Even as the war in Gaza rages on and the death toll surpasses 35,000, the Biden administration appears set on pursuing its vision of a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal that it sees as the path to peace in the Middle East.
But, the agreement that the administration is selling as a peace agreement that will put Palestine on the path to statehood and fundamentally transform the region ultimately amounts to a U.S. war obligation for Saudi Arabia that would also give Mohammed bin Salman nuclear technology.
As the Gaza War demonstrates, the Abraham Accords — which normalized relations between Israel and other Arab states — did not help bring peace to the Middle East. But instead of pushing for a ceasefire that could end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and limit the chances of a wider regional conflagration, Biden is pushing to continue the legacy of the Abraham Accords in a move that only increases the likelihood of American troops being sent to fight another war.
Learn more in this new video by the Quincy Institute’s Khody Akhavi:
Blaise Malley is a former reporter for Responsible Statecraft. He is also a former associate editor at The National Interest and reporter-researcher at The New Republic. His writing has appeared in The New Republic, The American Prospect, The American Conservative, and elsewhere.
Khody Akhavi is Senior Video Producer at the Quincy Institute. Previously he was Head of Video for Al-Monitor and covered the White House for Al Jazeera English, as well as produced films for the network’s flagship investigative unit.
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaks to members of the news media at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., February 7, 2024. REUTERS/Leah Millis
Congress is set to return to session next week and with the November elections and the holidays right around the corner, it is possible that some controversial or significant pieces of foreign policy-related legislation won’t get touched until the new year.
With that said, lawmakers are expected to push legislation related to China and Ukraine spending, with the massive annual defense appropriations coming, as well as its yearly authorization, otherwise known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), before the end of the year.
Meanwhile, political games in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have stalled the introduction of any new legislation in the Senate.
Currently in contention is a Republican bill set to sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC) in response to the court issuing arrest warrants against members of the Israeli government. Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) is refusing to sign off on any other legislation or nominations until this bill is moved forward, with the necessary agreement from Democrats. The House passed the bill with bipartisan support, but the White House reportedly opposes the measure.
The ICC sanctions bill may see movement later in the year, but Senate Democrats say they would rather support a “bipartisan” version.
“Unfortunately, the Biden administration has not engaged in a full-throated opposition to this maneuver, suggesting that perhaps there are ‘other ways’ to punish the ICC short of what Republicans are proposing,” noted Bill Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute.
Hartung added that “we need prominent leaders in Washington to truly stand for the ‘rules-based international order’ they reference ad nauseum by standing back and letting the ICC do its job on this urgent issue."
Various anti-China measures could see some action in September. “The House will be voting on a series of bills to empower the next administration to hit our enemies’ economies on day one,” said GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson at a recent Hudson Institute event. “We’ll build our sanctions package, punish the Chinese military firms that provide material support to Russia and Iran, and we’ll consider options to restrict outbound investments.”
Speaker Johnson said that House Republicans were motivated to present this China-focused legislation before the end of the year, with Hill staffers indicating that bills could get a vote sometime in September.
On the budget side, the House passed a $833 billion FY2025 defense appropriations bill in June. It is $8.5 billion above the FY 2024 level of $825 billion, a 1% increase, but below the president's 2025 request of $849 billion. The Senate is currently considering a $851 billion package.
The House package allocates $200 million for Taiwan’s international security cooperation programs and defense services, as well as $500 million for Israeli Cooperative Programs (missile systems), and prohibits funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
It is likely that appropriations, along with other spending bills, won’t be addressed until after the election, with a stopgap measure put in place through mid-December.
This year’s NDAA passed the House in June, and through Senate committees, but is unlikely to hit the Senate floor until December.
A House amendment that prohibits funds for any NATO related activities until each member country has spent 2 percent of its respective GDP on defense expenditures failed, 81-346. A measure that would have barred funds from being used for assistance to Ukraine also failed, 74-343, but the House approved an amendment to require the president to submit a strategy for the Ukraine war to the body before further funding is allocated (note: the White House missed a deadline for a similar mandate in June).
Many mostly symbolic amendments were also added to ensure support for Israel.
Meanwhile, Congress may consider a measure to keep funding flowing to Ukraine as it is possible current funding could run out as early as January (Ukraine received $61 billion in emergency funding in April). According to Punchbowl News, this could entail "tweaking" current Pentagon authorities, which would give the Biden administration the ability to continue sending weapons to Ukraine, possibly by expanding the drawdown authority of the president, or by taking from other funding streams. These changes could find their way into the upcoming NDAA.
Pro-Ukraine Republicans, according to the reporting, are trying to ensure that Ukraine doesn't lapse in its funding, perhaps setting up a skirmish with fellow GOP lawmakers who have been opposed to more aid without a defined strategy for ending the war.
"It appears that the GOP's traditionalist wing is attempting to constrain the ability of the New Right under Trump — should he win the election — to reorient American policy toward Ukraine and Russia," said George Beebe, Director of Grand Strategy for the Quincy Institute.
Some indicated they will put up a fight against unconditional funding, particularly after the election. “The next administration needs to make it a Day-One priority to establish a strategy for Ukraine, driven only by U.S. interests and with full awareness of the strategic trade-offs involved in supporting Ukraine at the expense of higher priority theaters,” charged Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) in an interview with the Daily Signal.
“Parallel to a coherent strategy, the next administration needs to be immediately candid with Zelenskyy that the days of appeasement are over, that U.S. weapons may not be used inside Russia, and that any future U.S. aid will be contingent upon peace negotiations,” he said.
With Congress in campaign mode, and only weeks left in the 2023-2024 session, we shouldn't expect a ton of signed legislation by December. But we can expect that the upcoming House “China Week” will feature the introduction of anti-China related legislation. The NDAA will have to be approved before the end of the year, and the defense appropriations bill may be approved, but will likely be replaced with a temporary funding stopgap bill for now.
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Amira Mohamed Ali (l-r), party chairwoman of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), Sahra Wagenknecht (from the M, r-l), party chairwoman of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), Sabine Zimmermann, top candidate of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) in Saxony, and Christian Leye, Secretary General of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), leave after a press conference on yesterday's (01.09.2024) state elections in Saxony and Thuringia.
Elections Sunday in the eastern states (Länder) of Saxony and Thuringia showed unprecedented levels of support for the right populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), as well as a strong performance for the new ‘left-conservative’ party, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW).
In a major historical breakthrough, a party on the far right has finished first in a state election in postwar Germany. In Thuringia, the AfD received nearly a third of the vote, followed by the center right Christian Democrats (CDU) at about a quarter, and the third-place BSW at almost 16%.
Prior to these elections, Thuringia had been the sole state government led by the post-communist Die Linke (Left) party whose support in these elections dropped to 13%. In Saxony, the CDU, which has headed the state government since reunification, retained its first-place position but only barely. The CDU won 32% versus 30.6% for AfD, with BSW in third place at 11.3% and SPD at 7.3%.
In both states, the CDU remains the champion of the national mainstream parties. Its state leaders — incumbent minister-president (governor) Michael Kretschmer in Saxony and party chairman Mario Voigt in Thuringia — have begun coalition talks, which will exclude AfD in both cases. A second precedent-setting outcome of these elections is the likely inclusion of BSW — a party formed only eight months ago — in a governing coalition member in these two states.
Kretschmer expressed confidence that a coalition of CDU with BSW and SPD can quickly be formed in Saxony, where these three parties together will have a majority of seats. The picture in Thuringia is cloudier. There the AfD leader is Björn Höcke, considered to be on the rightmost fringe of the AfD. The AfD party organizations in both Saxony and Thuringia are under legal scrutiny as suspected proponents of anti-constitutional extremism. Höcke has been found guilty and fined for purposely adopting a Nazi slogan at a rally.
Thuringia’s CDU leader Voigt hopes to draw BSW, SPD, and Greens into a coalition, but these four parties together would fall short of a majority. At a national level, CDU has long pledged never to govern with Die Linke, but it will have to come to some sort of cooperative arrangement with that party in Thuringia to be able to govern without AfD. The outgoing governor, Bodo Ramelow of Die Linke, is a relative moderate and has himself most recently governed with a minority coalition.
However, this solution is inherently fragile. A coalition composed of parties with sharply divergent policy preferences will run the risk of being unable to provide coherent leadership and therefore fail to attract away support from the AfD.
The elections confirmed the steep slide of all three of the parties in the national governing coalition: SPD, Greens and Free Democrats (FDP). The Greens slid substantially in Saxony, where they had been in the governing coalition led by the CDU. They failed to win any seats in Thuringia. The SPD cleared the 5% threshold for winning seats in both elections, but showed a marked decline from its previous levels of support. The FDP won no seats in either contest.
Both AfD and BSW are characterized as populist, one on the right and the other on the left. The core issues in priority order for AfD are immigration, the economy, and Ukraine. BSW’s antiwar stance on Ukraine is its most insistent political theme, followed by the weak economy, attributed in large part to the war. This argument has been a source of strength to BSW in Thuringia and Saxony, where polls have long shown wariness of escalation and support for opening negotiations to end the war.
While it would be an overstatement to characterize these elections as dominated by the Ukraine issue, this theme has been unusually salient, due mainly to the energetic personal involvement of BSW national leader Sahra Wagenknecht in the two campaigns. Politico called these elections a pro-Putin ‘coup’.
The long-standing concern of some voters about irregular immigration also shaped these elections, principally to the benefit of AfD. A knife attack killing three people at a city festival in Solingen in northwestern Germany on August 23 jolted immigration policy back to public prominence. The alleged perpetrator is a 26-year-old Syrian national whose asylum claim had been rejected.
While not as inflammatory as the AfD, the BSW also raised concerns about immigration, marking a sharp departure from the stance taken by Wagenknecht’s former party, Die Linke.
The public and media reaction to these election results oscillates between interpreting them as a uniquely eastern phenomenon or as a harbinger of destabilization not confined to the former East Germany (GDR). To put these elections in perspective, Saxony has a population of 4 million, while Thuringia is home to 2 million people. Germany’s population is almost 84 million. Elections in Brandenburg — another eastern state — will likely deepen the same anxieties.
Many commentators attribute these striking election results to the distinctive political culture of the former GDR, driven by disillusionment with the social and economic effects of reunification. Both AfD and BSW vote tallies are considerably higher than their standing in national polls, roughly 18% and 8% respectively.
It would not be wrong, however, to assume that AfD and BSW reconfigure election outcomes elsewhere in Germany. The dominance of established parties of the center left (SPD and Greens), center right CDU-CSU and the liberal Free Democrats is deteriorating, and this tendency is not confined to the eastern states.
The growing strength of AfD and BSW will complicate coalition formation after the national elections of October next year. The CDU is clearly the strongest party polling at just above 30% but the weakness of SPD, Greens and FDP will make it harder to continue to isolate AfD, even if BSW joins a national governing coalition.
BSW could also sharpen its demand to cease military support for Ukraine and its opposition to the proposed stationing of US medium range missiles on German territory.
The two wars that have engulfed much of the second half of Joe Biden’s presidency are at risk of escalating. Ukraine has taken the war into Russia in recent weeks, and Washington continues to gradually lift its restrictions on how Kyiv can use American weapons. Meanwhile, the efforts to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza appear to be stuck, and the risks of a wider regional war remain acute.
Against this backdrop, Swedish diplomat Hans Blix published a book, “A Farewell to Wars: The Growing Restraints on the Interstate Use of Force,” that argues that a number of factors, including fear of nuclear war, growing public aversion to armed conflict, and increased economic interdependence, greatly decrease the possibility of large interstate wars in the future.
Blix gained international fame as the head of U.N. inspection mission in Iraq (UNMOVIC) from late November 2002 until just before the U.S. invasion of the country on March 20, 2003.Hundreds of U.N. inspections that scoured the country found no evidence to support U.S. claims that Iraq had possession of or was developing weapons of mass destruction.
Last month, RS interviewed Blix, now 96, about how he developed the book’s thesis and whether the events in Eastern Europe and the Middle East in the months since its publication have affected his analysis in any way.
The full conversation is below:
RS: Considering years of brutal and devastating war in Ukraine, the Hamas attack on Israel, and Israel’s destruction of Gaza, is it not provocative to write “a farewell to wars?”
BLIX: I am not, of course, closing my eyes before these bloody wars, nor to the large gruesome chapter of civil wars that is outside my field of inquiry. The Russian invasions of Ukraine are crude violations of the rules that Russia herself and all other states of the world have committed to by accepting the U.N. Charter. I support the continued large- scale assistance that is given to Ukraine. I do so not because of any fear of Russian designs against Europe, but because we need to help end or minimize the intrusion that violates the common legal order established in the U.N. Charter.
Yet, having taken a long-term view and identified growing restraints against interstate war, I do not see the Russian action as ending this evolution but as a disastrous aberration and deviation from it. What was intended, I believe, was not a war but a quick intervention to achieve regime change through a limited “special military operation,” a Crimea 2. It failed, as it was based on erroneous intelligence and lack of understanding that the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians wanted independence and continued emancipation from Russia and the Russian economic and political system.
RS: Are you confident that there will not be other “aberrations?”
BLIX: The cases of the 2003 Iraq war and 2022 Ukraine invasion should be warnings against future uncritical action on the basis of intelligence. Injured pride on the one hand and hubris on the other may be incentives to the use of force, but, as I show, strong factors of restraint have developed and give hope even at this dark period. Despite hot lines and fast communication, there remain risks that misunderstandings might spark major fires.
RS: Which are the factors and hopeful long-term trends against interstate use of armed force that you see?
BLIX: First, I see over time a great evolution in the public mind regarding war and violence. Historically, war and the conquest of land used to be viewed as glorious enterprises. The evolution, though heterogenous and not an organized movement, has gone toward less violence and more humane attitudes. Public opinion helped to abolish slavery. Humanitarian movements generated the Geneva conventions. The death penalty has been abolished in most countries and duels prohibited. There were only 20 years between the First and the Second World War, but we have had no big wars between great powers for some 80 years. And while we are aware of the limitations of the United Nations, it has remained a vital common mechanism for the handling of conflicts and for global cooperation.
Second, while competition is inherent in the relations between states as between individuals (no “farewell”), the nuclear weapons that have become available to the major powers for possible first and second strikes lead them to the well-known conclusion that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. Since 1945, no nuclear weapon has been used and what is equally important: despite this quasi-taboo, the fear of use has made the great powers wary of starting or engaging in actions that risk escalation. Fear of escalation to space and A.I. warfare may have a similar effect.
Third, fear of escalation to a nuclear war leads governments to limit themselves to threats and to non-kinetic means of pressure, such as cyber actions, economic and financial warfare and subversion.
RS: Do you actually see nuclear weapons as a guarantee for peace?
BLIX: I think the number of nuclear weapons can — and should — be drastically reduced, and they will retain their restraining effect as long as a second-strike capacity remains. A world getting down to zero nuclear weapons will have developed other means of restraining itself.
RS: I wanted to ask you specifically about two potential “aberrations” to your thesis that seem to be on many people’s minds. 1) The possibility of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan (which you mention in your book); and 2) The potential for the Israel-Gaza war expanding into a wider regional conflagration in the Middle East (which took place after the book was published).
How do you think these two sources of tension fit into long-term trends against interstate war identified in your book? Do you believe that either one of these has a significant risk of breaking out into a larger interstate war?
BLIX: Beijing’s demand for Taiwan’s integration into mainland China has its main roots in pride. China will not, like Denmark after World War II, accept the emancipation of a big island [Iceland]. Rather, Taiwan’s separate position is felt as part of the humiliation that China long suffered at the hands of the West. This is a powerful incentive to bring about reunification. Although China will insist that an action vis-à-vis Taiwan is not “interstate,” there are strong disincentives to the use of armed force. China cannot, like Putin, believe that reunion could be achieved through a limited “special military operation.” As in the case of Ukraine, it would be a matter of occupation rather than liberation. Above all, having witnessed the disastrous costs of the Russian “aberration” in Ukraine, China will hardly take the risk of an armed action that could escalate to wider war and devastation.
What lies in the future? Hopefully continued restraint by all and time during which China has continued fruitful economic relations with Taiwan and feels increasingly respected as one of the world’s great powers without any need to be glued to past humiliations.
Could the Gaza conflict, through some “aberration,” explode into a wide conflagration? The mix of contradictory strivings in the region is certainly explosive, but, without major powers directly participating and clashing, a major conflagration is unlikely. In the civil war in Syria, we saw how the U.S. and Russia took great care to avoid any direct clashing in the air. During the Gaza war, it has been remarkable that all three major powers — indeed the whole world except Israel – seem to have rediscovered the two-state solution. Although Netanyahu may wish to highlight the tensions with Iran and prevent any easing of U.S. economic sanctions and other pressures on Iran, he may not want to provoke a full and direct war. The U.S. -under Biden has been actively seeking to prevent such a war, and both China and Russia would be likely to exert influence to prevent its eruption. One of several big questions looming, however, is how to make the broadly supported two-state solution operative with huge numbers of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land.
RS: Your book makes a compelling case for the importance of diplomacy and detente in addition to military deterrence as a restraint in the use of global force? How do you assess the state of diplomacy between great powers, namely the U.S., Russia, and China today?
BLIX: In the current tense situation between the U.S. and the West on the one hand and Russia and China on the other, communication seems to be regrettably and dangerously sparse and to take place to a large extent through public channels (newspapers, TV). This mode of communication carries the risk of accentuating differences. Even worse is when diplomatic, cultural and scientific contacts are limited or shut off. Much nuanced understanding and opportunities for openings to mutual accommodation are lost. In my view, the three governments should make more use of diplomats and special emissaries with keen hearing and the capability of communicating and detecting openings for accommodation.
Most differences between states are solved routinely between competent civilian authorities, including foreign offices and diplomatic missions. To forestall potential armed conflicts, states use diplomacy aiming at détente, but shows of military force – deterrence -- are generally regarded as the most important way of averting war and hostile attacks. At present, accelerated arms races, military maneuvers and annual global military costs exceeding two trillion dollars testify to states’ – in particular China’s, Russia’s and the U.S.’ -- heavy reliance on deterrence and readiness to run the risk of sparks and fires. We do not know how much low-visibility diplomacy is actually going on and we realize that there may be issues on which there is no room for diplomacy. But we must note that not so few long-lasting and gruesome armed conflicts end in negotiations and diplomacy with the sorry postscript that they had no military solution. This makes us wonder if diplomacy could not have been used earlier.
In my view, diplomacy is dangerously underused today, and efforts to seek accommodation and détente seem often unfairly scorned. We should be more aware of the costs and risks of military deterrence and properly weigh them against costs and risks of restraint and accommodation. Even staunch advocates of red lines and deterrence sometimes favor limiting the role of weapons by accepting specific areas as demilitarized or free from nuclear weapons or from the stationing of foreign forces. Indeed, the nuclear weapons-free zones that cover the larger parts of the world are measures of restraint preferred to measures of deterrence. Until recently, my own country, Sweden, sought to help reduce tensions in the Baltic area by not hosting foreign forces and not joining NATO. It was only after its hope of détente had been shattered by the Russian aggression in Ukraine that Sweden came to prefer being inside NATO’s red lines and join a common system of defense. Deterrence may thereby have been strengthened -- at the cost of higher tension in the Baltic region.
A last thought — outside the box: In national legal systems, a process of attempted conciliation may be compulsory for couples requesting divorce. We know that the efforts to promote the peaceful settlement of international disputes by inducing states to accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice have had limited success. And compulsory processes of conciliation between conflicting states is an unlikely proposition. But could – besides the Secretary-General’s quiet diplomacy — a UN mediation mechanism be established for use when requested by parties, by the General Assembly, the Security Council or the Secretary General? Mediators can with less difficulty than parties to disputes explore what steps of accommodation or conciliation may be plausible to help prevent or stop a conflict .
Blix is an international lawyer with a Ph.D. from Cambridge (UK) and an Ll.D. from Stockholm. He represented Sweden at some 20 sessions of the U.N. General Assembly. He helped to bring about the 1970 unanimous declaration on the interpretation of key parts of the U.N. Charter. For several years in the 1960s he assisted Alva Myrdal at the Geneva Disarmament Conference and he was one of the key negotiators at the 1972 conference that updated the Geneva conventions and adopted a convention against particularly inhumane weapons. He was Swedish Foreign Minister in 1978 and Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1981-1997. After the Iraq war 2003, he wrote “Disarming Iraq.”
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