How the Israel-Hamas War Is Tilting the Global Power Balance

DUBAI—The war between Israel and Hamas isn’t just risking a regional conflagration. It is also affecting the global balance of power, stretching American and European resources while relieving pressure on Russia and providing new opportunities to China.

The long-term effect of the Middle East flare-up is hard to predict. It depends, first of all, on whether Israel is ultimately successful in its stated goal of eliminating Hamas as Gaza’s main military and political force. Another critical issue is whether Israel’s diplomatic relationships in the region and the global standing of its Western supporters can survive the rising civilian casualties in Gaza and the looming horrors of urban warfare in the densely populated enclave.

But, for now, the war launched by Hamas on Oct. 7 with a brutal attack on Israeli towns and villages that killed some 1,400 people, mostly civilians, is proving a boon for America’s main geopolitical rivals. China, Russia and Iran have long sought to undermine the U.S.-backed international system and are now taking advantage of America’s distraction.

“What we are seeing is part of a shifting and moving world order,” said former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb, who is currently running for Finland’s presidency. “When the U.S. leaves power vacuums, someone is going to fill those vacuums.”

To be sure, the U.S. is already back in the Middle East, showcasing its role as the indispensable partner for Israel and key Arab nations with shuttle diplomacy and military deployments—an engagement that enjoys bipartisan support and dissipates some of the isolationist sentiment that has been gaining ground in recent years.

Still, as Washington’s attention focuses on the Middle East, Russia is probably the clearest beneficiary of the spreading upheaval. Pointing at the mounting Palestinian deaths—around 2,750 by the latest count—Moscow revels in what it calls the hypocrisy of the Western governments, which have roundly condemned Russian massacres of civilians in Ukraine but offer only mild, if any, criticism of Israeli actions in Gaza.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose forces, according to Ukrainian authorities, killed tens of thousands of civilians as they besieged the Ukrainian city of Mariupol for months last year, compared the Israeli siege of Gaza to that of his hometown St. Petersburg, then called Leningrad, during World War II. This, in essence, equated Israelis with Nazis. Such language, a stark departure from Putin’s once warm relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is part of Russia’s diplomatic effort to position the country as the leader of the global movement against the West’s “neocolonialism,” even as it pursues a colonial war of conquest in Ukraine.

“Any conflict that draws some attention from Ukraine very much plays in favor of Russia,” said Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis. “The Russians may not have started it, but they have a huge interest in prolonging the conflict in Israel as long as possible. It would be a win for the Russians tactically, in Ukraine, and strategically, strengthening their narrative against the Western world.”

China, too, has embraced the Palestinian cause in a way it hadn’t done in decades. Its once cordial ties with Israel are in tatters. Despite Beijing’s repeated invocations of the need to combat terrorism as it repressed Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region, China has pointedly refrained from using the word “terrorism” as it described the Hamas attack, much to Israel’s dismay—even though there were four Chinese citizens killed by Hamas and three more taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities.

“The crux of the matter is that justice has not been done to the Palestinian people,” China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Thursday, in his first public remarks since the Hamas invasion triggered the war.
 

As Beijing prepares for a possible clash with the U.S. over the future of Taiwan, China benefits from Washington’s attention once again being diverted by trouble in the Middle East, China watchers say.

“What matters to China are the interests of China and the most important thing for Beijing is the relationship with the United States, and the way in which China could weaken the United States and the image of the United States,” said Antoine Bondaz, a China expert at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. “They will try to portray the U.S. as the factor of instability and China as a factor of peace. China’s goal is to present itself to the developing nations as an alternative—and as a more attractive alternative.”
 

The war launched by Hamas also deals a blow to China’s main Asian rival, India, which has grown much closer to Israel in recent years. Just in September, India and the U.S. announced plans for a transit corridor connecting India, the Middle East and Europe that would run through the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel, and become a rival to China’s Belt and Road project. But the talks on the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia—a key element of the plan—have been scuttled by the Gaza war and their future is now uncertain.

“India has invested a lot in the Middle East generally, and especially with Israel and key Arab countries such as the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia,” said Ashok Malik, chair of the India practice at the Asia Group and a former policy adviser to the Indian Foreign Ministry. “The normalization of relations between progressive Arab countries that are seeking to use economic and technological opportunities to modernize and Israel, as part of a broader normalization of the Middle East, is certainly something that India encourages—for business opportunities but also as a broader political construct.”
 

For many nations in Europe, in addition to straining regional relationships and diverting attention from Ukraine, an escalation of the war could also cause an energy crisis, potentially crippling the Middle Eastern alternatives to Russian oil and gas.

Bloodshed in the Middle East also carries the risk of renewed violence by Islamist militant groups at home, as happened during the campaign against Islamic State in 2014-17. Huge pro-Palestinian rallies have already flooded the streets of major European capitals over the weekend, with some protesters chanting in support of Hamas’s objective, the elimination of Israel.

“Whenever something this intense happens in the Gaza Strip or Israel, it has consequences in Europe,” said Thomas Gomart, director of the French Institute of International Relations. “What we are seeing now is the overlapping and entanglement of different theaters. What will be the main theater for Europe in the coming years? Will it be the Middle East? Will it be Ukraine? Caucasus? Issues with Iran? The acceleration of crises is spectacular and for Europe, it means having to make very brutal adjustments.”

Russia certainly counts on the West’s attention fading away from Ukraine, where Russian forces launched a so-far unsuccessful attempt to seize the city of Avdiivka shortly after the Hamas attack. Should the war in the Middle East expand to involve Lebanon and then possibly Iran and the U.S. directly, the already shrinking resources of military aid slated for Ukraine could become even scarcer—a danger acknowledged by Kyiv.

“If the conflict will be limited in time, a matter of weeks, then in principle we have nothing to worry about,” the head of Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence, Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, told the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper. “But if the situation drags on, it’s fully understandable that there will be certain problems with the fact that not only Ukraine will need to be supplied with weapons and ammunition.”

So far, little of the military aid rushed by the U.S. to Israel is of the kind that is needed for Ukraine. Israel’s most urgent request was for interceptors for its Iron Dome antimissile system that Ukraine doesn’t operate, while Ukraine’s key necessity is for 155mm artillery ammunition. Overall, Israel heavily relies on its huge air force, while air power plays a limited role in the war in Ukraine. During the 50-day Israeli incursion of Gaza in 2014, the Israeli army fired only 19,000 explosive 155mm shells, an amount that Ukraine consumes in as little as one week.

“The Israel Defense Force is very much a Western-style military, with air-based firepower, which can be handled more easily,” said Franz-Stefan Gady, CEO of Gady Consulting, a military consulting firm based in Vienna. “Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military remains a Soviet-era-legacy force with the majority of firepower that is ground-based, which is a lot harder for the U.S. to sustain.”

The biggest risk to Ukraine in recent weeks has been the reluctance of some Republicans in the House to authorize additional U.S. aid. The crisis in the Middle East could actually remove that roadblock as the Biden administration seeks to bundle military aid to Israel with aid to Ukraine.

“It is more likely now that we’re going to get a big funding package that includes Israel, which means that if you want to vote against Ukraine, you’ve got to vote against Israel too, and no one is willing to do that,” said Ivo Daalder, chief executive of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a former U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Overall, he added, the U.S. should be able to support Israel and Ukraine, while also retaining its commitments to Taiwan. “We can walk and chew gum at the same time,” he said. “We have the capacity and we are the global power that can do all three.”   

If anything, the crisis in the Middle East is also a reminder of how important America remains for the region and the world. China hailed its entry into regional politics in March as it brokered an agreement on restoring diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. But now, as the risks of a regional war increase, China is keeping a low profile—while the U.S. has rushed two aircraft carrier groups and Secretary of State Antony Blinken is flying around the region, aiming to contain the conflict.

“China’s primary leverage in the region was access to its markets, access to its investments. It is its economic power,” said Gordon Flake, CEO of the USAsia Center at the University of Western Australia. “They don’t yet have hard power in that region, and so no one is turning to the Chinese for how to solve their problems.”

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com