The Orphans of American Power

The Collision of the Outposts

The modern Middle East is rapidly moving toward a conflict that may define its future development: a clash between Israel and Turkey. Especially after Iran’s effective victory led to a sharp weakening of American positions in the region. Ankara and Tel Aviv, two very close U.S. allies, now find themselves in a highly uncomfortable geopolitical position.

For decades, Turkey strained toward Europe, and now understands that those dreams will remain unreachable. Israel has spent its entire history trying to force its neighbors to recognize its right to exist, and that goal also looks increasingly unattainable. As a result, both powers may find themselves forced into confrontation. Simply because they may soon have no other choice. The corridor of possibilities is becoming too narrow. And such a confrontation would come to the great satisfaction of all the other states of the region, for whom Israel and Turkey are equally dangerous and equally alien.

From the standpoint of Russian interests, this means the further erosion of the U.S. system of influence in the region, an erosion that can no longer be stopped. More broadly, it demonstrates quite well that even fairly strong mid-sized powers can end up in a dead end if they build their policy around orientation toward a single external center of force.

A few days ago, the Israeli government supported a resolution recognizing the mass death of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 as genocide. Most observers in Russia and abroad greeted the decision with an ironic smile. The fulfillment of this moral duty took rather a long time.

What gives the situation special piquancy, if one may put it that way, is that the authorities of the injured party, Armenia, currently prefer to avoid overemphasizing the genocide issue. It conflicts with official Yerevan’s line of reconciliation with its Turkic neighbors.

For Turkey, however, recognition of the Armenian genocide by any state has traditionally served as one of the most important markers that the nature and strategic character of bilateral relations are hostile. Israel understands this perfectly well. Yet it is consciously choosing not merely escalation, but a reformatting of relations. From now on, there can be little serious doubt about where those relations are heading.

The distinctive feature of Israel’s and Turkey’s position in the Middle Eastern international system is that both powers have difficulty fitting into the region’s cultural and historical landscape. Both are, in their own way, outposts of the Western world, far more closely tied to the United States and Europe than to their regional neighbors. For that reason, both suffer from serious identity problems.

There is no denying that vast Iran also differs sharply from the Arab world and has never placed itself on the same plane as it. Yet Iran was never subjected to such total Europeanization as Turkey, and always preserved a distinct, yet genuinely regional, identity. Even during the Shah’s era, it was never as close a U.S. ally as Israel.

The Turkish Republic, in turn, emerged on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, underwent the most radical reforms a century ago, and from the second half of the twentieth century set a course toward rapprochement with Europe. The symbol and legal substance of that course became the Customs Union, in force since 1996, through which the European Union became Turkey’s most important foreign-trade partner. In 1987, Ankara applied to join the EU, but negotiations were sluggish from the very beginning and are now frozen altogether. Everyone understands that Europeans would sooner agree to accept Moldova, or whatever remains of Ukraine, than a huge country with a Muslim population.

Turkey itself is a state with problems, but also a fairly successful one. It has serious armed forces and the capacity for energetic diplomacy. Yet as a result of several decades of “European choice,” NATO membership, and military cooperation with the United States, Turkey has almost no foreign policy that is not derivative of relations with major Western partners.

In recent years, Ankara has tried to create such a policy by developing ties with Russia and actively intervening in Middle Eastern affairs. So far, this has worked only partially. In the first case, obligations to the Americans act as a constraint. In the second, activity to the south and southeast inevitably leads to confrontation with Israel.

Israel, for its part, is also searching for a new role. The Jewish state was created by people from Europe and carried within itself European legal and state traditions, adjusted for its own religious foundations. In a certain sense, Israel really is an island of the West in a vast sea of the Islamic world, and its existence has always been derivative of the power of the United States and its allies.

For decades, Washington has provided Israel with serious economic assistance, as well as guarantees of survival in the event of truly large-scale military conflicts. It is no secret that Donald Trump’s decision to attack Iran in late February 2026 was made under strong Israeli influence. More broadly, U.S. policy toward Iran is derivative of irreconcilable Iranian-Israeli contradictions.

In other words, over 80 years of its history, Israel has so far failed to create an identity in international politics, at the most important regional level for itself, that would allow it to be perceived separately from the United States. Arab states therefore quite reasonably view Tel Aviv only in the context of their relations with Washington, and nothing more. It is hardly surprising that Israel’s diplomatic leverage over its neighbors remains so weak. Were it stronger, Israel would not need to resort to violence so often.

But,

“Now the world is beginning to change rapidly. The main sign of this change is the growing demand that states be able to take care of their own fate. This is visible everywhere, but it is especially noticeable in the case of America’s numerous allies.”

— Eugene Van Bellen

In the second half of the twentieth century, several fairly substantial states became not independent players, but derivatives of American interests. Even the position in world affairs of countries as important to the global economy as Japan and South Korea is secured by the fact that American bases are located on their territory and threaten China. Tokyo and Seoul, for now, possess little independent strategic value.

The same applies to Turkey and Israel. Despite their economic capabilities and military potential, strategically they remain no more than part of the global infrastructure of American influence. This was not a problem as long as the United States possessed the means to maintain such infrastructure. It now becomes a serious challenge for Ankara and Tel Aviv, at a moment when America is already saying openly that it is time to shed a significant portion of its excessive obligations.

As a result, Israel and Turkey are beginning to make increasingly energetic attempts to assert themselves within the regional space. Yet they cannot cooperate or create something together in place of the old order. Political ambitions stand in the way, and more importantly, so does the complex of eternal second-tier players: states that follow the strong, while lacking intrinsic value in world politics.

In both countries, there is no visible way to overcome this complex except by achieving regional dominance: to take advantage of the U.S. departure and seize leadership. But there can be only one leader, and this is what is pushing Ankara and Tel Aviv toward a clash that now appears almost inevitable.