The war in Gaza, the decline of US leadership and the emergence of a networked regional order

ABSTRACT

The War in Gaza is an inflection point in Middle Eastern history pushing the region onto a new trajectory. The 7th of October attack by Hamas and the response by Israel have upended many assumptions about a US-centric regional order. Washington looks increasingly helplessly onto regional developments that are shaped by regional state and non-state actors. The new apolar, regional order is network-centric and revolves around a delicate stability equilibrium that is constantly changing. Order in the Middle East appears to be increasingly spontaneous and thereby vulnerable to singular events often brought about by networks of non-state actors – of which Hamas is just one of many.

KEYWORDS:

• Regional Order
• Gaza War
• Hamas
• Israel
• United States

Introduction

The war in Gaza has been disastrous not just for the civilians on the ground, wedged between the front lines of Hamas and Israel, but also for regional stability and security. The regional order built around American unipolarity has been in a process of constant decline at least since the Arab Spring. Washington’s indecisive and reluctant leadership has contributed to a regional vacuum that regional actors were left to fill for themselves as the battleground for great power competition shifted further south and east. However, beyond the archaic concept of a regional hegemon, the regional order has been increasingly shaped by non-state actors and networks who do not only challenge the position of the United States but the integrity, stability, and influence of states per se. The US’ unequivocal support for an Israeli military operation in Gaza that lacks both a clear strategy and defies fundamental liberal norms and principles about the conduct of war is the death knell of an already disintegrating regional order. The unreserved US support for the Netanyahu government’s campaign and rhetoric, unnecessarily prolongs the war, mobilizes regional audiences, weakens regional governments and states, and empowers informal networks of non-state actors. As a result, the regional order resembles ever more a ‘spontaneous order’ as a product of the cumulative actions, behaviours, and activities of a myriad of different state and non-state actors.

A regional order in decline

In the post-Gulf War Middle East, it was America’s unipolar moment that shaped a regional order in the 1990s that laid out the ground rules governing relations among its key players. Most Realists would have looked at regional order through the narrow lens of ‘governing arrangements between states, including its fundamental rules, principles and institutions’ (John Ikenberry, 2001, p. 12) – with a focus on international relations between regional states. Even within the framework of Huntington’s (1999) concept of a hybrid uni-multipolar system, with the US as the only superpower among several major powers, Washington was seen as the regional hegemon with the most credible coercive and convening power underwriting a structure in the region that could guarantee a sense of stability. From the Gulf War, over the Iraqi sanctions’ regime, the 1991 Damascus Declaration, to the Oslo Accords, right up to the 2003 War in Iraq, regional affairs were shaped by an assertive superpower able to use coercion and accommodation to bring regional players together and set the boundaries for acceptable state behaviour. The Middle East in many ways functioned as an extension of the rules-based international order, whereby international rules, norms and institutions were widely respected – even if they favoured the United States and its western allies, including Israel.

The US-led war against Saddam Hussein in 2003 fundamentally changed that. On a short-sighted, ideological crusade, the George W. Bush administration ignored international law and common sense to turn this order on its head – destroying not just the Saddam regime but the Iraqi state. In its place pro-Iran, Shiite as well as Sunni jihadist networks have been able to flourish ever since. And while Operation Iraqi Freedom was a demonstration of the strength of conventional US military power, the subsequent failure to defeat one insurgency after the other, resulted in a humiliating withdrawal of US forces in October 2011.

But the idea of the US as a regional hegemon had already died in the months before that. The myth of authoritarian stability began to implode in late 2010 as the region experienced a pan-Arab moment of dissent (Gause, 2011). Instead of throwing its weight behind the widely liberal first movers wanting to oust the authoritarians, Washington widely stood by passively on the sidelines only granting support when policy objectives were overtaken by the quickly shifting reality on the ground. Rather than putting its money where its mouth was, the Obama administration only hesitantly supported those who were genuinely calling for a political liberalization of the region. Regional actors desperately waited in vain for direction from the once-hegemon – from Qatar and Turkey on the one hand, who had provided support to the revolutionaries, to the UAE on the other, who saw civil-societal mobilization as a fundamental threat to regime security (Krieg, 2019, p. 91). Meanwhile, the old powerhouses in Egypt and Libya fell, while Syria became the ground for the region’s greatest bloodshed.

Carpet bombed by conventional and chemical weapons, forcefully displaced from their homes and subjected to torture and disappearances of networks of pro-regime militias, the Syrian people witnessed the hollowness of the promises the US once made in terms of the sanctity of liberal rules, norms, and institutions.

More so, the very building block of the old regional order – namely the authoritarian state – has been fundamentally weakened by the revolutions of 2010 onwards. The aftermath of the Arab Spring and the violent counterrevolutions in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Sudan since 2013 created weak and failing states existing on a continuum somewhere between civil war and regime repression. In almost all regional states, formal state institutions exist alongside informal networks to whom tasks of governance and statecraft are delegated (Krieg, 2017, p. 157). Violent non-state actors and pro-regime militias exist in a transnational networked space determined by flows of goods, arms, people, and information. The state formally exists but the order that emerges over the past decade is far less state-centric as much more network-centric, where different types of nodes and hubs interact with one another creating a new pattern of interdependence between a variety of actors.

Two decades on from the ‘Pax Americana’, the Middle East today looks much more like a neo-medieval system where private, commercial as well as state and supra-state actors such as the Arab League or the Gulf Cooperation Council co-exist, all with their informal sovereign rights and overlapping claims for authority. It is a networked order of entanglement in which there is no space for a hegemon, where no one node is so disproportionately more powerful than the next one that it can impose its will. The order is also far less stratified than it was assumed to be in the 1990s. And while Russia wants us to believe in a multipolar order, the Middle East widely appears to be apolar today as real poles of power in the region do not permanently exist – neither in Moscow, Beijing or Washington, nor in Tehran, Riyadh or Ankara. In each conflict in the region power dynamics appear to be extremely volatile whereby a pole in one conflict might not be a pole in another.

Following from behind

All along, we were meant to believe that Palestine did not matter that much anymore (Shaheen, 2021). In the aftermath of the Arab Spring with Arabs having to deal with insecurity and instability at home, Palestine was imagined featuring far less prominently in the Arab psyche. The counterrevolutions had undermined the short-lived space for an organic Arab public sphere, giving authoritarian 2.0 hope they would be able to subvert discourse and civil-societal mobilization (Krieg, 2023, p. 91). The UAE-led Abraham Accords were a symptom of that development. In absence of US policy and leadership towards the region and the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular, the Trump administration was happy it could delegate this issue to regional players. Neither of the signatories filled the vehicle with content to bring the conflict at the heart of region to an end – but it provided the signatories with a powerful ‘get-out-of-jail card’ to be played in Washington whenever American values or interests appeared to clash with those of the UAE in particular.

Like the rest of US Middle East policy, the Israel-Palestinian conflict was outsourced to local partners (Krieg, 2016). The ongoing ‘pivot to Asia’ meant that US grand strategic priorities were no longer in the Middle East but in the Asia-Pacific. Washington’s inconsistency with which it responded to regional Middle Eastern crises has been quite consistent from the Obama over the Trump to the Biden administration. The policy of ‘leading from behind’ dissolved into ‘following from behind’ as regional actors took over the initiative to shape rules and behaviours. The Saudi and UAE-led blockade of Qatar between 2017 and 2021 was a case in point. Dissatisfied with Qatar’s support for revolutionaries during the Arab Spring, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh took the decision to impose a blockade on its fellow Gulf neighbour. This move fundamentally challenged the regional US security infrastructure that revolved around the US Central Command base in Qatar. Despite years of US mediation attempts, the crisis remained a protracted reality of the regional status quo for years. Regional players eventually set their differences aside at a time of their choosing.

With Israel the situation remained much the same. Consecutive Netanyahu governments pivoted further to the far-right, actively undermining US grand strategic principles of the Two-State Solution, empowering the illegal settlement movement, and de-humanizing Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. From Obama over Trump to Biden, Netanyahu has managed to outplay and outsmart Israel’s most important donor (Zakaria, 2024) – at no cost to himself politically. Quite the contrary, while 10000s of Israelis gathered on a weekly basis to protest the ethno-nationalist populism of Netanyahu and his far-right fundamentalists, the Biden administration only sent a lukewarm warning to the Israeli Prime minister who was about to embark on a consequential judicial reform undermining the very democratic foundation of the Jewish State.

It is against this backdrop that Hamas engaged in the most atrocious attack on Israeli soil in its history. Meant as an act of reflexive control, Hamas deliberately targeted the psychological centre of gravity of both Israel and the United States, providing the far-right Israeli government with a pretext so severe, that it had to overreact. Hamas provided the religious fundamentalists in Netanyahu’s government with the excuse they needed to rally the country around under the banner of vengeance to advance their phantasies of removing not just Hamas but also Gazans from the Strip. It became apparent quite quickly that Israel – issued with a card blanche from Washington – would start to exceed the accepted boundaries of self-defence.

A Netanyahu-first policy

Hamas sowed the wind and reaped a hurricane. What was intended to be a strategic conundrum created by Hamas for Israel – dozens of Israeli hostages inside a maze of hundreds of kilometres of tunnels, below one of the most densely populated area in the world – became a strategic disaster. The IDF was sent in to ‘annihilate Hamas’ within a strategic vacuum devoid of any political solution to the root cause of the problem: occupation. Hamas imposed a war on Israel, which was to become all about whose story wins not whose army wins. Netanyahu standing in front of the ruins of his political legacy, went into survival mode – whipping up support for an ‘existential war’ that from the beginning was waged against the backdrop of de-humanizing language vis-à-vis Gazan civilians. As an AI-empowered ‘mass assassination factory’ was unleashed on Gazans (Abraham, 2023), the Biden administration upheld Israels right of self-defence. Even as civilian casualties started to mount and Israeli targeting protocols started to emerge that deliberately ignored the fundamental legal principles of civilian immunity (Gvaryahu, 2023), Washington mantra-like echoed Netanyahu’s talking points.

The lack of moral leadership displayed by an ostensibly ‘progressive’ Democratic administration became ever more apparent as humanitarian aid became increasingly weaponized by Israel. Israel’s decision to cut electricity and water supply to the territory – an apparent war crime – was not called out by the United States. AI-empowered targeting processes that undermined fundamental principles of international humanitarian law were not criticized. Instead, Biden administration officials affirmed for months Israel did everything it can to protect civilians – even though evidence suggested otherwise (Human Rights Watch, 2023). The message to the 400+ million Arabs in the region was: the lives of 7 million Israelis are worth more. Looking back at western messaging vis-à-vis Russia over Ukraine, it looked as if the lives of white Europeans were worth more than that of Palestinians. Because while Russia had been called out for the same war crimes, Israel appeared to have gotten a pass. As a consequence, US soft power in the region has probably taken the worst hit since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (Dagher & Kaltenthaler, 2023).

Beyond the loss of normative power, the Biden administration showed a lack of coercive power as well. Despite a change of American discourse on the war by early 2024, Netanyahu continued to blatantly ignore Biden’s half-hearted pleas to be more considerate. US calls for Israeli restraint did not have an impact on the conduct of the war. Calls by the US for Israel to come to the negotiation table were only responded to by Netanyahu when it served his own interests. The fact that the United States had to engage in performative foreign and security policy by dropping aid into Gaza – a territory besieged by Israel whose war is largely funded by the US – shows the impotence of US power projection in the region.

This paradoxically, reversed power imbalance between ostensible superpower and Middle Eastern small state is not new. In 2002 then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon like Netanyahu today filled the vacuum of US regional policy towards the Israeli Palestinian conflict with Israeli policies that were highly damaging for US interests in the wider region. Fareed Zakaria at the time called out Washington’s laissez-faire attitude as effectively subcontracting American policy to Ariel Sharon – dubbed ‘Secretary of State Sharon’ (Zakaria, 2002).

It is this evident weakness in the US position that undermines credibility into an order the US once underwrote in the region. Taken together with the collapse of moral leadership, America’s ability to build consensus has been equally impaired. Few regional partners are now betting on the United States to build a regional coalition to address the root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Arab Gulf states remain hesitant make any plans for the day after in Gaza, as long as Netanyahu appears strong enough to play the once-superpower for his own political survival.

A regional war to end the regional order

America’s impotence to transform the Gaza conflict also bodes ill for the various regimes who have traditionally relied on the United States for legitimacy. In a post-Arab Spring world, statehood in the region had already been in decline. The legitimacy of regimes to rule has been on a low point for years. The counterrevolutionary narrative of authoritarian stability rested on the promise that authoritarians can actually deliver – if not on liberalization and democratization, then at least on fundamental public goods. The inability of these regimes to address socio-economic grievances has created subtle mobilization that now finds an outlet in rallying around the Palestinian cause (Baroud, 2024). The powerlessness of the post-revolutionary neo-authoritarians to make any meaningful difference to the catastrophic situation in Gaza is undermining regime stability, particularly in Egypt and Jordan.

On the other side, the war in Gaza provides a moment for the networks of non-state actors to outperform the authoritarian regimes. First and foremost, as the old US-led state-centric order collapses, Iran can grow its ‘Axis of Resistance’ – a fairly horizontal network of armed non-state actors across the region that is supported to varying degrees by Tehran. It exploits the anti-Israel sentiments in the Arab world from Lebanon, over Syria and Iraq to Yemen – and even into Palestine.

In Yemen, the Houthis – also provided with funding and technology from Iran – have been able to exploit the war in Gaza to champion itself as the defender of the Palestinian cause. For the first time in history a non-state actor in a deprived country has enforced a quasi-naval blockade at a maritime choke point. Not only does it help the Houthis to rally around support domestically but it gives it a wider regional appeal. US and UK air strikes against Houthi targets will do little to degrade the capabilities of the battle-hardened militia, while further entrenching the conflict beyond the boundaries of the Gaza war. Yemeni statehood is the first casualty in this war.

In Iraq, the Gaza war has mobilized Iran-aligned militias to attack US military bases. And while the US air force responded to these attacks, they have done so undermining Iraqi sovereignty and bypassing the formal Iraq state infrastructure, Washington had once created. Already largely subverted by Iran, the Iraqi state will be hollowed out further by America’s desperate tit-for-tat engagement with these quite resilient militia networks who have little to lose.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah’s status as the state within the state is further solidified by the mid-level intensity war with Israel. While leader Nasrallah has been careful not to push the envelope in this conflict, Netanyahu and his top-brass appear to be increasingly willing to test Hezbollah’s resolve as tens of thousands of Israelis are unable to return to their homes in northern Israel. The protracted forever conflict at current levels helps Hezbollah to keep up the image as the only entity able to defend Lebanon.

For Egypt, the war in Gaza is a disaster. The Sisi regime has transformed Egypt into a beggar state having to repeatedly lobby partners in the Gulf for ever greater bailouts. With the Houthis blockading the Red Sea, vital revenues from the Suez Canal have dropped significantly at a time of macro-economic hardship. At the same time, Egypt finds it difficult to secure its borders with Gaza, fearing that hundreds of thousands of displaced Gazans could make a run for the border fence in case Israel started to attack areas around Rafah in the south of the Strip. Domestic public opinion would view this as the ultimate capitulation of the Sisi regime in front of Israeli aggression – at a time when Sisi is desperately selling top national real estate to balance the books.

In Jordan, the situation is equally dire. As the custodian of Al Aqsa Mosque, the Hashemite kingdom faces domestic mobilization by both east and west bank tribes to do something to assist Gazans under relentless bombardment. Apart from some performative aid drops into Gaza, the kingdom has few levers to push back against the growing ‘resistance narrative’ Islamists are propagating.

Towards a spontaneous order

What emerges as a result of this Gaza War is an order that is far less structured and linear than what has been there before. The apolarity of the regional environment becomes ever more apparent as states and regimes struggle to contain non-state actors. The new order is spontaneous as it is created ad-hoc by networks of actors engaged in reciprocal as well as confrontational activities. I am borrowing here from Hayek’s market-oriented interpretation of the concept of spontaneous order, in its archetypal form, whereby order emerges ad hoc as the cumulative result of a myriad of individual actions and micro-processes that bring about an equilibrium (Luban, 2020, p. 69). The new equilibrium of stability is not determined by a hegemon that does no longer exist, but by networks of state and non-state actors interacting with one another. The Gaza War brings home the powerlessness of states to manage these non-state actors, and the inability of even great powers to use the tools at their disposal to shape the context effectively.

The United States stands on the sidelines offering performative activities such as air drops over Gaza or measured air strikes against the Houthis – without really addressing the root causes of instability. Meanwhile, a militia in flip-glops in the north of Yemen holds world trade for ransom. A hybrid insurgency in Gaza shapes the region through reflexive control, affecting the narrative of the story told about the war, which becomes ever more important than how the war is actually executed. Iran’s networks of ‘resistance’ fighters keep on poking not just Israel but every state still supporting the Israeli war effort. Public mobilization around the Palestinian cause acts in many ways as the rallying point to express anger of other grievances ignored by failing state institutions.

Local middle powers, meanwhile, become new poles in this bottom-up order pursuing their interests largely as they see fit, regardless of their territorial, economic, or population size. Iran commands its own regional agenda covering up domestic issues of governance by delegating ‘resistance’ against Israel to its many surrogates across the region. Saudi Arabia and the UAE – long engaged in Yemen stay away from supporting the US-led bombing campaign against the Houthis. And while the UAE hold on to the Abraham Accords, the Saudi kingdom is taking its own approach to normalization with Israel – one that is built around its own national interests and not a US wish list or timeline. Qatar as America’s most potent enabler in the mediation space helps Washington to maintain a backchannel with Hamas and Israel, but stands firmly in support of the Palestinian cause.

The most powerful players in this new spontaneous order are those that can instrumentalize non-state actors, i.e., are about to work alongside or through those networks that challenge the old regional order. In the consensus and mediation space, Qatar and Oman hold the keys to enable regional states to speak to Hamas and the Houthis, respectively, – a vital capability to deconflict and de-escalate. Iran and the UAE hold more coercive levers through their networks of non-state actors. Tehran is able to resiliently influence and shape crises through its ‘Axis of Resistance’. Abu Dhabi, meanwhile, following Iran’s example has curated its own networks in Libya, Yemen, and Sudan if not to control these conflict zones, to at least set the direction of travel in these conflicts. Those states that are most able to curate, orchestrate, and work alongside networks will most effectively function as the connectors between great powers and the growing number of non-state actors that shape the regional order.

The Gaza War is speeding up a transformational development in shaping the regional order. The credibility of the norms, principles, and institutions created by the United States after the Cold War is in tatters, as Washington drags its feet to hold Israel to the same standard as other states – a credibility issue that by extension also affects America’s authoritarian partners in the region. For a Realist, the emerging spontaneous order appears to resemble the idealistic characterization of Hobbes’ state of nature: a dog-eat-dog world, where neither a balance of power nor a hegemon can set the tone. Instead, the norms, principles, and institutions of this order are constantly renegotiated beyond a narrow group of local states and governments. The consensus that underlies this new regional order is fragile but not necessarily chaotic. However, it is a new system in which those will struggle who like Israel or the Unites States rely solely on coercive, military power; who rely on hierarchies to engage horizontal structures such as Hamas; who put all their bets on the myth of ‘authoritarian stability’ without recognizing that public opinion matters – first and foremost when it comes to the Palestinian cause.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).