Here is an impossible triangle for the West. It can finance two simultaneous proxy wars. Janet Yellen, the US Treasury secretary, was right to say, on 16 October, that America could “certainly” afford to support Ukraine and Israel. The West can also place financial sanctions on other countries to impose its will on them. And it can assert its moral leadership over the rest of the world. But it cannot do all three of these things at once. I would argue that it cannot even do two.
In a recent TV interview, the former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin said that Hamas has laid a trap for the West, “one of maximum horror, of maximum cruelty”. It is a trap that could lead to escalation, he said, but also to the end of Western leadership, something we have taken for granted for generations.
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