But the crisis hasn’t just dominated global attention generally; it’s overshadowed the war in Ukraine specifically. Yet the two wars are interconnected: The United States is leading global campaigns to build support for Ukraine and Israel, while also remaining the largest funder of the two countries’ militaries. And both wars are intricately tied to the global struggle between Washington and its allies in Western Europe, on one side, against Beijing and Moscow, on the other. So how is the new conflict in the Middle East affecting the ongoing conflict in Ukraine?

Richard Gowan is the UN director for the international nonprofit Crisis Group. To Gowan, the outbreak of violence in Israel and Gaza has created a major opportunity for Russia to deride the United States relentlessly as indifferent to Palestinian civilian deaths—a charge that, rightly or wrongly, carries a lot of weight in non-Western countries. Among many of them, the Israel-Hamas conflict is eroding America’s standing—partly because majorities in these countries support the Palestinian cause, partly because they see Washington as unable to get the situation in Gaza under control. Amid all this, Gowan says, the outbreak of war in Israel and Gaza is contributing to growing uncertainty about the future of the war in Ukraine, as world leaders figure out how to handle an apparent stalemate there.

Richard Gowan: When Russia invaded Ukraine, it created a rare moment of unity in the West—but the fighting now between Hamas and Israel has triggered off profound disunity. Across the West, responses vary from country to country; but almost everywhere, we’re seeing vicious exchanges in the public sphere, not least on social media, between sympathizers of Israel and Palestine.

The new crisis came as a terrible shock, but it’s clear that many people here are drawing on very deep feelings about the issue—and longstanding traditions in how they interpret the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a whole. Instantly, the war became an important factor in Western domestic politics—in a way few if any other recent wars have.

Bluhm: How do you see this affecting support for Ukraine against Russia—particularly in Western Europe?

A notable exception was in Riga, Latvia, where I was in mid-October. The mood there was different. On the borders of the Baltic states, Russia is still a very troubling presence—and maximizing support for Ukraine, the number-one priority.

Officials in Latvia told me they were extremely nervous about a loss of focus on Ukraine among other countries in Europe. In Eastern Europe, where the Ukraine war remains a priority, the challenge has been to draw a link between what’s happening in the Middle East and what’s happening in Ukraine—and they’ve been using an argument, advanced by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, equating the need to escalate fighting Hamas terrorism with the need to continue fighting Russian terrorism.

At the same time, many officials admitted to me privately that the war between Ukraine and Russia seemed to have reached an impasse—something Ukraine’s top military commander, General Valery Zaluzhny, said explicitly in an interview earlier this month.

A lot of Western policy-makers are now trying to work out the longer-term game plan for Ukraine. I hear mutterings from Washington and Brussels about accepting a “frozen conflict” or looking at possible conditions for a peace plan. Even before October 7, we were entering a period of drift and doubt about the West’s strategy in Ukraine. Now, though, the situation in the Middle East has completely drawn attention away from it.

If Israel were to agree on a ceasefire with Hamas relatively soon—or settle into a more limited, if lengthy, conflict—I think some attention would shift back to Ukraine. And if, as seems very probable, Russia were to launch a heavy air campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure during the winter—with all the inevitable civilian deaths that should bring—that’d also draw attention back to Ukraine. So there are reasons why this might be just a brief period when Ukraine is off the top of the Western agenda.

But I don’t think that resolves the underlying problem: Leaving Israel and Gaza aside, we’ve already entered a period of uncertainty about the Western alliance’s medium-term strategy on Ukraine. To be blunt, the war in the Middle East creates an alibi for decision-makers in the West to postpone hard choices about Ukraine—because their attention is credibly elsewhere.

“Arab leaders are unhappy about how Russia has played the moment. They think Moscow is instrumentalizing the suffering of the Palestinians to score cheap points against the U.S., and they don’t believe Russia really wants a ceasefire. They see the whole thing as game-playing, and they resent it. In fact, a lot of diplomats from non-Western countries find the Russian position a little hard to take. In the end, I’m not sure how much that matters, because this is all playing out in the global public sphere just as Russia would hope. The U.S. is using its veto in the UN Security Council to protect Israel, and the U.S. is making a lot of mistakes—without the Russians having to do anything. Each time American officials respond to questions about Palestinian civilian deaths by pointing out that Israel has a right to self-defense, for instance, it just causes the U.S. more reputation damage around the world.”

“There are questions about whether the need to keep arming Israel—especially if this becomes a longer conflict—would reduce the European and U.S. ability to keep arming Ukraine. And while I’m not an expert on munitions, I know the two militaries’ needs are largely separate, even if they have some overlap. The bigger question is whether the Republicans in the U.S. Congress will become more willing to block or cut aid to Ukraine, arguing that the focus should be entirely on Israel. That would affect morale in Ukraine, whatever the eventual impact on weapons supplies.”

“I see two big issues connecting the two conflicts. One is whether the war in Israel and Gaza spreads. It’s tremendously costly now but mostly limited to Gaza. If the war spreads, things change irrevocably. The U.S. has very intently focused on avoiding regional escalation, but the longer this goes on, the greater is the risk that southern Lebanon gets drawn in. And in a worst-case scenario, Iran gets drawn in. If the U.S. gets pulled into a more direct conflict in the Middle East, or has to maintain a strong military presence there to deter attacks on Israel in a longer regional war, that will have to pull Washington away from its focus on Ukraine. The second question is whether the Americans can tamp down the conflict in Israel and Gaza. The U.S. has been trying to play its classic role of peacemaker in the Middle East, and everyone expects the U.S. to defend Israel. But if the United States isn’t strong enough to hammer out a peace deal and contain the conflict, that going to have serious global consequences for American reputation and diplomatic credibility. And if the U.S. can’t draw the war down, then many observers would see this as a symptom of U.S. global decline, and that could affect what Moscow—and Beijing—do in Ukraine.”