Donald Trump arrived in the Middle East in the third month of NashIt will. Barack Obama arrived there in the fourth month. Joe Biden waited almost a year and a half. He gets there as someone who has frozen a demon. This area yields for him especially bad news, with bad dynamics. No “hundred deal” is on the agenda. Even the opening of another Israeli embassy in another Arab capital will no longer yield the solemnity of the Abrahamic Accords.
Not only can he not count on a Middle Eastern bonus, but he is already paying a price, at least towards the left of his party. The man, who during his campaign promised to “land” Saudi Arabia from a group of civilized countries, removes the taboo and makes a pilgrimage to Prince Muhammad bin Salman. American intelligence has blamed Ben Salman for the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Hashukaji in 2018.
Biden bites his lip. He was one of the most prominent preachers in favor of foreign policy based on human rights. Now he is forced to give up the moral tone, at least in the Middle East, perhaps elsewhere as well, in favor of security, economic and political interests. He wants the Saudis and Gulf princes to produce more oil. Three months ago this request was anchored in a desire to weaken the world’s dependence on Russian oil; It is now anchored in a desire to curb inflation in the United States. It gallops first and foremost through the fuel pumps.
The public handshake to Ben Salman will end any semblance of international isolation of the House of Saud. For the old president of the United States, this will be a sad moment. When the United States cannot choose its friends, or when it knowingly chooses tyrants and human rights violators, it declares itself a degree of political and moral weakness. In most countries, the choice between morality and interests is never particularly difficult. In the United States, the rhetorical, religious, and cultural traditions always make it difficult to be cynical, at least ostensibly. But the campaign to reconcile the tyrants is also sad for reasons of a broad global strategy.
“Rotate” the United States east
The Middle East became a millstone around the neck of American foreign policy about 15 years ago. This was the result of the Second Iraq War.
Barack Obama inherited the tangle of Iraq from George W. Bush Jr.. He tried, and kept trying, to “pivot” the United States to East Asia. He thought, and most learned and non-scholarly observers agreed, that tackling the Chinese challenge should be at the center of US attention, not redrawing the map of the Middle East.
To get east, he evacuated the entire U.S. military from Iraq, even though the Iraqis themselves wanted some presence. To get there, he let Russia save the Assad regime, and open the gates of Syria to Iran. To get there he signed a nuclear deal with Iran, and paid for it in a plane full of cash. When the Saudis protested, he seriously advised them to learn to “divide the neighborhood” with the Ayatollahs (hinting at the days when he worked for a living as a neighborhood guide in Chicago and was a mediator between street gangs).
But the Middle East did not agree to stabilize at the end of the queue. Shortly after the evacuation of the Americans from Iraq, ISIS fanatics emerged from the desert, conquered Mosul and considerable parts of the Syrian desert, and established an Islamic caliphate. Then began a six-year war, in which the United States was forced to invest considerable resources. The “pivot” to the east did not materialize.
Donald Trump disagreed with almost no element of his predecessor’s foreign policy, but he too wanted to turn east. He, too, wanted to fold from the Middle East, but since he was not endowed with subtleties or the ability to deepen, he walked a double in a china shop. He tore to pieces the agreement with Iran, and assassinated the main executioner in the Middle East. He sold US Kurdish allies in Syria to Tape Erdogan. The complications resulting from these moves did not add up to any safe exit recipe.
Biden can brief his briefings
Joe Biden, Obama’s deputy, was an active partner in trying to sway America eastward. Since settling in the Oval Office he has also repeatedly tried to unload millstones so he can concentrate on China. He folded from Afghanistan in a shocking and humiliating demonstration of losing his temper. He renewed talks with Iran on the return of the nuclear deal.
And then, on the way to the Far East and the Pacific, Ukraine happened, shuffled all the cards, and was completely distracted. How can you make a “pivot” to the east, when you have to finance and arm a weak country, so that you can fight for a long time against a superpower.
Biden does not need any briefing on the Middle East. He can brief his briefings. He became a member of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee in 1975, at the age of 32. He served on it for 33 consecutive years; Six years as chairman. The first Israeli prime minister that young senator Joe Biden visited in Jerusalem was, or in fact was, Golda Meir, in 1973. I have not found the exact calculation of the number of his travels to the Middle East in the last 49 years, but it can be assumed that he has been there dozens of times.
His meeting with Golda, he later said, was “one of the most significant meetings of my life.” She told him that “Israel’s secret weapon is that Israelis can go nowhere else.” In 1986, in a speech to the Senate plenum on the approval of annual aid to Israel, Biden said, “It is time we stopped apologizing for our support for Israel. This is the best $ 3 billion investment we can make. If it were not for Israel, the United States would have had to invent it to protect its interests in the region.
Growing skepticism towards Israel
One can of course attribute that declaration to electoral needs. A few months later, Biden began his first attempt to be elected his party’s president. But even if that declaration was an expression of self-interest, Biden can be said to belong to a different generation, in which Israel still enjoyed a romantic aura on the American left. Since then, the weight of public support for it has shifted far to the right. Opinion polls repeatedly show growing skepticism towards Israel among Democratic Party fans. The emotional closeness between Israel and Donald Trump is not helpful, especially when the former president and his supporters repeatedly deny the legitimacy of Biden’s election.
The president’s political weakness does not strengthen his hands in foreign affairs. In the words of an experienced political strategist, David Gergen, who advised four presidents, Biden should give up a high-profile agenda, and instead decide on two or three issues he wants to focus on, external and internal.
.@David_Gergen has advised four presidents. How does he rate Pres. Biden, & what has he learned about leadership & its evolution?
From today’s GPS: pic.twitter.com/NnMgwQT52Q
– Fareed Zakaria (@FareedZakaria) June 12, 2022
But this is not the time to settle for an American president who settles for little. The classic presidency advice “Do not roll too many balls in the air” does not fit the most threatening collection of crises the world has experienced in at least 75 years.
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