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With its blind support for Israel, the United States is accelerating its defeat in its great power competition against China in the Global South. While many observers believe that the U S will remain the world’s leading superpower for at least the next two decades, the Biden administration’s justification of the Gaza genocide is likely to accelerate the erosion of US image, prestige, and ability to build coalitions to counter China. Such an assessment of the coming decline of America’s global attractiveness is especially pertinent because building coalitions and gaining the support of allies and partners has been a cornerstone of US foreign policy for the past seven decades.
More dangerous than Trump’s ‘America First’
During the hectic presidency of Donald Trump, most US observers expressed their alarm at the heightened isolationism he adopted as part of his America First policy. Withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, the Paris Climate Agreement, the Iran nuclear deal, and recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital were among Trump’s signature policies that alarmed observers in the Washington political establishment. Many argued that these policies had alienated allies and partners across the world, pushing some countries to question the reliability of Washington and its ability to honor its commitments.
Upon assuming the presidency, one of President Biden’s first commitments was to restore US prestige on the world stage, mend ties with US allies and partners who were bullied or mistreated by Trump and restore the international community’s confidence in the US ability to continue to play its role as leader of the so-called “free world” – a role that requires ensuring the unity of the club of Western democracies in its quest to impose its values on the world stage under the guise of addressing the emerging, most pressing global challenges. In the wake of the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, thousands of Trump supporters expressed their rejection of the November 2020 presidential elections.
In response, Biden claimed the moral high ground, presenting himself as a voice of reason and wisdom that would repair the havoc wrecked on America’s global standing and prestige by Trump’s tantrums. Notably, Biden vowed to refocus the Washington elite’s efforts on restoring America’s reputation or prestige and reassuring US allies and partners that America was back in town. Indeed, both President Biden’s rhetoric and his track record as a conventional politician led many observers around the world to view the US favorably. Underlying this positive perception shift was the belief that, given Biden’s familiarity with the complexities of diplomacy and his penchant for moderation and sobriety, his foreign policy would result in more stability and security worldwide.
The second cornerstone of US foreign policy has been to play the role of peace broker in many regional and global conflicts. This strategy has long enabled it to always secure outcomes that serve its long-term geostrategic goal. Be it in Libya, Azerbaijan, Syria, Ethiopia, or Yemen, the United States has traditionally sought to carve out a leading role in the conduct of any negotiations aimed at putting an end to the cycle of violence that has engulfed these countries. The same was once true of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, where the US has historically played the role of leading peace broker for the past 30 years.
While the US has hailed the Abraham Accords as an achievement that will usher the Middle East into a new era of stability, peace and prosperity, the Biden administration’s long-term goal has been to free Israel, America’s foremost satellite state and spoiled child, from the diplomatic isolation it has suffered for the past several decades.
What’s more, as the overwhelming and brazen American justification of Israel’s genocidal Gaza campaign has shown, the Biden White House would have no qualms about condoning or excusing Israel’s murderous war on Gaza while shrugging off its professed commitment to the Palestinians’ inalienable right to an independent state. From Washington’s perspective, a stable Middle East under Israel’s leadership would allow the US to focus all of its time, energy, and resources on countering China’s growing assertiveness, especially in Southeast Asia and in the wider global south.
America has lost the Global South
The third cornerstone of US foreign policy has been the urgency of winning the hearts and minds of peoples in the Middle East and elsewhere in the Global South through cultural, educational, and political outreach programs. Crucial to this public diplomacy front are the myriad grassroots initiatives and non-for-profit organizations Washington funds across the Global South under the guise of spreading democracy and the corresponding “universal” values such as the rule of law and freedom of expression.
US government-funded organizations such as the Peace Corps or community-funded philanthropic institutions, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Open Society, etc., have been instrumental in helping the United States reach out to and build long-lasting partnerships with different communities across the Middle East and the Global South in general.
Beneath this stated goal of promoting human rights, gender equality, interreligious dialogue and democracy, the larger, real objective is to co-opt the future intellectual, academic and political leaders, to bring or keep them into the US orbit in the quest to further the self-proclaimed image of the US as the liberator, the advocate of the voiceless, and the ultimate champion of so-called universal values.
Yet all this hard work and the billions of dollars spent over the past several decades to achieve that goal might have been undone by the Biden administration’s decision to blindly support Israel. In other words, President Biden’s shortsighted and misguided policies in the Middle East and his repeated justification of the Jewish state’s ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinian people will prove incomparably more damaging to the image and strategic interests of the United States in the Global South than former President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy. Never before has a US president given this much support to Israel, in defiance of reports and appeals condemning the horror of its indiscriminate, murderous targeting of civilian infrastructure in Palestinian territories.
The Biden administration has rejected appeal after appeal by UN agencies, humanitarian organizations, and disgruntled career US diplomats to pressure Israel to agree to a humanitarian or permanent ceasefire. Dismissive of reality and the growing outcry and condemnation that Israel’s war crimes are generating worldwide, including in the US, the Biden administration has continued to use or condone the same Israeli talking points: Israel has the right and obligation to defend itself, and the ceasefire will only benefit Hamas. Worse, in violation of US law, the Biden administration has continued to supply Israel with more sophisticated and lethal weapons it knew would be used against unarmed civilians.
For the Biden White House, the more than 15,000 people massacred, the 37,000 injured, and the 1.5 million forcibly displaced were merely collateral damage. In essence, Washington’s discourse and attitude toward Israel’s punitive war against the Palestinians has revolved around an uncritical reiteration of the Israeli leadership’s post-October 7 dehumanization of the Palestinians, especially the Gazans, whom they have accused of supporting Hamas by not rebelling against its rule. The main point here, as Israel’s President Isaac Herzog outrageously suggested in a recent statement, is that the Palestinians do not deserve any sympathy or mercy because they have allowed themselves to be ruled by Hamas.
Even more shocking has been the ease and confidence with which Biden has embraced and, in some cases, promoted all the lies that Israel has used to justify its systematic, criminal targeting of civilian infrastructure, especially hospitals. Indeed, two recent developments shed light on the Biden administration’s shameful double standards and disregard for the plight of Palestinians as Israeli occupation forces raided Gaza’s largest hospital. The first was when it rejected calls from Hamas leaders to send an international mission to investigate whether the militant group had indeed used hospitals to hide its weapons and launch military operations.
The second was when it dismissed out of hand the humanitarian pleas of Western medical personnel who work or have worked at Al-Shifa Hospital. A key illustration of this was the indifference that greeted the plea of Norwegian doctor Mass Gilbert, who has operated at Al-Shifa for over 30 years. Gilbert had emphasized that there was no evidence that Hamas was using the hospital as an operational base, yet — and rather unsurprisingly — the Biden administration responded to such pleas by insisting that it had received reliable intelligence supporting the Israeli claim that the hospital was a Hamas headquarters.
Among the many statements in which Biden displayed an unprecedented callousness and lack of empathy for the suffering of the Palestinians, one of the most shocking was when he said that he rejected the ceasefire to prevent Hamas from attacking Israel again and “cut[ting] babies.” Hamas, he insisted, “has already said publicly that they plan on attacking Israel again like they did before, cutting babies’ heads off, burning women and children alive. So the idea that they’re going to just stop and not do anything is not realistic.”
This remark by the US President simply ignored an earlier statement by his administration, which last month said that it had seen no evidence of Hamas’s beheading of babies or burning or women and children alive. It also ignored that Israeli officials themselves could not confirm that Hamas had beheaded babies during the October 7 attack.
With its unqualified support for Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinian people, its supply of more lethal weapons to Israel, its blocking of all international efforts to pressure Israel into a cease-fire, and its veto of Security Council resolutions calling for a cease-fire, the US will lose the respect, sympathy, and support of much of the Global South. As a result, its ability to win the hearts and minds of the global public through its soft power strategies will be severely diminished.
The American emperor has no clothes
Despite its immoral and illegal war on Iraq in 2003, which left in its wake about half a million dead and hundreds of thousands maimed, and tore the entire Middle East apart and plunged it into religious sectarianism, the US has managed to whitewash its image to some extent, causing many people in the region and across the Global South to forget the suffering that the US army inflicted on the Iraqi people.
Thanks to its vast and sprawling propaganda machine, consisting of hundreds of think tanks, public and community-funded grassroots organizations, as well as its powerful media, the US has been able to maintain its image as the guardian of the rules-based world order and the ultimate champion of human rights, fundamental freedoms, democracy, etc.
This time, however, it appears that the US’s reputation and long-term interests in the Global South will not be unscathed. Global public opinion is soberly discovering that the self-proclaimed bulwark of human rights, the supposed gatekeeper of morality and nobility in international affairs is nothing less than a serial offender of the very “universal values” it purports to stand for or defend. Not only is the global public opinion realizing the hollowness of the slogans that the US has used for decades to justify its predatory foreign policy decisions, but it is also witnessing in real time the collusion and complicity between US officials and the mainstream media.
In times of war, the mainstream media, instead of questioning the policies and decisions of the US administration, play the role of eco-chamber and amplifiers of government messages aimed at luring the US and European public into believing that Washington has no choice but go to war against the forces of evil and darkness bent on destroying the “rules-based global order” that the US has built since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the so-called universal values that underpin it.
America’s standing and reputation was already on a downtrend trajectory prior to the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza. According to a survey conducted by the Arab Barometer between October 2021 and 2022, the US appeared to be losing ground to China across the whole MENA region. In North Africa, for example, public opinion has a more favorable view of China than the US, with the latter trailing the former by between 12 and 20 points.
People also tend to view U.S. financial aid unfavorably. Meanwhile, they are more likely to believe that China’s economic expansion in the region contributes to development and stability. Morocco was the only country where the US maintained a slight advantage of five points over China (69% vs 64%). As the pollsters pointed out, however, respondents might have factored Washington’s recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara into their overall views of the US. If a similar survey were conducted today, US approval ratings in Morocco and elsewhere in the Global South would appear to be staggeringly low.
The US’s reputation has taken another hit since the breakout of the Russia-Ukraine war, which brought into stark relief the West’s brazen hypocrisy and double standards. Public opinion across the globe, especially across the Global South witnessed how these bulwarks of human rights and equality between people rushed to the rescue and defense of Ukraine, denouncing Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territory and resorting to all sorts of measures to retaliate against it. Meanwhile, the plight of the Palestinian people, who have been subjected to 75 years of land grab, mass murders, dispossession, daily humiliation, arbitrary arrest, has been simply ignored.
Israel’s ongoing, US-backed ethnic cleansing campaign targeting the whole Palestinian people will undoubtedly further erode America’s reputation in the Global South. The unprecedented number of protests that have taken place across the world, including in Morocco – which ranked as the world’s fifth country in terms of public condemnation of Israel and its Western enablers – offers a glimpse into the damage that Biden’s unyielding and “ironclad” support for Israel has done to the reputation of the United States, especially in the Middle East.
In fact, US diplomats working in the region have already started feeling the impact of the Biden administration’s endorsement of Israel’s wholesale war crimes against the Palestinian people. They have warned Washington that this policy could cause the US to lose Arab public opinion for a generation.
Based on conversations I’ve had in recent weeks with people from all walks of life in Morocco and other Arab countries, as well as the anger spreading on social media, it’s safe to assume that American diplomats’ warnings to the Biden administration have yet to fully grasp the extent of the damage their policies are doing to long-term US goals and interests in the region. Biden will surely be remembered for generations as the president who gave the green light to Israel’s genocidal war against a defenseless Palestinian population besieged for 16 years and deprived of all basic human rights. He will be remembered as the president who provided weapons, ammunition and financial support to Israel, who stated that his administration will have a “high tolerance for whatever results from Israel’s military response.”
Point of no return for America’s global decline
The erosion of the US image in the Global South will be felt not only by public opinion and the younger generations, but also by Global South officials, who will find it difficult to meet with US officials or to appear in public with them. The US has already gotten a taste of the hostile environment in which its diplomats will work in the months and years to come when the Jordanian King canceled last month the summit that was supposed to bring him together with President Biden, Egyptian President Abdelfattah Al Sissi, and the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.
US officials will be shunned in most countries around the world. This will open the door for China to strengthen its partnerships with the Global South, tighten its economic grip on their economies, and make more decisive inroads in winning the hearts and minds of the global public opinion.
Indeed, the US’s brazen support for a country that has repeatedly violated all the norms and laws that underpin the same rule-based system it is supposed to champion has outraged even some of the usually pro-US or West-friendly leaders and intellectuals in the Global South. By comparison, China’s principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of its allies and partners will only give more incentives to the governing elites in the Global South to further align themselves with Chinese foreign policy goals and strengthen their economic and military ties with Beijing.
The erosion of the US credibility as a trusted mediator and genuine agent for peace and stability in the Middle East will accelerate the pace at which Washington may ultimately lose the first phase of its great power competition with China in the region. The fact that China has no colonial past in the region and that it has no track record of subjugating, terrorizing, enslaving or annihilating other peoples for economic gain may prove decisive in tipping the balance in its favor. Unlike the US or Europe, whose hands are stained with the blood of African, Arab, Asian and Latin-American peoples, China has no history of bellicosity against these countries and civilizations.
Indeed, China can claim to have in common with these countries the fact that for most of the past two centuries it too has been on the receiving end of the colonial barbarism and brutality of the British and Japanese empires. Elites in the Global South will be more inclined to work with and consolidate their ties to China than to an aging European continent and an arrogant US whose political and intellectual leaders have failed to fully grasp and act upon the magnitude of the epochal changes that have taken place on the global stage in recent years. Such has been the hubris and arrogance of the US elite that they have come to believe that no matter what humiliations their country inflicts on other nations, it can still rule the world, force other countries to act in accordance with its whims and agenda, and suffer no consequences in the long run.
Unlike past wars in which the US was directly or indirectly involved, which may have been forgotten, the genocide unfolding in Gaza is different. For the first time in history, the global public is witnessing the ethnic cleansing of an entire population on live television and social media. As such, the constant avalanche of videos showing the slaughter of unarmed civilian populations and demonstrating the sadistic and barbaric behavior of the US-backed Israeli army will leave long-lasting emotional and psychological after-effect in the hearts of people across the Global South, particularly among Generation Z, whose members will be the leaders of tomorrow.
US officials might be tempted to believe that, once the war ends and the dust settles, they can rely on the same policies they have used in the past to repair the US’ reputation in the Global South. No matter how many billions of dollars they will pour into achieving this goal, their efforts risk falling short because it seems that public opinion in the Global South, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, is increasingly convinced that the US, far from being a force for good and a country that promotes regional and global peace, is the primary existential threat to the wellbeing, stability, and prosperity of their countries. The region’s vocal condemnation of US complicity in Israeli war crimes suggests that its public opinion is neither ready to forget nor forgive America’s justification of the annihilation of their Palestinian brothers and sisters.
The ongoing boycott campaign targeting US and European brands accused of supporting Israel should serve as a wake-up call to Western leaders that the public opinion across the Global South, particularly in the Middle East, is determined to make the US and Europe pay dearly for their blind support and endorsement of Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinians.
The heinous war crimes committed by Israel against unarmed, defenseless civilians will never be forgotten by the people who have been on the receiving end of US misdeeds over the past seven decades. They will never forget or forgive the deafening silence of the United States in the midst of Israel’s repeated preemptive attacks on hospitals, schools, homes, mosques and churches. They will never forget the tears and grief of mothers and parents who lost their children in the blink of an eye. They will never forget or forgive the despair of thousands of children who lost their entire families. They will never forget the hundreds of families that were completely erased from the civil registry. Nor will they forget or forgive the repeated appeals for a cease-fire that the US repeatedly rejected on the pretext that such a move would allow Hamas to regroup.
This time, Washington’s aggressive PR or seduction campaigns will not have the desired effect on the people of the Global South, especially the younger generations who do not suffer from the same inferiority complex as older generations of leaders and intellectuals. Emerging leaders in the Global South know that the West is just another self-interested actor in the foreign policy jungle, and so they intend to reject its hypocritical “universal values” and “rules-based global order” and instead promote the emergence of a more just, multipolar world order.
