The mayhem of the last eight months suggests that the United States remains ascendant in the Middle East, and its global hegemonic presence undiminished. Reality points in a different direction. In this series, Joseph Camilleri explains how, despite its global military reach and expanding alliances in Europe and Asia, America today stands adrift and diminished. Gaza, Ukraine and the China obsession tell the story.

Biden’s fulsome backing of Israel in the present confrontation continues a special relationship that dates back to the inception of the state of Israel. It is a relationship that successive US administrations have regarded as the centrepiece of America’s regional dominance.

Between 1946 and 2023 Israel was by far the largest cumulative recipient of US economic and military aid, estimated at close to $300 billion (in constant 2022 dollars). In recent years, the United States has provided Israel an average of $4 billion annually in foreign military financing and an additional $500 million for cooperative missile defence programs.

Little surprise then that in April 2024, the Biden Administration chose to sign off on war assistance to Israel estimated at some $25 billion at the very time that the Palestinian death toll had exceeded 35,000, most of them women and children.

This was the strongest signal yet that, words to the contrary notwithstanding, Washington was prepared to give Israel’s war machine carte blanche to conduct its operations as it saw fit.

The special relationship with Israel has served several US objectives. It has enabled the United States to extend and justify its military presence in a region of high strategic importance. It has kept most Arab states on a leash. And, it has been frequently used to contain the assertive reach of adversaries, notably Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, importantly Russia, and plausibly even China.

The sheer brutality of Israel’s invasion of Gaza has undone much of this. It has severely curtailed Israel’s and America’s diplomatic leverage. It has exposed and exacerbated political divisions within Israel and created new tensions in a highly fractured American society.

What went wrong?

The Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 was initially viewed by the Biden administration as a godsend. The relationship with........

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