THE wars in Ukraine and Gaza potentially have grave global implications.
Ukraine was invaded by Russia in February 2022 and Israel went into Gaza following the Hamas attacks in Israel in October 2023. Both wars see the United States actively involved.
It is the principal military backer of Ukraine as well as of Israel. Although it can be argued that the US is not the aggressor in both conflicts, it is now seriously on the backfoot as far as world opinion goes with the conflicts dragging on.
After more than two years, the fighting in Ukraine has all the appearances of a war of attrition. Gaza, meanwhile, has been virtually razed to the ground and turned into a humanitarian crisis of unimaginable proportions.
The US can say tomorrow that enough is enough and urge both Ukraine and Israel to sue for peace instead.
But it is unlikely to do so for a variety of reasons. Those reasons — ranging from domestic US politics to geopolitics — may appear reasonable but are they in the larger US interest as well as global interests?
It may be morally satisfying for the US to argue that Russian invaders and Palestinian "terrorists" must not be rewarded but will it settle for a mere moral win if winning in the battlefields prove hugely costly (in both military and political terms) or is even impossible?
The rest of the world seldom has the luxury of dealing only in moral absolutes and as the so-called unipolar moment of US hegemony comes to a close or is even over, US policymakers similarly need to make adjustments by adopting pragmatism and not just as their default stance, lest the already loud global chorus about US hypocrisy grows even louder.
This is not just a call for the US to dismount its moral high horse; it is an appeal to the superpower's own enlightened self-interests. The American narrative of itself as a moral beacon for the world undoubtedly resonates fairly widely historically.
The US was dragged into World War 2 and stayed on to rebuild both Europe and East Asia. All or most of the countries in Europe have become prosperous and stable democracies as have such East Asian countries like Japan and South Korea.
Without active US approval (such as by agreeing to China's accession into the World Trade Organisation), China would not have gained full access to rich Western markets and attained its stunning economic transformation within a generation.
The huge bet the US took that as China transformed itself economically, political transformation would naturally follow has been dashed by the cold reality of President Xi Jinping's ascendancy.
We are witnessing the fallout today as the Sino-US economic partnership that profited both and the rest of the world has turned into intense rivalry.
Xi is playing his underdog hand to the hilt with the gift of Russia being sent to the doghouse by the West.
The trilateral interplay among the US, China and Russia (formerly the Soviet Union) when then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made the historic rapprochement with China in the early 1970s led to the collapse of the Soviet empire.
Is there now a role reversal, with Russia being welcomed into the warm embrace of an ascendant China and what may that portend for the US?
Some astute Western observers readily note such an ominous geopolitical trend. Dare we all contemplate what Graham Allison asked in his book, Destined for War: Can America and China escape Thucydides's Trap?
The fog of today's twin wars must not blind the US from the greatest moral imperative of all — that of averting a war between itself and China.
The writer views developments in the nation, region and wider world from his vantage point in Kuching