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Roula Khalaf, editor of the FT, picks her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The mafia is said to have asked What good (Who benefits from this?) when trying to find out who is behind a hit. There is no evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin had anything to do with Hamas’ horrific massacre of 1,200 Israeli civilians last year. But Russia was one of the biggest beneficiaries. To reach this conclusion, all you have to do is ask: whose bad (Who loses?). The biggest geopolitical answer is Joe Biden. If Israeli forces move into the Rafah enclave in the Gaza Strip, the situation is likely to only get worse.
Fate decided that Hamas’ barbarism took place on October 7, Putin’s birthday. The geopolitical instability that has prevailed since then was packaged like a gift to Moscow. Putin now finds it easier to portray Biden’s “liberal international order” as a hollow shell. Biden has made it clear that he will fully support Israel if the International Criminal Court files charges against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his colleagues. In contrast, the US President supports the ICC’s indictment of Putin for his alleged war crimes in Ukraine.
The irony is that up until October 7, Putin and Netanyahu had something of a mutual admiration society. Each recognized the other as a strong leader who would do anything to stay in power. Each shared a disdain for American liberals and charitable Democrats in general. These overlapping resentments remain. However, since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and especially since October 7, Russia has turned away from Israel and allied itself with Iran, Israel’s main enemy.
Iran has sent Russia large quantities of drones to use against Ukraine. Russia, for its part, has given up any pretense of balancing Iran and Israel, which it had cautiously tried to do for many years. Three weeks after the attacks on Israel, Moscow also received a delegation of high-ranking Hamas officials. Worryingly, Putin has also drifted into open anti-Semitism. Until recently, he was one of the few leaders in Russian history to avoid this old scapegoat. Now he routinely points out that Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish. Strangely, he does this alongside the claim that Zelensky is running a Nazi state.
Everything that is bad for Biden is good for Putin. Since he is the sole advocate of a “rules-based international order” in the 2024 presidential election, a Biden victory would be bad news for Moscow. As Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, said at the FT Weekend Festival last weekend, a second Biden term would prepare Ukraine for a counteroffensive against Russian-occupied territory in 2025.
A victory for Donald Trump would mean Ukraine’s forced capitulation to Russian conditions at the negotiating table. The more chaos there is in Gaza between now and November, the harder it will be for Biden to defeat Trump. This is what makes the advance of Israeli forces into eastern Rafah this week so dangerous for Biden.
Putin is largely a passive beneficiary of the consequences of the IDF’s Gaza operations. But his interests in this regard overlap with those of Netanyahu. The Israeli leader this week effectively sabotaged the chances of a ceasefire with Hamas by saying he would advance on Rafah anyway.
Israel’s leader has an epic conflict of interest. When the war ends, there will be an Israeli parliamentary election. Polls suggest Netanyahu’s Likud party would not enforce Go, meaning he could go straight to prison over his delayed corruption trials. He has every incentive to continue the war. Netanyahu therefore poses as great a threat to Biden’s re-election prospects as Putin.
It remains possible that Biden’s team, led by Antony Blinken, his secretary of state, and Bill Burns, his CIA director, will find a way to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a ceasefire and the release of some hostages. This could change the weather in Israel. Netanyahu knows that it would be far more difficult to resume military operations once this three-stage process begins. As Sullivan also said last weekend, diplomacy is about “getting a thousand no’s until one day you get to a yes.” Achieving that yes vote is the White House’s top priority.
Failure to bring about a ceasefire could lead to thousands more civilian deaths in Gaza, possible famine due to limited humanitarian aid, and more campus protests in America. It would also lead to widening divisions in the Democratic Party. Biden recently stopped an arms shipment to Israel on humanitarian grounds. If the Gaza war escalates again, he will be forced to take much tougher action.
Biden must keep one thing in mind. What is good for Netanyahu is good for Putin and therefore also for Trump.