The world is not getting tamer as the US presidential election nears. Lethal Israeli strikes against leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah — following a deadly missile attack by Hezbollah in the northern Israel — raise the specter of a wider Middle Eastern war. An apparently fraudulent election in Venezuela is fanning protests and brutal repression by the government.
Both crises are testing US President Joe Biden in his final months in office. Both are also examples of how a messy world could wreak havoc on a close-run presidential race.
Speculation about a so-called October surprise is nothing new. In the fall of 1956, a war over the Suez Canal and a doomed uprising against Soviet domination in Hungary jolted global affairs on the eve of then-US president Dwight Eisenhower’s re-election. In 1968, then-soon-to-be US president Richard Nixon feared that a breakthrough in the Vietnam peace talks might doom his candidacy, just as Democrats feared that Nixon was undermining those talks for his own political gain.
Illustration: Mountain People
In 1980, supporters of Ronald Reagan — who won that year — worried that then-US president Jimmy Carter would seal a last-minute bargain to spring US hostages from Iran. (Other observers later alleged, probably without merit, that Reagan sabotaged that bargain so the hostages could be released on his watch.)
The 2016 presidential election was roiled by Russian cyberattacks and disinformation meant to benefit Donald Trump’s successful campaign.
Today, a world witnessing crises in several regions could throw any number of wrenches into the contest between Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris.
The ugliest possibility would be a major escalation involving Israel and its enemies, most notably Iran and the regional proxies it supports. An all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah would dwarf the fight in Gaza in its destructiveness. It could easily become a regional eruption by causing Iran to intervene in support of its most important proxy.
Beyond its human cost, such a war would play into the Trump campaign’s argument that weak Democratic leadership has produced a world on fire, but its real political impact would be among Democrats themselves.
No so long ago, a raging war in Gaza — and Biden’s firm support for Israel — was threatening to depress Democratic enthusiasm among young voters, progressives, people of color and also Arab-Americans, particularly in Michigan. Harris is somewhat less vulnerable to that problem, because she has been marginally more critical of Israel.
Nonetheless, a war in which Israel is ravaged by Hezbollah’s missiles, while the Israeli military makes southern Lebanon look like Gaza, might trigger ugly protests at this month’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago. It would also re-insert an Israel-shaped wedge in the Democratic coalition at a time when Harris’ hopes for victory probably lie more in maximizing core turnout than winning over independents.
Elsewhere, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is trying to cheat his way to another term, while the opposition seeks to thwart this electoral larceny. Venezuela itself is not a hot-button issue in the US, but an out-of-control crisis could inflame issues that do seriously threaten Harris’ bid for president: immigration and the economy.
In the past few years, nearly 8 million Venezuelans have fled their country to escape the repression and misery caused by Maduro. Polling shows that perhaps one-third of the remaining population — millions more Venezuelans — could leave if that regime clings to power.
Although most Venezuelans end up elsewhere in Latin America, a migratory shock of this magnitude could produce new scenes of chaos at the US border before the vote for who enters the White House and if the US punishes a tenacious Maduro by tightening sanctions on the Venezuelan oil industry, the effect could be turmoil in energy markets — and the domestic economy — before Nov. 5.
There are other spoilers lurking. Yemen’s Houthis have been shooting at shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden for months. If a shot hits a US warship and kills US service members — a scenario, Pentagon officials warn, that only grows more likely — it is sure to hurt an administration that seems unable to vanquish ragtag Middle Eastern radicals. Or, perhaps, if Russia achieves some sizeable gain in eastern Ukraine, where Kyiv’s forces are under heavy pressure, it would amplify Trump’s charge that the current administration lacks a strategy for winning or ending that war.
What geopolitical developments might favor Harris? Her best hope is a breakthrough in the seemingly endless ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas.
A deal that ends the war in Gaza could calm Hezbollah and the Houthis, both of which claim that they are fighting in solidarity with the Palestinians. There is an outside chance a ceasefire could re-energize negotiations for normalized diplomatic ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, giving Biden — and Harris — a signature achievement.
At the very least, a ceasefire would reduce the odds of Democratic disunity over the Middle East.
US officials say they are close to an agreement, although obstacles — Hamas’ intransigence, the resistance of right-wing elements in Israel and Hezbollah’s missiles — still abound. Israel’s killing of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ top political leader, could give his colleagues incentive to cut a deal before they meet the same fate — or it could simply trigger a conflict with Iran, which is furious that the assassination happened on its soil.
Even if a temporary ceasefire is reached in the next few weeks, it could well break down.
However, as a high-stakes and newly competitive presidential election nears its climax, expect the Biden-Harris team to go all out to secure a truce — both for the geopolitical reprieve it will bring and the political benefits it might provide.
Hal Brands is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, the Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a member of the US Department of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board. He is also a senior adviser to Macro Advisory Partners. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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