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President Joe Biden of the United States gives a speech from the White House on Oct. 10, 2023, about the military clash between Israel and Hamas. (EPA/Yonhap)

By Gil Yun-hyung, international news editor

“We have no place else to go. We have no place else to go.”

The time was 2:24 pm on Oct. 10, three days after the war in Gaza began with an attack by Hamas. US President Joe Biden delivered a short speech, in which he denounced Hamas as having committed “sheer evil” and declared his intent to staunchly support Israel.

The most fascinating part of the speech was a quote from a conversation he had had with the late former Prime Minister Golda Meir (1898–1978), who has been called Israel’s “Iron Lady.”

As a newly minted US senator, the young Biden visited Israel in 1973 just before the start of the Yom Kippur War, also known as the Fourth Arab–Israeli War.

Speaking to the promising young US senator who had come to meet with her, Meir explained the harsh security realities that Israel was facing. As she saw the disappointment on his face, she suggested that the two of them should take a picture together.

Meir stood wordlessly before the press for a moment before leaning over and whispering, “Don’t worry, Senator Biden.  We have a secret weapon here in Israel. We have no place else to go. We have no place else to go.”

Her message was that after the suffering of a 2,000-year diaspora in the wake of the ancient Judean kingdom’s fall at the hands of the Roman Empire, Israel had no choice but to fight desperately, for it had nowhere else to go.

As I heard this story, I was overcome by the terrible sense that this war was not going to end easily. If you think about it, Israel is not the only party with “no place else to go” — the same can be said for any people whose land was taken from them.

When Koreans had their country taken from them, they too had no place else to go. They responded by launching the independence movement, asking the poignant question, “Does spring arrive even in stolen fields?”

Similarly, the Palestinians have held out in Gaza and the West Bank and waged a struggle for over seven decades because they have no place else to go.

All the world’s misfortunes tend to arise when people succumb to an insular sense of victimhood where the stronger parties fail to recognize the desperate plight of the weaker ones. It becomes all the more difficult to prevent the growing disaster when the president of the United States — the world’s strongest country — chooses to throw its support behind this rather than striking a balance.

Right now, the US is fighting two wars, one each in Europe and the Middle East. What worries me the most at this crucial moment is not the long-term decline of its national might but its loss of leadership.

In the case of the war in Ukraine, Biden’s plan for choking off the Russian economy has been stymied by China and “Global South” countries like India, which have declined to go along with the anti-Russia sanctions imposed by the US and other leading industrial nations.

The result is a situation of growing “solidarity fatigue” as the war wears on, where the US has to now reckon with the prospects of an orderly retreat from Ukraine. In a Dec. 27 piece, the US news website Politico trenchantly observed that the objectives of the US and Europe were “shifting their focus from supporting Ukraine’s goal of total victory over Russia to improving its position in an eventual negotiation to end the war.”

The situation with the war in Gaza is even grimmer. In effect, the US is fighting a lone battle against international opinion calling for a swift end to a tragedy in which over 20,000 people have been brutally killed.

On Dec. 12, a UN General Assembly resolution to demand a “humanitarian ceasefire” was approved by 153 of the UN’s 193 member states, with only 10 votes against, including the US. At the US’ lone insistence, a resolution adopted by the UN Security Council on Dec. 22 omitted wording about a “cessation of hostilities.”

Washington’s stance is having an impact on prospects for the presidential election this November. Survey findings published by the New York Times on Dec. 21 showed just 33% of respondents approving of Biden’s response to the war in Gaza.

That rate was just 20% — versus 72% opposed — among those in the 18–29 age range, who should be a key support base for Biden.

If Biden does lose his bid for reelection, the war in Gaza will go down as a key inflection point. If Donald Trump returns to the US presidency, South Korea will need to brace itself for a major shock after over seven decades of flourishing on the back of an alliance with the US.

Having previously legislated a doctrine of preemptive use of its nuclear capabilities, North Korea has not shied away from threats of using those weapons to subdue South Korean territory. The potential for dialogue has drastically shrunk, and the Korean Peninsula now finds itself oppressed by sentiments of hatred.

As unpleasant as it is to say, a returning Trump could weaken the extended deterrence pledge that Biden offered through last year’s Washington Declaration. South Korea may have to start wrestling with fundamental changes to the larger national security framework that it has maintained over the years.

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