What Kissinger would have advised on Israel-Hamas

In Kissinger’s time, as secretary of state and national security adviser, his challenge was managing the Cold War. He did so with consummate skill isolating the Soviet Union by recognising and building a relationship with China. And let’s face it, he ruthlessly dispensed with supporters of the expansion of Soviet interests in Latin America and Asia. The strategy succeeded spectacularly, even if, at times, the tactics were a little rough.

Later, I took a leaf out of Kissinger’s book and promoted the building of effective deterrence against Chinese adventurism on the one hand and mechanisms for coexistence with China on the other. During the life of the Howard government, we successfully achieved that.

Kissinger would support Israel’s attempt to eliminate existential threats.

All of us will agree that there are times when we wonder what the strategy of any particular government might be, assuming it has one at all. Government positions on international issues are often designed to placate vested interests within their own country, rather than based on any strategy or for that matter moral principles.

Let us take the Hamas war as a contemporary example. Presumably most reasonable Western governments would want Israel not just to have the right to exist but to thrive within secure borders. Kissinger would support Israel’s attempt to eliminate existential threats.

One of those is Hamas. Not only did it commit atrocities beyond the wildest imagination of the most evil people on October 7, but Hamas has repeatedly made clear what its strategy is: the elimination of Israel as a state and the murder of the Jewish people.

Behind Hamas lies Iran which also sponsors Hezbollah which likewise wishes to eliminate Israel. Iran is also helping Russia in Ukraine. So a Western strategy which made sense would put massive pressure on Iran and unequivocally back Israel as it fights for its life.

Mistakes on Iran

The Australian government has been wrestling with its position on the Hamas war. It has no strategy. It simply is trying to balance domestic opinion, rather than articulate clear and simple objectives.

Not that the Biden administration is all that much clearer. There are things it has done well in response to the Hamas war, not least the decision to send two US carrier groups to the eastern Mediterranean. That’s the sort of thing Kissinger would have done. They have proved to be an effective deterrence against any significant intervention in the war by Iran and Iranian surrogates, such as Hezbollah and the Houthis.

But in recent years, the Biden government has tried to reach out to Iran, abandoning the position of the Trump administration, which was to apply maximum pressure on that regime. That engagement policy with Iran has been spectacularly unsuccessful.

The Biden administration has also been only partially helpful to Israel as it tries to destroy Hamas. President Biden has been fuelling a ghastly dilemma for the Israelis; a kind of Sophie’s choice problem.

On one hand, the Israelis do want to get their hostages back from Hamas. On the other, they have to destroy Hamas militarily just as the West has successfully destroyed al-Qaeda and ISIS. It can be done but it will require determination and time. Hamas may not be able to match the military might of the Israeli defence force, but it does have a large number of Israeli hostages.

We can now see why it took the hostages. It has released them group by group in exchange for a pause in the fighting. That has given Hamas time to regroup and re-arm.

You can see how this will play out. Hamas will never release all of the hostages. They will always hold on to a few to preserve their military position from the Israeli Defence Force. The Biden administration has been championing the hostage-release-for-pause tactic and that will in the end inevitably fail. There is only one tactic which will work: the total destruction of any capacity Hamas has to wage war.

The destruction of Hamas will have two very obvious advantages. First, there will not be future wars. Without the destruction of Hamas, the events of October 7 will only recur. So if your strategy is a ceasefire and the end of war between Israel and the Palestinians, if you think it through you need the elimination of Hamas first.

Secondly, the elimination of Hamas will give the Palestinians the opportunity to reconfigure their political environment. It will also give the Arab states – which are equally hostile to Hamas – the opportunity to assist the Palestinians with the reconfiguration of their politics.

If those states can persuade the Palestinians to establish a relatively corrupt-free alternative to the discredited Fatah regime in Ramallah and Hamas, then there might be an outside chance of one day negotiating successfully the elusive two-state solution.

So that’s the lesson of Henry Kissinger. We need to think issues through on the basis of having a clear strategy, not in reaction to TV images or perceptions of different voter interests at home.