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In Europe, Russia’s war on Ukraine shatters the long-standing norm that borders should not be changed by force. In the Middle East, the war between Israel and Hamas threatens a dangerous radicalization of the region, with Iranian-backed militias fighting U.S.-backed allies from Lebanon to Yemen to Iraq to Syria. And in Asia, China’s rise continues to unsettle the balance of power.

Each of these challenges has its peculiarities, but they have in common the need for a sophisticated mixture of deterrence and diplomacy. The Biden administration has tackled them energetically, setting agendas, rallying allies and talking to adversaries. Success will depend on whether it can execute the policies it has adopted. Alas, that might depend on the United States’ domestic politics more than its grand strategies.

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In Europe, Washington has emphasized combating Russian aggression. This is easier said than done. Russia has an economy that was nine times the size of Ukraine’s before the war and a population today almost four times larger. That basic mismatch can only be addressed through continuous, large-scale Western assistance to Ukraine, coupled with pressure on Kyiv to develop a more manageable military strategy and to reform its politics and economics so that it can genuinely become a part of the West.

In the Middle East, the challenge is more in the realm of diplomacy than deterrence. Israel has overwhelming power compared with Hamas; there really is no doubt that it will win in the narrow, military sense of the word. But to leave Israel more secure, with meaningful, new alliances with the Gulf Arab states, the United States must get Israel to address an underlying, unavoidable reality: about 5 million Palestinians live in lands occupied by Israel without political rights and without a state of their own.

China is the largest of the challenges and the one that, in the long run, will shape the international order — determining whether the open international system collapses into a second Cold War with arms races in nuclear weapons, space and artificial intelligence. The strategy the Biden administration has adopted is nuanced, emphasizing competition and deterrence while also trying to build a working relationship with Beijing. During the past few months, that strategy seems to have yielded results, including a more conciliatory tone from the Chinese. The shift undoubtedly has much to do with Beijing’s economic troubles, as well as the realization that Xi Jinping’s “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy has backfired, producing animosity........

© Washington Post