. Buckley. Israel’s alliance with the United States hasn’t proved fatal — and probably won’t — but it has left Israel with difficult choices and an enduringly dangerous security situation.

Zoom out from the battlefields in Gaza, about the size of Brooklyn and Queens, or the 18 miles from the Israeli-Lebanon border to the Litani River and consider the mess that the Biden administration has made of the world. Israel’s biggest problem is that U.S. influence is imploding around the world and to be an American ally means to wear a target on one’s back. Israel’s second-biggest problem is that its American ally has sandbagged it at every turn.

Instead of peace through strength, Biden has offered promulgation from weakness. That has grave implications for Israel’s position.

October 7, 2023, was the worst day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust, with 1,200 dead and many raped and tortured as well as 250 kidnapped. Relative to Israel's Jewish population of 7.2 million, that’s the equivalent of 55,000 Americans, or roughly 20 times the death toll on 9/11.

America’s Global War on Terror caused 900,000 civilian casualties, according to a Brown University estimate. Taking the Iraqi city of Mosul from ISIS during 2016-2017 killed anywhere between 10,000 and 40,000 civilians. Israel’s campaign to extirpate Hamas from Gaza has been measured by comparison.

But Hamas succeeded in forcing Israel into a war on its terms, in which its objective is to maximize casualties among its own civilian population, the better to isolate Israel diplomatically. That is an innovation in warfare.

No precedent exists for the deliberate mass killing of a combatant’s own civilians. But that has provided a pretext for the global left to demonize the Jewish state. For the first time, the destruction of Israel — implied in the slogan “from the river to the sea” — is an acceptable opinion in polite company.

Overshadowing what, after all, is a little war on Israel’s border are two great conflicts: the Ukraine War and the U.S.-China cold war. The American side is losing both, thanks to the fecklessness of the Biden administration.

Biden stated in a March 2023 post that the U.S. foreign policy establishment believed economic sanctions would reduce the Russian economy by half. Instead, Russia’s economy has expanded, and its production of ammunition and weapons has exceeded NATO's combined efforts. Russia is gradually winning a war of attrition that is exhausting Ukraine’s limited pool of manpower. Having staked NATO's credibility on a confrontation with Russia, the Biden administration may have destroyed NATO.

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Tariffs and technology sanctions on China have slowed but not stopped the world’s largest manufacturing economy. Since the COVID-19 epidemic, China has doubled its exports to the Global South, and its supply chains drive the Global South’s exports to the United States. America’s trade deficit has surged to a record $1.2 trillion, and we now import more Chinese goods through third-party countries than before the tariffs.

Tech sanctions on China have kept China a few years behind the United States in chip technology but have not stopped it from producing advanced computer chips. Nor have they stopped China from dominating many of the world’s key high-tech industries, including electric vehicles, alternative energy, and telecom infrastructure.

What some analysts call China’s “overcapacity” is better characterized as rapid progress in AI applications to manufacturing and logistics, drastically lowering production costs for EVs and other key exports.

Instead of peace through strength, the Biden administration has offered promulgation from weakness. That has grave implications for Israel’s position.

Russia has sought help where it can and has deepened its relationships with Iran, North Korea, and China. China imports 90% of Iran’s burgeoning oil production. As long as the United States conflicts with Russia and China, our ability to contain Iran is limited. On the principle that the friend of my enemy is my enemy, China has become an adversary of Israel.

Israel’s biggest problem, though, is that it cannot trust its American ally. Withholding crucial ammunition during a shooting war is the least of Biden’s misdeeds. Washington has insisted that Israel offer a cessation of hostilities (that is, allow Hamas to survive as a military force) in exchange for the return of hostages under the mediation of Qatar. That adds injury to insult.

Israel’s intelligence failure on October 7 has been examined endlessly. A half-dozen attack helicopters deployed to the border would have stopped the attack, as Israeli commentator Ehud Yaari observed. The lower ranks of Israeli signals intelligence officers warned repeatedly of a possible attack, yet the top military and political leadership refused to believe them. Specifically, Israel’s leaders believed disinformation from Qatar, a gas bubble with a postage-stamp principality on top.

Qatari diplomats visited Gaza monthly with suitcases containing more than $15 million in cash and assured the Israelis that Hamas had been paid to keep quiet. In January 2022, the Biden administration elevated Qatar to the same status as Israel or South Korea, a “major non-NATO ally.” Qatar hosts America’s largest military base outside the continental United States, and U.S. intelligence services collaborate closely with the Qataris, who gave $5 billion to the Sunni jihadists backed by the CIA during the Syrian civil war between 2010 and 2017. Qatar is the leading financial supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is the Palestinian branch. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates attempted to blockade Qatar in 2018-2019 but were foiled by Iran, which continued trade with Qatar and the United States.

After Qatar’s Hamas client attacked Israel, Qatar exacted no penalties from Hamas, which continued to operate out of luxury hotel suites in Doha as it did before. The United States, which treats Qatar as an ally on par with Israel, exacted no penalties from Qatar. On the contrary, it elevated Qatar's status as the mediator between Hamas and Israel.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration granted Iran access to $6 billion in frozen accounts in South Korea in 2023 and released an additional $10 billion in frozen assets in March 2024. While China, Russia, North Korea, and others can bypass U.S. sanctions, the administration’s generosity toward a nation that supports Hezbollah and other terrorist groups is reprehensible.

After Iran launched 180 ballistic missiles at Israel last week — causing virtually no casualties but causing non-trivial damage — Israel only has terrible choices. It could destroy Iran’s two main oil terminals and shut off its source of foreign exchange at the cost of bringing the outrage of the world on its head. It could attempt to destroy Iran’s missile production capacity. Whether destroying its dug-in nuclear facilities is an option is unclear.

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There are several possible outcomes.

If Donald Trump is elected in November, we can expect a turn in American policy away from coddling Iran and Qatar and back to the core idea of the last Trump administration’s policy for the region: Extend the Abraham Accords to Saudi Arabia.

If the Ukraine war ends, the politics of the region will shift. Russia will have less incentive to act as a spoiler and more incentive to restore normal relations with its European trading partners, making Iran the odd man out.

If the Biden-Harris administration continues, Israel faces a long and debilitating war in which it can hold its own but not achieve a stable peace. Betrayed by the United States, Israel will have to maneuver as best it can in a world of diminishing American influence. October 7 will have been a dark day not just for Israel but also for the United States.