Battle for White House will shape world in 2024

The three, of course, are the war in Ukraine, the conflict in Gaza and speculation surrounding who will become the next president of the United States.

So, what exactly is it that links these stories and what trajectory might they take in the months ahead? Perhaps the easiest way to understand this is to take the last of the three first – the US presidential election.

More than half the people on the planet live in countries that will hold nationwide elections in 2024 – which in itself is an unprecedented milestone. To put this in some kind of context based on recent research on voter turnout, it means that close to two billion people in 70 countries will head to the polls from Britain to Bangladesh and Russia to Taiwan in the new year.

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But vital though as all these ballots are, few – if any of them – will compare in terms of spectacle or potential consequences as that of America’s presidential showdown. In short, the outcome of America’s election will impact across the world, shaping the geopolitical landscape affecting us all, perhaps, for many years to come – and in ways some would prefer not to contemplate.

For the moment, at least – barring unforeseen illness, death, imprisonment or a late surge by a Republican rival – America’s election looks set to pit incumbent Joe Biden against former president Donald Trump in a rematch which in itself says everything we need to know about how bitter and high stakes this presidential contest will be.

Not surprisingly perhaps, many Americans are understandably nervous about the outcome. But looking on also with anxious anticipation will be a myriad of world leaders from Ukraine, Europe, the Middle East and of course China and Russia.

To give just some idea of how significant the potential global ramifications are, one need only consider the words of one senior US State Department official who spoke after a meeting of Nato foreign ministers in Brussels last month.

Speaking to the Reuters news agency, the official went as far as to say that Russian president Vladimir Putin will not make peace in Ukraine before he knows the result of the November 5 US election.

“My expectation is that Putin won’t make a peace or a meaningful peace before he sees the result of our election,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the outcomes of the Nato meeting.

Asked whether they were expressing a personal opinion or the view of the US government, the official said it was a “widely shared premise”.

Putin himself, of course, faces his own “test” at the ballot box in March but given that his return to power is all but a given, it’s the US election result that the Kremlin will have its eyes on.

Moscow knows that should a Biden administration return to power, Ukraine will most likely continue to receive the massive funding and military support on which it so depends at this crucial stage in the war. Not that this will necessarily be a straightforward process.

Last Thursday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Biden for what was a comparatively modest US weapons package for Ukraine which is likely to be the last one until Congress approves new funding.

The $250 million package – which includes artillery shells, air defence equipment, anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, and small arms ammunition for the fight against Russia – will help Ukraine in the short term, but Zelenskyy knows that it still leaves Ukraine facing an uncertain future and without critical financial support entering the new year.

Having already handed Ukraine about $100bn in aid since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, Biden has asked the lower house of Congress to approve another $60bn but Republicans continue to block the move, using the issue to demand new immigration legislation.

Though work is continuing in the upper house of the Senate to reach a compromise, the more America heads into presidential election mode, the greater the chances of a substantial aid package becoming snarled up in domestic politics.

Ukraine’s worries are further compounded by the fact that an EU financial package worth €50bn is itself being held up after a veto orchestrated by Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán who has one eye on voters in his country in the run-up to the European parliamentary elections in 2024.

The biggest challenge for Ukraine of course would be if Trump were to return to the White House. As a headline in Politico magazine ominously warned a few months ago: “Trump is no ghost of the past – he’s haunting Ukraine’s present”.

As the magazine’s veteran foreign correspondent Jamie Dettmer made clear, for some time now, Trump has displayed his indifference to the “fate of Ukraine’s territorial integrity”. The former president has also added his weight to the blocking of aid, egging on the GOP caucus to cut off funds to Ukraine on the grounds that Biden is putting “Ukraine first” and “America last”.

With Ukraine’s offensive against Russia’s invasion stalled as winter bites, the question of military and financial aid has taken on fresh significance. Should Biden remain president, he will be determined to keep supplies flowing, knowing full well that without it, Ukraine will likely struggle to make a military breakthrough in the new year and thus come under mounting pressure to negotiate with Moscow.

But still, the spectre of a Trump presidency looms large. Assuming the recent legal hurdles thrown up against him standing in Colorado and Maine are overcome, his campaign will pull no punches and Ukraine stands to lose if he wins.

Right now, the election looks set to be a close-run thing, even if many US political watchers still believe it likely that Trump will be criminally convicted in at least one (probably two) of his four trials before the election. True to form, Trump would present this as political persecution by the “Biden crime family”.

Should Biden win, political pundits have largely agreed that it will have more to do with a rejection of Trump than a ringing endorsement of Biden.

Which takes us to that other story grabbing the headlines these past few months that will roll over into 2024 in a significant way – the conflict in Gaza. As it stands on the ground these past days, despite overwhelming firepower, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have not been having it all their own way.

This weekend, as intense fighting goes on between the IDF and Hamas militants, Israel is concentrating its military offensive on southern Gaza, particularly around the city of Khan Yunis. But it is also conducting operations elsewhere and in each location is facing stiff resistance in Gaza’s ruins.

The current fighting is focused in the Bureij and Nuseirat refugee camps, as well as Khan Yunis, with IDF troops backed by intensive airstrikes that continue to take an enormous civilian toll and fill Gaza’s few remaining functioning hospitals with wounded Palestinians.

Almost all of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have now been forced from their homes by Israel’s withering 12-week assault, triggered by the Hamas attack on October 7 that killed 1200 people and brought 240 hostages into the group’s grasp.

But just as the fighting shows no signs of relenting and could go on for weeks if not months, the international diplomatic furore mounts.

Last Friday, South Africa was the latest country to lend its voice and action to the clamour, accusing Israel of violating international laws on genocide in its military operations in Gaza.

In bringing a case to the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ), South Africa argues that the court – a UN body that adjudicates disputes between states – has jurisdiction under the 1948 Genocide Convention, to which both Israel and South Africa are party. For its part, Israel was quick to unequivocally dismiss the charges.

“Israel rejects with disgust the blood libel spread by South Africa in its application to the International Court of Justice,” a spokesperson for Israel’s foreign ministry said. “South Africa’s claim lacks both a factual and a legal basis and constitutes a despicable and contemptuous exploitation of the court.”

But the dispute and engagement by South Africa once again illustrates how the conflict in Gaza has the capacity to draw in wider players. Just as with the Ukraine war, the United States is crucial here, as is the role of the coming presidential election.

With every day that passes, Americans are increasingly divided over who to blame and what they want Washington to do in a war that has claimed the lives of more than 1300 Israelis and 21,000 Palestinians.

Voters are also sending decidedly mixed signals about the direction US policy-making should take as the war in Gaza grinds into what could be a protracted conflict.

As a result – and faced with an election – Biden is having to think again about his response to Gaza which to date has always been dictated by America’s decades-old alliance with Israel. With the prospect of a neck-and-neck battle for the White House, the incumbent will be looking for every vote – and that’s where America’s Arab and Muslim voters come in.

Though they constitute a relatively small bloc of voters – 3.5 and 3.45m respectively – in the state-by-state electoral college, their votes do have the potential to impact elections.

As Brooke Anderson – the Washington DC correspondent for the London-based The New Arab online news outlet – recently pointed out, in the pivotal US election of 2020, Arabs and Muslims were instrumental in getting the vote for Biden and the Democratic Party. Now, as Israel’s war in Gaza grows, this small but growing bloc of American voters might not be as reliable for the Democratic Party as they were three years ago, with a recent poll showing Arab American support for Biden has dropped to 17%.

US election watchers are now already talking about a new election slogan doing the rounds and this time it’s not Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA), but something more specific: “Abandon Biden”. The slogan is said to have it origins in Minnesota where Muslim Americans demanded Biden call for a ceasefire and has spread to Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida.

Back in 2016 in Michigan, it’s worth remembering that Trump won by 10,000 and Biden beat him by 154,000 votes in 2020 – in this, a state where there are 220,000 registered Muslim voters.

This no doubt gives food for thought for both Democrats and Republican election campaign teams, given that Michigan is again one of the critical battleground states in the 2024 election. Biden’s team will be acutely aware of the need to ensure they do not squander such votes.

Back in 2020, Biden was seen by many Arabs and Muslims as the best alternative to Trump, despite the Democrat’s long record in the Senate of voting for right-wing bills for Israel.

By contrast and as The New Arab recently highlighted: “Trump’s policies towards Arabs and Muslims were notoriously draconian. He issued multiple travel bans for Muslim majority countries, which included dismantling much of the State Department’s immigration infrastructure; repeatedly made anti-Muslim statements on social media; and moved the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.”

It was Trump’s administration too that initiated the Abraham Accords, a set of normalisation treaties between Israel and multiple Arab states, which excluded Palestinians in the process.

And so as 2024 beckons, the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza are set to continue resonating far beyond their territorial parameters for some time to come.

Most significantly though – events on the ground aside – it’s hard to escape the fact that their political and military trajectory will very much depend on what America does next. And at the epicentre of that lies the coming battle for the White House.