Biden, Xi Taking Lumps For Allies' Bad Behavior

The rights and wrongs of these conflicts are not truly what the United States and China have in common. What they do have in common is that each is trying to exercise leverage over its ally in such a way as to serve its own interests and its public reputation – in America's case, leverage ideally to force a ceasefire but at least to put limits on future civilian deaths in Gaza; in China's case, leverage to dissuade Russia from threatening the use of nuclear weapons and, ideally, to persuade it to start talks over a peace settlement with Ukraine (though how deeply China desires this is open to doubt).

The question for both President Biden and President Xi is what to do if their threats are ignored by Israel and Russia respectively. What, in other words, can the world's two most powerful countries do if their bluff is called?

The good news for Joe Biden is that the leverage he holds over Israel is quite strong and direct: the US supplies Israel with nearly US$4 billion worth of arms every year.

Despite that, the response by Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some of the extremist parties in his government to Biden's threat to halt these arms supplies was defiant: Israel, they said, could stand and fight alone if it had to.

That is undoubtedly true, in the short term. The Israeli military already has the weapons and supplies it needs to be able to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah, which it claims is the last stronghold of Hamas's military.

Yet, in the longer term, Israel needs American support – has needed it ever since the State of Israel was founded in 1948, both for military supplies but also, crucially, for diplomatic support in its relations with its Arab neighbors and its confrontation with Iran, the nearby state that finances and supplies Hamas and Israel's other opponent, the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon.

The face-off between Biden and Netanyahu is therefore a battle of nerves and willpower on both sides. Prime Minister Netanyahu cannot afford to lose America's support, but he may choose to bet that it will not be withdrawn for long.

That bet is plausible because for Biden the bad news is that in America's presidential election year, almost anything he does could harm his prospects: if he backs down, Donald Trump will accuse him of being weak; if he withholds support for Israel, both Trump and pro-Israel Democrats will criticize him for doing so.

Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses pose twin dangers: that left-leaning Democratic voters may desert him, and that if disorder spreads (as it did with anti-Vietnam war protests in 1968), then an image of weakness and loss of control could prove disastrous in November's vote.

That array of bad consequences means, however, that on balance the best course for President Biden would be to use his leverage over Israel to the full: any presidential candidate needs to look strong, and he cannot afford to lose any of his own Democratic Party voters.

No candidate is ever disadvantaged by looking strong, but making threats and then withdrawing them would provide irrefutable proof of weakness as well as indecisiveness.

This also fits with a diplomatic imperative: if America is ever to stabilize the situation in the Middle East it needs the support of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar and the Gulf States, and if he backs down on Israel's invasion of Rafah, that support will be lost or greatly diluted. If Gaza is to be rebuilt and policed after the war is over, the involvement of those Arab states will be essential.

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President Xi's challenge is more ambiguous than Biden's. For while China welcomes any disruption to Western leadership that may be caused by Russia's actions, which is why it has provided Russia with both diplomatic and commercial support, it does not want to be associated with threats of the use of nuclear weapons.

Xi's challenge – an unhinged Vladimir Putin. Photo: The Kremlin

This is in part because in global diplomacy China is trying to portray itself as a peacemaker and stabilizer, in contrast to a disruptive America, so the more violent its Russian ally becomes the less convincing this stance will be.

But it is also because China wants to keep alive the idea that it could absorb Taiwan peacefully or at least with only a short conflict, an idea which fits badly with any notion of superpowers using their nuclear arsenals.

The good news for Xi is that he doesn't have to face an election and can view Russia's war with greater indifference than Biden can Israel's. The bad news, however, is that his leverage over Russia is quite limited.

Beyond threats, the only real way in which Xi could put pressure on Vladimir Putin would be by restricting trade between Russia and China, perhaps especially in the higher technology items that the Russian defense industry needs. But that would make China look rather like America, using trade as a tool of containment.

It is quite tough being a superpower.

Formerly editor-in-chief of The Economist, Bill Emmott is currently chairman of the
Japan Society of the UK , the
International Institute for Strategic Studies
and the
International Trade Institute .

First published on his Substack, Bill Emmott's Global View , this is the English original of an article previously published in Italian by La Stampa.