- Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Israel-Hamas war is distracting the world from the invasion of Ukraine.
- An international affairs expert told Insider Israel’s war in Gaza may benefit Putin in several ways.
- Protracted war in Israel may force the US to make tough choices about providing aid elsewhere.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a Saturday press conference, said the Israel-Gaza war is “taking away the focus” from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, BBC reported.
While some may bristle at the notion, it is true that incremental updates of the war in Ukraine are no longer front-page news — and that ultimately could be a benefit to Russia, Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at Harvard and author of the NYT bestseller “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” told Insider.
Though the ultimate outcome of the conflict in Gaza remains unclear, Walt said, in almost every possible scenario, Israel’s war on Hamas is going to have “non-trivial effects” on a variety of other conflicts throughout the world, including the war in Ukraine.
Chiefly, he said the issue is one of the United States’ and other countries’ “bandwidth” to support their allies in wartime.
“There’s seven days in a week, 24 hours in a day, and only so much time and attention that people like Biden can devote to different problems,” Walt told Insider. “So if you have to focus a lot of attention on the Middle East, not just during the conflict but probably for years afterward, that just means less time for other problems, and other countries are going to feel neglected.”
For Ukraine, that sense of neglect may come in the form of munitions shortages. The US and its allies have already begun struggling to keep up the supply of 155mm artillery shells, which are a key part of a war of attrition like this one has become, where one side tries to wear the other down in a steady barrage of attacks over a long period.
Though the US has plans to ramp up production of 155mm artillery by 500% over the next two years, the country currently produces just over 14,000 rounds a month, Insider previously reported — which Ukrainian troops can blow through in about two days.
“Now that we’re going to be helping rearm Israel, some of the things that might have gone to Ukraine are gonna end up going to the Middle East instead,” Walt said.
He added: “Add to that, that Ukraine has now become a political football in the US Congress, with the Republicans sort of playing games with it in various ways. And then finally, there was a Gallup Poll conducted which showed that the percentage of Americans who thought we were giving too much help Ukraine was up to 41%. And that was about 29% earlier in the year. So you’re getting an increase in the number of Americans who, while they’re not pro-Russia or anti-Ukraine, just think we’ve done enough and we’re giving too much. So put all that together, and this is not good news for Ukraine.”
Split US priorities amid multiple global conflicts
The fact that there are numerous global conflicts where the US has committed to backing one side for a prolonged period creates the conditions for things to deteriorate in Ukraine without much effort from Russia, Walt said.
“I think the advantage, if you to call it that, Russia has right now is that in the Middle East, they don’t have to do anything. They can sit back and watch this train wreck occur, and criticize the various parties involved, but no one’s asking them to intervene. They can focus their attention on the most important challenge they face, which is the war in Ukraine,” Walt told Insider.
But the problem the United States has now is trying to manage several significant challenges simultaneously: the war in Ukraine, the crisis in the Middle East, and a long-term rivalry with China, which “involves something of an economic war,” Walt said, as well as military posturing.
“Unfortunately, I think the only thing that’s going to shift the attention back to Ukraine would be some really substantial setback, and nobody wishes that to happen,” Walt said. “But if it looks like Russia is about to make substantial gains again, that could get the problem in Ukraine back on the front pages. And it then puts the Biden administration in a terrible position where they have to decide: are they going to do more to prevent a decisive Russian victory?”
