Between Rules and Rituals: U.S. Ontological Security and the Civilizational Turn in the 2023–24 Gaza War

This paper develops the analytical framework by integrating ontological security theory with realist constructivism to explain the United States’ dual identity in foreign policy — its Type C liberal–internationalist commitments in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, and its Type B civilizational solidarity in the Middle East. Focusing on the Biden administration’s handling of the 2023–2024 Gaza War, the study demonstrates how powerful domestic incentives — lobbying by AIPAC and Christian Zionist groups, pro-Israel media framing, tech-platform censorship, and academic repression — combined with a long-standing security pact with Gulf monarchies, to constrained the U.S. policy options. These forces compelled the Biden administration’s attempt to project a coherent rules-based narrative in the Middle East. This “ontological retreat” eroded American soft power and provided space for China’s civilizational-state model — offering development, non-interference and rise of all. The paper argues that only by acknowledging and reconciling its domestic and regional ontological imperatives can the U. S. hope to restore moral authority.