Every U.S. president comes into office with big dreams, only to be bludgeoned by the realities of international politics.<\/p>\n
At the end of the day, presidents are forced to prioritize goals, restrain ambitions and seek a framework that helps them organize their foreign policy. George W. Bush, for instance, stuck with his global war on terrorism mindset. Barack Obama\u2019s approach was crafted in part to keep the United States from repeating the mistakes of the Bush years. Donald Trump\u2019s \u201cAmerica First\u201d weighed heavily on transactional dealings.<\/p>\n
President Joe Biden\u2019s organizing principle could best be summarized as defending the so-called rules-based international order, or the global order that the U.S. built after its victory in World War II. Biden and senior advisers such as Secretary of State Antony Blinken repeat the phrase constantly in public speeches, press briefings and official government documents. As the Biden administration\u2019s National Security Strategy<\/a> articulates, \u201cWe will partner with any nation that shares our basic belief that the rules-based order must remain the foundation for global peace and prosperity.\u201d<\/p>\n U.S. officials as well as their colleagues in Europe seem to genuinely believe what they\u2019re preaching. Most of the rest of the world, however, tends to view the scripture as bunk \u2014 a collection of rules and norms that are designed to be universal but in reality are highly selective depending on whether or not you\u2019re an ally with the West. Countries in the so-called Global South, the vast swaths of Asia, the Middle East Africa and Latin America that make up most of the world\u2019s population, hear the term \u201crules-based order\u201d and react with a mix of eye-rolls and resignation.<\/p>\n For good reason. In truth, the very rules the U.S. claims to safeguard \u2014 respect for international law; the inviolability of borders; the sanctity of state sovereignty; accountability for violators \u2014 is an imaginary fairy-tale we tell ourselves before going to bed at night.<\/p>\n The Global South has felt this way for quite a long time. But the ongoing war in Gaza, which local officials say has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, turned much of the enclave into a wasteland and displaced more than 80% of its 2.3 million people, is proof positive that the West in general and the U.S. in particular is highly selective in enforcing the very rules it claims to protect.<\/p>\n It\u2019s difficult to put into words just how medieval the situation in Gaza has become. The seaside Palestinian territory wasn\u2019t a great place to live even on a good day \u2014 in 2018, five years before the latest war between Israel and Hamas erupted, U.N. officials assessed that Gaza was \u201c unliveable<\/a>.\u201d Yet today, the word \u201cunliveable\u201d sounds tame. Gaza\u2019s north, once the most populated area of the enclave, has been destroyed. The hospital system, or what\u2019s left of it, is barely keeping the lights on. The U.N. estimates<\/a> that a quarter of the population is close to famine.<\/p>\n The humanitarian calamity in Gaza has gotten so bad that President Biden authorized airdrops of food<\/a> to the people there, a sign if there ever was one that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is largely brushing aside Biden\u2019s pleas for more crossing points and faster aid convoys. The fact that Biden had to resort to airdrops, an extremely expensive and inefficient way of getting humanitarian supplies to civilians on the ground, exposes just how ineffective U.S. policy has become.<\/p>\n This obviously matters for the men, women and children inside Gaza who are forced to deal with extreme hardship and have no option to escape. But it matters to America\u2019s prestige and reputation as well. Much of the world is aghast at the conflict there and equally confounded by Washington\u2019s refusal to use whatever military, political and economic leverage it has over Israel to restrain its partner\u2019s conduct. Particularly when doing so would help solidify the universal rights and prerogatives U.S. leaders are ostensibly interested in promoting.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no use sugar-coating it: on Gaza, the U.S. is increasingly isolated. On February 20, the U.S. delegation at the U.N. Security council vetoed<\/a> a draft resolution that demanded an immediate cease-fire. Washington did the same thing in December. The U.S. explanation at the time was that any Security Council action would jeopardize the truce negotiations between Israeli and Hamas, which remain ongoing to this very day. Most of the Security Council has scoffed at that justification, pointing out that the draft resolutions supports U.S. attempts to stop the war, get hostages out and humanitarian assistance in.<\/p>\n In case the U.S. had any delusions about just how tenuous its position was<\/a>, Blinken got an earful from his colleagues during last month\u2019s G20 foreign ministers meeting in Brazil. Even Australia, a U.S. treaty ally, felt the need to distance itself from U.S. policy, warning Israel not to go through with an impending military offensive in Rafah, where more than one million Palestinians are currently displaced. While South Africa\u2019s representative didn\u2019t blame the U.S. specifically, she didn\u2019t have to; the world\u2019s big powers, she said, have all but given Israel blanket immunity.<\/p>\n For many, the war in Gaza and America\u2019s response to it shows that the international system is no longer functioning as it should. \u201cThe rules-based order that has governed international affairs since the end of World War II is on its way out, and there may be no turning back,\u201d former U.N. Special Rapporteur Agn\u00e8s Callamard wrote<\/a> in Foreign Affairs magazine.<\/p>\n But if we\u2019re being completely honest, there was no rules-based order to begin with. Most of the world understands this, even if U.S. policymakers delude themselves.<\/p>\n ____<\/p>\n