The next US president will have to work in a world confronting its greatest risk of major power confrontation since the Cold War.
“The US remains the most consequential international actor in matters of peace and security”, Comfort Ero, president and CEO of the International Crisis Group, tells me. She adds a caveat, “but its power to help resolve conflicts is diminished.”
Wars are becoming ever harder to end. “Deadly conflict is becoming more intractable, with big-power competition accelerating and middle powers on the rise,” is how Ms Ero describes the landscape. Wars like Ukraine pull in multiple powers, and conflagrations such as Sudan pit regional players with competing interests against each other, and some more invested in war than in peace.
America is losing the moral high ground, Ms Ero says. “Global actors notice that it applies one standard to Russia’s actions in Ukraine, and another to Israel’s in Gaza. The war in Sudan has seen terrible atrocities but gets treated as a second-tier issue.”
A win by Harris, she says, “represents continuity with the current administration.” If it’s Trump, he “might give Israel an even freer hand in Gaza and elsewhere, and has intimated he could try to cut a Ukraine deal with Moscow over Kyiv’s head.”
On the Middle East, the Democratic candidate has repeatedly echoed Mr Biden’s firm backing of Israel’s “right to defend itself.” But she’s also made a point of emphasising that “the killing of innocent Palestinians has to stop.”
