Date: Thu, 4 May 2023
From: Robert E. Hunter <Robert@hunters21.com>
/Ambassador Partnership/, May 4, 2023
It’s always risky to assess at mid-term how a US president is doing in
foreign policy. Cold warrior Ronald Reagan had not yet gone to Reykjavik
to meet Mikhail Gorbachev. Jimmy Carter had brokered peace between
Israel and Egypt, but had not yet been challenged
by the Ayatollah, and at mid-term Harry Truman had not yet fashioned
the NATO alliance. But for the world outside if not the American people,
such mid-term assessments need to be done, if only to seek reassurance
about US leadership and as a hoped-for harbinger
of the future.
President Joe Biden’s foreign policy “report card” so far? At best mixed.
Assessment should begin with his worst moment of “egg-on-your face,”
the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, completed in August 2021. But
while Biden’s team (mostly the Pentagon) made a hash of the withdrawal,
it had been set in stone in February 2020 by his
predecessor, Donald Trump, and was way overdue, both regionally and in
most Americans’ wanting out. The Biden team’s execution was sloppy --
with, for many, tragedy -- but his strategy in implementing Trump’s
agreement with the Taliban was sound. And who
among America’s friends and allies any longer care?
This illustrates the first lesson in assessing how a US president is
doing in foreign affairs: most US foreign policies are based on
continuity, doing what the president(s) before you did. Going against
the inertia of that continuity, when national interests
call for it, requires serious strategic analysis and then presidential
leadership.
Thus judging Biden on the Big Three issues – the Russian invasion of
Ukraine, the Middle East,, and China – first requires looking at the
cards he was dealt. Judgment of Biden’s record is still merited and
necessary, but we should be chary about laying all
that is now happening at his feet.
The Biden administration correctly read the signals that Putin would
invade Ukraine. And after war began, Biden has effectively threaded
the strategic needle: between 1) giving Ukraine enough military help to
stave off defeat and orchestrating support (and
limitations thereupon) by most of the NATO allies and some other
countries, and 2) not providing so much military capability to Ukraine
that it could raise the ante by attacks into Russia proper. Thus Russia
has chosen not to attack any NATO ally, with formal
alliance security guarantees, and there has been no escalation of the
war into Russia that could – even if Putin is bluffing –bring nuclear
issues into play. Ukraine and its people will continue to suffer
horrendously. But the war has been limited (and
make no mistake, this is not a new cold war, but a hot war between the
United States and Russia, for the first time since 1919.) For both
Biden and Putin, /realpolitik/ has so far prevailed.
But in making judgments about how we got here and what needs to be done
for the long-term, it’s important to understand that the Russian
invasion of Ukraine did not come out of a clear blue sky. Even though
nothing can justify what Putin has done and Russians
have committed terrible war crimes, the invasion was not “unprovoked,”
as represented in the prevailing US narrative. George H. W. Bush (and
then Bill Clinton) proclaimed a grand strategy of “Europe whole and
free” (Mainz, May 1989), which as much as anything
meant not isolating Russia, as Germany was punished in the Treaty of
Versailles, later providing grist to Hitler’s mill. Despite ups and
downs, in the 1990s relations between the West (US/NATO) and the Russian
Federation went pretty well. The Russians even
asked to be part of the post-Dayton Implementation Force in Bosnia and
sent their best troops, putting them under US command! Russia joined
NATO’s Partnership for Peace and entered the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding
Act, an amazingly far-reaching set of arrangements.
This was balanced by the NATO-Ukraine Charter which, among other
things, provided some informal reassurances to Ukraine but also tacitly
recognized the need for NATO’s enlargement to stop well short of giving
real credence to Russian fears/charges of being
“surrounded” by NATO and not having its legitimate security needs
respected, as for our part we and NATO demand.
Then US policy went off the rails, under those who have believed that
Russia (the Soviet Union) had lost the Cold War, so why take it
seriously. Most important, in 2008 the US led NATO to declare that
Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO.” That
was very much a Bridge Too Far for Russia. But instead of recognizing
and correcting this cardinal mistake, every US administration (and NATO)
have continued to repeat the mantra right up to the current moment.
This has given credence among most Russians to
the argument that their country is under threat and thus supports
Putin’s domestic propaganda -- even though Ukraine could never get the
needed consensus of NATO’s allies to join. Then in early 2014, an
assistant Secretary of State promoted a coup in Kyiv
on an open-line telephone call (!) to the US ambassador in Ukraine (it
can be heard on the Internet) and gave Putin cover for his first
invasion soon thereafter.
The Biden administration did make limited efforts to try repairing
earlier damage in relations with Russia, notably in Biden’s Geneva
meeting with Putin (whether Putin would have done what Russia needed
to do to promote relations, including not invading
Ukraine, is an open question). But critically, the US and NATO didn’t
drop the pledge to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO.
Most important for the future, the idea that Russia must be included in
Europe’s future has been scotched, to the delight of the New Cold
Warriors in the United States who always thought this way and dominate
the Biden administration, along with a near-consensus
of the American commentariat, but to lasting damage to the West: a
strategic blunder greater than the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This includes
an inevitable consequence: that the United States will not be able to
reduce its involvement in European security and
thus enabled to divert as much attention and resources as it wants to
deal with China. Is it too late to change assessments and strategy? The
Biden administration at least needs to recognize geostrategic reality,
that Russia cannot forever be cast into the
outer darkness, whatever happens in the Ukraine war. That will require
fresh strategic analysis in Washington and likely also a fresh set of
eyes to enable Biden to see America’s long-term interests more clearly.
That should encompass recognizing that a viable framework for moving the
conflict from the battlefield to the conference table has existed since
2015. It is the Minsk II Agreement, adopted by Kyiv and Moscow but
violated by both sides. It would include Ukrainian
sovereignty over all of its territory, but some self-determination for
principally Russian-ethnic and Russian-speaking areas, with outsiders
(UN?) involved.
In the Middle East, Biden can be given a pass on Israel-Palestine
peacemaking. With Bibi Netanyahu and his ilk in charge in Israel,
nothing has been possible for years and won’t be now (this is a loss for
both Israel and the Palestinians). Further, the US 2024
election season is already in full swing, and Biden would not be the
first president unwilling to take political risks by alienating the
potent Israel lobby.
Regarding Iran, Biden followed Donald Trump in undercutting the single
most important foreign policy success of Biden’s mentor (Barack Obama),
by not at the start of his administration (or any time since then) just
rejoining the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan
of Action, from which Trump withdrew in 2018. That set Iran back on a
course to being able to build a bomb if it desires to do so. Biden thus
has to take his share of responsibility for increased risk of an Iranian
nuclear potential. His fundamental error
has also led an Iran under active threat to seek partners elsewhere,
notably by supporting Russia in Ukraine, to wonderment in Washington.
Not just rejoining the JCPOA has thus been another major strategic
blunder by Biden and his team (as it was with Trump),
again responding not to US interests but to Israel and some other
partners in the region, plus the domestic Lobby. That also will not
change, at least before the presidential election.
Most important (maybe) for the longish-term is China. Competition is
inevitable; but whether cooperation is possible is still an open
question and confrontation is almost assured. Biden didn’t invent the
need to try finding a way to compete and cooperate
with China at the same time, but he and his team haven’t helped.
Confusion of long-term objectives and methods to achieve them continues
from the past; and so does inconsistency in US policy. There is no
comprehensive overview, as different constituencies
have their own views. US business and consumers want one thing, human
rights activists another, the Pentagon (with others who focus mostly on
the military dimension) a third, the cooperation-minded – e.g., on
climate change and North Korea -- want a fourth,
and so on. There is no mechanism in the administration or in US public
debate to try reconciling the various strands. Confusion reigns, with
the bizarre tactic of imposing sanctions on the one hand and seeking
cooperation on the other: that doesn’t compute
in the real world. A new perspective, solid strategic analysis, and
understanding the need to set priorities are needed here, too, along
with seeing how events in different parts of the world interact, which
the administration does not do adequately.
Perhaps most daunting for the future of US policy and common to all
three areas – Russia, Iran, and China – is the triumph of the basic idea
of “enemies” and, at best, acceptance of new cold wars if not major
actual fighting (with Russia already, Iran perhaps
soon, China possibly later.) The US and others should have learned
from the 1948-1991 East-West Cold War that this course is ultimately
unproductive for all, creates intellectual, policy, and psychological
rigidities, and tends to persist beyond any national
interest basis. It also encourages analysts and officials to ignore
alternatives and to go with an emerging even if inaccurate consensus.
This reflects an all-too-common tendency to run away from complexity and
nuance that need to be core parts of global
politics and strategy. As with the Trump administration, this tendency
has come to rule President Biden and his team.
In fairness, Biden was dealt a difficult hand, and he has got some
things right, notably the overall goal in Afghanistan. But he did not
see what needed to be done to try averting war in Ukraine (with Putin,
of course, having had the deciding vote), and there
is no evidence that the administration has a coherent plan for bringing
the war to a halt. Ceding to Ukraine control over the goals and how to
get there diplomatically may be needed to sustain Ukrainian morale for
now, but it can’t stop the war: only the two
big powers, the United States and Russia, can do that. Indeed, the
Ukraine war is part of larger issues raised in the aftermath of the Cold
War: most important, whether in the longer term Russia will be in or
out of “Europe.” Regrettably for everyone, those
Americans supporting “in” have lost to those who support “out,”
including senior members of the Biden administration who should know
better.
A final problem facing Biden was not of his making, although he has
continued it: after the end of the Cold War, much of the US analytical
community (and hence officials in government) effectively disarmed
intellectually, with the underlying but naïve and dangerous
premise that “history has come to an end.” Instead, it was just
beginning in new terms, without American hegemony guaranteed anywhere,
now that the West no longer needed to shelter under America’s wings
against the Soviet Union. Today, therefore, new thinking
and the involvement of the best in the United States – as was done by
FDR, Harry Truman, GHW Bush, and Clinton at other key moments of major
change in US engagement in the world -- have been absent. Here is where
President Biden most needs to act.