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[ 20-01-2025 ]
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[https://slate.com/news - and - politics/2025/01/president - joe - biden - foreign - policy - afghanistan - gaza - israel - ukraine - russia.html
What Did Biden Accomplish on the World Stage? It’s a Mixed Bag.
BY FRED KAPLAN JAN 19, 2025 5:40 AM
Joe Biden entered the Oval Office in January 2021 with more experience in foreign policy than any president in 30 years - more than all but one or two of his predecessors in the past half - century. Yet he leaves this week with a mixed record, including some deep disappointments, on the global stage.
The downside of his performance stems, in part, from the fact that the world is more complicated, its problems more intractable, than at almost any time in U.S. history. But some of the failures can also be traced to his own blind spots and miscalculations.
That said, his legacy is teeming with bright spots as well. He restored the NATO alliance, which Donald Trump had purposely eroded. He solidified once fraying partnerships in the Pacific, to share prosperity and to contain China, while also negotiating joint projects with Beijing on issues of common interest.
He reentered global forums on climate change, which Trump had abandoned (and may yet again). He invested billions of dollars in technology at home, greatly enhancing U.S. competitiveness in microchips, A.I., and cybersecurity, which will reap huge benefits - economically and militarily - in the years ahead. In his final days, he concluded a ceasefire and a release of hostages in Gaza, and while he can’t take full credit for sealing the deal, there wouldn’t have been a deal to sign without months of his tireless (if often fruitless) diplomatic efforts.
Still, even some of these successes were less wholehearted than he has sometimes touted.
One of Biden’s first steps as president was to extend New START - the Obama - era U.S. - Russia strategic arms - reduction treaty, which was about to expire - for another five years. This prevented, or at least postponed, a new nuclear arms race, which might otherwise have revved up when tensions with Moscow deepened a year later with the invasion of Ukraine. (Russia has deployed new nuclear weapons, which the treaty allows, but it has not expanded the size of its arsenal.)
However, around the same time, Biden declined to revive the Iran nuclear deal - which Barack Obama had signed in 2015, but which Trump scuttled three years later. I have tried to find out, with no success, why Biden didn’t take this step, which he had promised he would do, and which the European co - signers were hoping he would do, and while a relatively moderate government was still in place in Tehran. Subsequently, Iran’s new leaders figured out how to circumvent U.S. economic sanctions (mainly by conducting trade, outside the realm of the dollar, through Russia and China) and rebuilt their nuclear program to the point where they are closer than ever to building a bomb.
In August 2021, half a year into his term, Biden withdrew all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Biden had long been skeptical about this war. As Obama’s vice president, he was the Cabinet’s only opponent to the military’s plan to escalate the war by deploying 40,000 more troops and adopting a counterinsurgency (aka “nation - building”) strategy. Biden pushed instead for sending just 10,000 more troops and using them simply to train the Afghan army. Obama acceded to the military, but after 18 months, concluded the plan was infeasible and switched to Biden’s approach.
The total pullout wasn’t just Biden’s idea. It was President Trump who signed a treaty with the Taliban - behind the backs of the Afghan government - agreeing to withdraw all U.S. troops by May 2021. By the time Biden took office, no U.S. armed forces members had been killed in Afghanistan for more than a year because the Taliban agreed not to attack Americans while waiting for the pullout to kick in. But the Taliban also threatened to resume their attacks if Trump’s treaty was broken. The war would resume and the U.S. would have to withdraw while under attack or rejoin the fight and send in 30,000 troops - so Biden decided to abide by Trump’s treaty.
Biden did wrangle a three - month extension to allow enough time for a withdrawal. He probably could have negotiated a still longer extension, for a more deliberate process, but he was in a hurry to get out - partly because of his long frustrations with the war, partly because he was impatient to focus on what he saw as more important parts of the world, especially in the Pacific.
Things might have been different if Biden had argued that the war’s purpose was fulfilled: We had long ago killed Osama bin Laden, the plotter of the Sept. 11 attack, and more ambitious missions contrived since then had proved impractical. But instead he argued that we had a stake in the war but that the Afghan army could fight on for at least another six months without our presence and that, if the terrorists returned, we could monitor and deal with the problems from “over the horizon” - i.e., from other U.S. bases, though the nearest one was 1,000 miles away.
In fact, though, the Afghan army collapsed almost immediately - as was predictable, since it had long depended on U.S. air support, intelligence, and logistics. The Taliban recaptured the government just as swiftly and resumed their oppressive policies, and there was nothing we could do from 1,000 miles away - as any military planner could have foreseen.
The results, catastrophic inside Afghanistan, had repercussions elsewhere. In his recent book, War, Bob Woodward reported - on the basis of U.S. intelligence sources inside the Kremlin - that a year later, Vladimir Putin thought he could get away with invading Ukraine in part because of Washington’s hasty abandonment of Afghanistan. Putin gravely miscalculated. He had plenty of chances to reverse course or at least limit his ambitions once Ukraine mounted its counteroffensive - but by then, Putin was trapped in his own delusions.
Biden’s response to Putin’s invasion - rallying allies, mobilizing intelligence resources, and rushing military aid - was, at the outset of the war, masterful. But this too hit some self imposed obstacles.
From the outset, Biden made clear that he would do everything to help defend Ukraine, short of having U.S. or NATO forces fight Russia directly, which would “start World War III.” This was a reasonable concern. Russia has a nuclear arsenal. Nuclear deterrence is a two - way street; it discourages Russia from attacking us, but also deters us from attacking, or enabling direct attacks on, Russia.
In his book, Woodward says - again, based on intelligence reports - that Putin actively considered launching tactical nuclear weapons if Ukraine’s counteroffensive started encroaching on Russian territory, especially if it did so with NATO - supplied weapons. So, Biden started respecting Putin’s “red lines” - refraining from steps that he thought might provoke Putin into widening or escalating the war.
First, Biden refused to send Ukraine modern tanks, then allowed them; then he blocked modern jet fighters, but soon after allowed them too; then missiles with sufficient range to hit Russia - Putin’s neon bright - red line - but later dropped prohibition as well. None of his concessions provoked Putin to expand the war.
The lesson here isn’t entirely clear. In retrospect, it seems that some of Biden’s restrictions were too tight. The Ukrainian army might be in a better position today if Biden had loosened his grip a year or two earlier. Then again, if Biden had supplied arms with no restrictions, and if Ukraine had plowed through Russian positions and launched attacks on Russian territory, would Putin have fired tac nukes? We don’t know.
But let’s assume Biden’s restraint was prudent. If he wasn’t going to let Ukraine “win,” in a meaningful sense of that word, what was his strategic goal? To help them fight to a stalemate, which would exhaust both sides and lead to negotiations? If so, U.S. intelligence miscalculated how many Russian casualties Putin - more than 400,000 so far - was willing to tolerate.
Ukraine was - and still is - a cause worth supporting and arming. But the campaign was bound to have its limits - billions of U.S. dollars in aid couldn’t keep flowing forever - and now, with no meaningful goals accomplished and Trump coming to power, it may end entirely, perhaps to Russia’s benefit.
The war in Gaza offers another case where Biden’s inclination to seek some middle ground mired him in a muddle.
After Hamas’ attack of Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 Israelis, Biden flew to Israel, embraced Benjamin Netanyahu, pledged unwavering support for the Jewish state - but then pressured the prime minister and his Cabinet to retaliate in a way that minimized civilian casualties.
This pressure initially had some effect. It brought about the creation of humanitarian corridors and a six-day ceasefire that led to the release of more than 100 hostages - nearly half the number nabbed by Hamas. At the same time, Biden’s stationing of two aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean sent a strong signal to Iran and its Hezbollah proxies in Lebanon not to assist Hamas with full - scale attacks on Israel from the north or east.
Then, after a while, Biden’s well - tempered strategy collapsed. He continued to defend and arm Israel, but imposed no penalties when Netanyahu unleashed massive bombing raids on Gaza with little sensitivity to civilian deaths. Netanyahu concluded, rightly, that Biden’s admonitions weren’t serious.
At the same time, Hamas had no incentive to stop fighting, much less to surrender all its territory. The war raged on, with only brief moments of restraint from either side. Just in the past few days, a ceasefire and hostage-for-prisoner release has been put in place - but few are optimistic that it will endure beyond its six - week duration.
Biden was born during World War II, came of age in the Cold War, and won his first election to the Senate at the age of 29, in 1972, toward the end of the Vietnam War. From the start, he focused on international affairs, eventually rising to chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
His Senate career coincided with the era dominated by the rivalry between two superpowers - the U.S. leading the capitalist West, the Soviet Union controlling the communist East. All the world’s conflicts and conclaves were seen, sometimes simplistically, in the context of this duopoly. Even those countries that tried to go their own way did so in the Cold War’s inescapable framework, labeling their organizations as “nonaligned.”
It was a tense world, but - from the vantage of the superpowers and their favored allies - a stable one as well. To most American foreign - policy specialists, including Biden, the central task was to manage this rivalry to assert U.S. interests without provoking a major war - negotiating nuclear arms - control treaties, strengthening NATO, leading the “free world” (too often defined as any country or movement that was anti - communist), and maintain free trade.
By the time Biden entered the executive branch as Obama’s vice president, the Soviet Union had collapsed, but the terms of the Cold War still dominated the discussion. It was called the “post - Cold War” era. What that meant - how it might be translated to some label that didn’t include those two words - was unclear.
The important fact, which many were slow to grasp, was that when the Soviet Union collapsed, so did the fulcrum - the object of challenge and confrontation - that kept the U.S. - led order intact and cohesive. Throughout the Cold War, our allies and many neutral nations followed U.S. interests, even when they didn’t align with their own, because they feared the alternative - domination by the Soviets.
For example, in the 1970s, when Egypt decided to break away from Moscow’s orbit, it aligned with Washington because it needed protection from some superpower. Its leader, Anwar Sadat, expelled Soviet officers, trashed Soviet weapons, and dropped its pro - Soviet policy - and instead bought American weapons, sent their officers to American military academies, and pursued pro - Western policies. (It was during this time that Jimmy Carter got Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to sign a peace treaty, which remarkably endures to this day.)
Nowadays, by contrast, Egypt (like many other medium - sized powers) can draw on a variety of suppliers and protectors - some of them foes of one another. It isn’t necessarily wedded to one system or alliance, and thus the larger powers have less influence over its actions.
In other words, the end of the Cold War unleashed a degree of anarchy which spun further out of control as the new structures failed to replace the old ones. Biden admitted as much in a speech at the State Department earlier this month, saying, “The post - Cold War era is over. A new era has begun.”
Looking back at Biden’s four years as president, one can conclude that he never quite figured out - it may be that a person of his background is unable to figure out - just how to adapt to the new era.
This isn’t a critique. Nobody really knows how to adapt. The United States may be the strongest nation on Earth, by several military and economic metrics. But that doesn’t mean we know how to convert these metrics into power - which the sociologist Max Weber defined, a little more than 100 years ago, as the ability to “carry out one’s own will, despite resistance.”
The Cold War was a system allowing the nations at the top - “the superpowers” - to carry out their will. When the Cold War vanished, it became harder for anyone to do so consistently or across a lot of spheres of activity.
In his finest moments, Biden played the hand he was dealt as well as anyone might have played them. But he didn’t realize just how much the world had changed as it passed from Cold War to post - Cold War to post - post - Cold War.
At least Biden understood that the new world imposes limits on how much any nation’s leader can influence others - which is why he emphasized the need for cooperation among allies.
Returning to the White House, Trump seems to think he has the command and know - how to control global events - to wield power - all by himself. The rest of us, worldwide, are holding our collective breaths, wondering how hard he will try, and what flailing actions he might take, to overwhelm the inevitable resistance.
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