According to a survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, only 41% of Americans support the idea of U.S. troops defending Israel, even if its neighbors attacked it. This is a decrease from 53% in 2021 and represents the lowest level of support since the the council started tracking the question in 2010.
According to the survey, 55% of Americans overall are against the idea of sending troops to defend Israel. These numbers show a decrease in support from Republicans, typically Israel’s biggest supporters, from 72% in 2021 to 55% today. Democrats went from 42% in favor of defending Israel with U.S. troops in 2021 to 35% today.
The poll was conducted online from June 21 through July 1.
Americans still believe in a peacekeeping mission, however, with 54 percent of Americans supporting sending peacekeeping troops if a deal between Israel and the Palestinians is arranged and kept, according to the survey.
The polling results come as the region is on tenderhooks over whether it will blow up into broader conflict. The United States, a stalwart partner to Israel, is at the ready if Israel is attacked by Hezbollah or Iranian allies in retaliation for high profile assassinations over the last two weeks. On the other hand, it is not clear how far Washington will go to intervene if Israel is the one to start a major conflict with Hezbollah or Iran.
But the Chicago Council’s polling shows that Americans are still unwilling to send U.S. troops into another warzone, no matter the relationship. Perhaps the political will amongst Americans is shifting towards some semblance of international realism after generations of never-ending war. Nevertheless, this should be a signal to Israel that it can only take it’s own escalations so far, that there are real limits to American support and that includes American skin in the game.
Aaron is a reporter for Responsible Statecraft and a contributor to the Mises Institute. He received both his undergraduate and masters degrees in international relations from Liberty University.
Boston, Massachusetts USA - October 09, 2023: Solidarity For Israel Rally (Arthur Mansavagw/Shutterstock)
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he would be open to peace negotiations with Ukraine.
“Are we ready to negotiate with them? We never refused, but not on the basis of some ephemeral demands, rather on the basis of the documents which were agreed on and actually initialed in Istanbul,” said Putin during remarks at an economic forum with leaders from Malaysia and China.
Putin is referring to negotiations that took place in Istanbul just weeks after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022. At that time, Kyiv and Moscow were reportedly close to a deal in which Kyiv would have agreed to reduce the size of its military, refrain from joining NATO but be free to pursue membership of the European Union. Those talks ultimately failed, with continued debate about whether Western countries moved themin that direction.
The Russian president also suggested that Brazil, China, and India could mediate new talks to end the war. His comments come just weeks after Russian officials dismissed limited, indirect talks with Kyiv in response to Ukraine’s invasion of Russia’s Kursk region last month.
Some observers have questioned whether Putin’s apparent desire for talks to end the war is sincere, but there’s also no reason Western leaders shouldn’t try to find out.
“On a stage with Asian leaders, including from China, he knows it’s important to rhetorically embrace talks no matter his real intentions,” Samuel Charap, a Russia expert and senior political scientist at RAND, told the Wall Street Journal. He added: “Western capitals tend to tune in when he rejects talks and tune out when he embraces them. … But until someone actually tests the proposition we’ll never know what his real intentions are. If it’s a bluff, you only know when you call it.”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba announced his resignation this week as part of a cabinet reshuffle President Volodymyr Zelensky hinted at last week. Reacting to the news, Zelensky said his country needs “new energy, and that includes in diplomacy.”
It’s unclear whether Kuleba’s departure will result in Kyiv pushing for negotiations to end the war, nor whether Zelensky would now be open to any concessions, including accepting a partition of Ukrainian territory, as part of any wider agreement. He has previously been unwilling to entertain such concessions.
In other Ukraine war news this week:
— Poland scrambled fighter jets as Russia launched missile strikes on the Ukrainian city of Lviv this week, close to the Polish border, according to CBS News. "I'm personally of the view that, when hostile missiles are on course of entering our airspace, it would be legitimate self-defense (to shoot them down) because once they do cross into our airspace, the risk of debris injuring someone is significant," said Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski.
— Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov met with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austion last weekend in an effort to lift restrictions on the use of American made weapons. “We have explained what kind of capabilities we need to protect the citizens against the Russian terror that Russians are causing us, so I hope we were heard,” told CNN.
keep readingShow less
Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan giving statements to the press after Russian-Turkish talks.
Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan giving statements to the press after Russian-Turkish talks.
On September 4, Kommersant reported that Yuri Ushakov, aide to President Vladimir Putin, confirmed that Turkey is requesting full membership to the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and that the organization would begin reviewing the request in advance of the BRICs Summit this fall.
The event will be held in Kazan, Russia, on October 22-24. Ushakov also underscored that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will attend.
The Russian aide’s announcement ended months of speculation and followed a Bloomberg article on September 2 claiming the country had “formally asked to join the BRICS group of emerging-market nations.” Erdoğan administration officials, speaking under anonymity, noted that one reason for the formal application was that the “geopolitical center of gravity is shifting away from developed economies.”
Noted Russian political scientist Alexander Safonov offered insight into the rationale for Ankara’s decision:
"Turkey is one of the states that is conveniently located in terms of global trade routes, including between Europe and Asia. This factor forces the government of the republic to seek as many contacts as possible through which these logistical features can be used. And, of course, BRICS as one of the modern leading economic platforms gives it more opportunities in this regard, including for establishing relations with China, Russia, and Iran."
Membership clearly would provide Turkey with the opportunity to increase its already high level of imports from China and Russia. It would also offer greater access for exports to these countries and lower the Ankara’s reliance on the United States and European Union.
In addition, Turkey may see BRICS as a potential new source of finance. As mentioned in the Bloomberg article, “the BRICS touts itself as an alternative to what its members see as Western-dominated institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. New members can potentially get access to financing through its development bank as well as broaden their political and trading relationships.”
Although Turkey claims that it intends to uphold its NATO membership and responsibilities and that the move is a formal continuation of its multipolar strategy to reach new markets and secure new trade routes, the decision may not be based entirely on the potential for increased economic opportunity.
Turkey’s BRICS gambit can also be viewed as a signal of its continued frustration with ongoing EU membership talks. They started in 2005 but have stagnated since a crackdown on Turkish opposition groups following a failed coup in 2016 and lingering questions regarding Erdogan’s commitment to democratic values.
The European Union expressed concern regarding the bid to join the BRICS organization, saying that as an EU membership candidate, Ankara had to “respect” the EU’s “values” and foreign policy preferences, despite its being free to join the alliances of its choosing.
The application to BRICS may also signal Turkey’s continued anger with the inability of the United States, specifically, and the West, generally, to stop Israel’s assault on Gaza and fears of a more widespread military conflict in the Middle East. Erdogan is already in a difficult political situation trying to balance his interests with NATO, on one side, and Muslim countries, from the other.
For example, on July 28, Erdogan, who has consistently engaged in strong rhetoric during Israel’s 10-month war in Gaza, suggested that Turkey could intervene militarily in a speech to his ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party. Al-Jazeera quoted Erdogan: “We need to be very strong so that Israel cannot do these ridiculous things to Palestine. Just as we entered Karabakh, just as we entered Libya, we can do something similar to them.” Some experts have suggested that Turkey will likely not intervene, but keep lines of diplomacy open.
However, the rhetoric followed Turkey’s restriction of some exports to Israel in April followed by a full halt to trade with Israel in early May. In response, Israel said it would scrap the country’s free trade agreement with Turkey in retaliation. The two countries had a trade volume of $6.8 billion in 2023 and Israel was the ninth largest importer of Turkish goods.
In addition to the reasons highlighted above, Turkey’s present interest in joining BRICS may be related to the fact the upcoming BRICS Summit is being held in Kazan and its success is incredibly important to Moscow. The impact of joining now could be mutually beneficial to both Moscow and Ankara as the two have maintained strong bilateral relations since the outset of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Turkey, acting as a mediator, nearly negotiated a peace settlement in Istanbul during April of 2022 and was part of the Black Sea Grain Initiative agreement between Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, and the United Nations, which allowed Ukraine to export grain and fertilizer via a safe maritime corridor in the Black Sea. In addition, Turkey never joined the West in imposing sanctions on Russia and has become a top buyer of Russian crude oil.
Returning to Erdogan’s remarks, his mention of the enclave of Karabakh should not be dismissed as it is a pointed reference to Turkey’s staunch support for Azerbaijan. Moreover, the two countries’ strong ties were possibly a key underlying reason for Russian President Putin’s timely visit to Azerbaijan last week. It is doubtful that Putin had not spoken with Erdogan before he secured Azerbaijan President Aliev’s attendance to the BRICS Summit as well as Azerbaijan’s intention to join BRICS.
This development is somewhat unexpected considering Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s comments just two months ago that BRICS needed to take a break on new members after adding Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates in January 2024. But clearly Russian attitudes have changed in just a brief time.
Shortly after Lavrov’s remarks, Ushakov underscored that with the BRICS Summit being held in Russia this year in Kazan the “special mission” of the Russian presidency is to “register” new members. As such, Turkey’s addition to BRICS in October would be touted by Moscow as a major development towards a truly multipolar global framework as well as an alternative for the Global South and other unaligned countries to western institutions.
Moreover, it is not surprising that Putin also recently invited Mongolia’s President, Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh, to Kazan, marking three potential new members to BRICS in about a week.
“This will be the first event of this level after the expansion of this organization. I hope that you will participate in the BRICS Outreach —BRICS Plus format,” Putin said to his Mongolian counterpart.
This Turkish twist in the BRICS story has clearly created international headlines about the upcoming summit in October. The announcement garnered the global attention that Moscow deemed necessary to assure the event is successful towards achieving Moscow’s objectives.
Whether the Summit delivers on securing Ankara's membership, as well as others like Malaysia and Thailand who have announced their intentions to join, will perhaps be another matter. It is important to recall that Argentina and Saudi Arabia had once announced their intentions to join several years ago but still are not members.
keep readingShow less
An armed soldier is standing behind a pile of used shells at the positions of the Motorised Rifle Battalion of the 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Donetsk region, Ukraine, on August 15, 2024(Photo by Ukrinform/NurPhoto) VIA REUTERS
Some Western supporters of Ukraine have been presenting the Ukrainian incursion into the Russian province of Kursk as a great victory that will significantly change the course and outcome of the war. They are deceiving themselves. While legally and morally justified, the attack has failed in all its main objectives, and may indeed turn out to have done serious damage to Ukraine’s position on the battlefield. One U.S. analyst has compared it to the Confederate invasion of the North that led to the battle of Gettysburg — a brilliant tactical stroke that however ended in losses that crippled the Army of Northern Virginia.
The Ukrainian attack has not captured any significant Russian population center or transport hub. It has embarrassed Putin, but there is no evidence that it has significantly shaken his hold on power in Russia. It may have done something to raise the spirits of the Ukrainian population in general; but, as Western reports from eastern Ukraine make clear, it has done nothing to raise the morale of Ukrainian troops there.
Understandably, they are focused on the situation on their own front; and that situation is deteriorating sharply, in part it seems because many of Ukraine’s best units were diverted to the attack on Kursk, and new Ukrainian conscripts are inadequately trained and poorly motivated.
"One of the objectives of the offensive operation in the Kursk direction was to divert significant enemy forces from other directions, primarily from the Pokrovsk and Kurakhove directions,” Ukrainian commander in chief General Alexander Syrsky said.
In fact, precisely the opposite seems to have happened; and this is leading to intensified criticism both of President Zelensky and the Ukrainian high command from ordinary soldiers and citizens.
The Russian army is advancing rapidly towards the key Ukrainian logistics hub of Pokrovsk. In the words of one of the Ukrainian defenders: “For a long time, the situation in Donbas was aptly described as ‘difficult, but controlled.’ However, now it is out of control. Currently, it looks like our front in Donbas has collapsed.”
If or when Pokrovsk falls, it will mean that Russia controls almost all of the southern Donbas, and could strike either north, against the remaining Ukrainian positions in northern Donetsk province, or east, with a view to rolling up the entire Ukrainian southern front.
There is now no prospect that even with Western military supplies, Ukraine can inflict a crushing defeat on Russia and recover its lost territories by force. There is a danger of Ukrainian military collapse, which might lead to pressure in the West for direct intervention. This is one thing that the Russian government's signaled change to its nuclear doctrine is intended to deter.
Present Russian nuclear doctrine states that nuclear weapons will be employed in response to a nuclear attack on Russia, or a conventional attack that “threatens the existence of the state.” In the words of Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov;
“[T]here is a clear intent to introduce a correction [to the nuclear doctrine], caused, among other things, by the examination and analysis of development of recent conflicts, including, of course, everything connected to our Western adversaries' escalation course in regards to the special military operation."
If a direct NATO intervention in Ukraine led to Russian defeat there, it would certainly threaten the survival of the present Russian government, and usher in a period of profound national instability and weakness, conceivably even leading to the disintegration of the Russian Federation. There is little reason to doubt that, faced with this threat, Russia would indeed escalate towards the use of nuclear weapons, albeit initially on only a limited and local scale.
Ryabkov’s statement is also of course intended to deter the U.S. and NATO from bowing to pressure from Kyiv and some NATO governments and politicians and allowing Ukraine to use the new NATO-supplied long-range missiles and F-16 warplanes to strike targets deep inside Russia. It is not that such attacks would provoke Russian nuclear retaliation; but if successful, it is easy to predict that Russia would hit back at the West through sabotage of European infrastructure. Russians believe the destruction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline has given them a moral and legal right to do this.
Such sabotage operations appear already to have begun, though on a small scale and as what appear to be warning shots rather than a campaign. If however this were to become a full-scale campaign, it could in turn provoke harsh Western responses leading to a cycle of escalation ending in catastrophe. The Russians also believe — not without reason — that the Ukrainian authorities have a strong interest in creating such an escalation so as to bring NATO in on their side; and that NATO must therefore be pressured into continuing to place limits on Ukraine’s use of NATO weaponry. The fact that Ukraine felt able to invade Russian territory using NATO weaponry has intensified Russian fears in this regard.
Once again, it is necessary here to separate what Ukraine has a right to do, from what is wise for Ukraine to do, and the West to allow. For it should be recognized that like the attack on Kursk, a Ukrainian campaign of bombardments of targets in Moscow and elsewhere deep in Russia with NATO missiles would essentially be a gamble, the outcome of which is highly doubtful.
After the failure of last year’s Ukrainian offensive, the Biden administration abandoned hopes for complete Ukrainian victory and instead started to say that support for Ukraine is intended to “strengthen Kyiv at the eventual negotiating table.” In recent months, the Ukrainian government has also shifted towards this position, and away from its previous refusal to negotiate with the Putin administration and insistence on complete Russian withdrawal from Ukraine as a precondition of talks with Russia.
There has long been a growing recognition in private among Western experts and officials that it is in reality impossible for Ukraine to recover its lost territories through victory on the battlefield. However this has not so far led — even strictly in private — to suggestions that Ukraine and the West might propose terms that the Russian people (let alone the government) could accept as a basis for negotiations.
In the meantime, the evidence suggests that it is Russia, not Ukraine, that is strengthening its military position for eventual negotiations; and it is not at all clear that Ukrainian strikes deep into Russia would significantly change this trend.
This is also true when it comes to Western aid. Even before the crushing defeat in local elections of German ruling coalition parties by those opposed to continuing support for Ukraine, the German government had announced that German direct aid to Ukraine will be cut by almost half, and by more than 90 percent in 2027. In that year, France will hold presidential elections which on present form seem likely to be won by Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National — also opposed to open-ended support for Ukraine. A drastic reduction in European aid would not in itself end U.S. aid. It would however force a U.S. administration greatly to increase that aid if it wished to prevent a collapse of the Ukrainian budget and economy.
There is no reason therefore to think that time is on Ukraine’s side in this conflict, and that it makes sense to delay the start of negotiations. That however does not mean that all the cards are in Russia’s hands, and all the Kremlin has to do is wait for Ukrainian collapse. The economy has performed far better than the West hoped, but the Russian Central Bank itself is warning of serious problems next year. As for the situation on the battlefield, while Ukrainian soldiers are exhausted, that also appears true of many Russian troops.
The army with which Russia began this war has been destroyed. The exact level of casualties is unclear, but the dead and disabled are almost certainly in excess of 200,000. The Black Sea Fleet has been crippled. As Russian establishment interlocutors acknowledged to me, Russia probably does not have the troops to capture major Ukrainian cities, unless President Putin launches an intensified wave of conscription — something he is clearly unwilling to do.
This means that if given a clear choice between what they could regard as a reasonable peace and a continuation of war to complete victory, it seems probable that a majority of Russians would opt for peace; and that it would therefore be very difficult for Putin to continue the war, if to do so meant the conscription of many more Russian sons and husbands. Such a compromise peace would be very far from what the Ukrainian and Western governments hope. It would also be very far from what Putin hoped for when he launched this war in February 2022.
Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.