The foreign policy record of US President Joe Biden's administration in 2023 will not give him much to boast about in next year's 2024 elections, which he is preparing for with his Democratic Party. At the end of 2023, the United States became more exhausted than it was at the beginning of the year, and the successes of Biden’s policies were very few, according to the American Responsible Statecraft website. There were no major disasters for Americans all year, but that changed over the past two months after the president gave the Israeli government carte blanche and unprecedented support to wage a brutal war in Gaza.

The costs of Biden's absolute support for Israel are increasing for America

Daniel Larison, an American writer and researcher at the Responsible Statecraft website, says that Biden committed Washington to assisting another foreign war following the attack of last October 7, while the conflict in Ukraine reached a stalemate.

Although the United States was not obligated to support this war, Biden made sure to turn it into one of his main policies and closely linked it to support for Ukraine in his public rhetoric. Biden did not make a convincing case that unconditional support for Israel's campaign was in the best interests of the United States, and the costs of such support have been increasing ever since.

Moreover, supporting the war has exposed American forces in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere to renewed attacks from armed militias, and has also increased the risks facing American ships in the Red Sea after the Houthis launched attacks on Israeli cargo ships or those seeking to reach Israel due to... Israel's continued aggression against Gaza. The risks of the conflict escalating and spreading to other areas in the region are increasing, as is the risk that the United States may become directly involved in a multi-front war.

A broader war that would put America's interests at risk is possible because of Biden's policies

Larrison says Biden's "instinctive" move to support Israel to the end made a broader war more likely and put American forces and interests at greater risk.

Not only has American support for Israel overshadowed the rest of Biden's foreign policy agenda, but it has also linked the United States to a campaign of indiscriminate bombing and a punitive blockade that is pushing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians into famine conditions. Not only did the Biden administration burn what remained of Washington's credibility on human rights and international law, but it also closely linked the United States to war crimes committed against Palestinian civilians.

The damage to America's reputation has already been severe, and the damage to American interests in the Middle East and beyond in the longer term is likely to be significant and unprecedented.

Biden's understanding of the Middle East is fundamentally flawed

The setback to Biden's own agenda cannot be denied; The administration's major diplomatic initiatives in 2023, such as the ill-advised pursuit of Saudi-Israeli normalization, faltered when the war in Gaza demonstrated that the administration's understanding of the region was fundamentally flawed, says Daniel Larison. The administration, which was convinced by the false assumption that US-facilitated normalization agreements between Israel and Arab clients would stabilize the region, failed to realize how bad things were in Palestine.

The Biden administration, like its predecessors, did nothing to curb Netanyahu's extremist government coalition in light of his endeavor to gradually annex the West Bank. The American administration was trying to figure out the necessary incentives to persuade Mohammed bin Salman to support normalization, believing that it was possible to quietly marginalize the Palestinians and ignore their grievances and jump on them. If it had succeeded, it would have meant another security commitment and more costs for the United States, so it would have been good for this policy to be suspended.

It is not clear how much the Saudi normalization push factor contributed to Hamas' decision to attack, but it is clear that it was not beneficial for the United States to waste such a large effort trying to entice the Saudis into a deal when tensions between Israel and the Palestinians were on the verge of exploding. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan's famous statement shortly before the war began about how the region was calmer than it had been in decades reflects the extent to which the administration believed its flawed press releases, Larison says.

Biden has made America a global pariah

Support for the war cost the United States much “goodwill” in the Global South, and the administration’s opposition to a ceasefire left the United States deeply isolated at the United Nations as never before on any major issue. The administration had previously stressed the importance of competing for influence with other major powers in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, but its hard-line stance on Gaza appears to have squandered most of the gains it has achieved.

Support for the war in Gaza undermined American support for the war in Ukraine in two ways. First, the Gaza war diverted American focus and resources away from Ukraine after the United States shifted its focus back to the Middle East. It also made a mockery of the administration's pro-Ukraine rhetoric. The United States has spent much of the past two years extolling the importance of international law in order to mobilize support for Ukraine, then showing that the United States does not hold its clients and partners to the same standards it expects of other countries.

Limited successes

Biden's record this year wasn't all bad, Larison says. On the limited positive side, the United States made some modest progress in stabilizing relations with China toward the end of the year and after months of deteriorating relations following the spy balloon incident last February. There was a minor diplomatic breakthrough with Iran this summer that led to the release of five Americans wrongfully detained by the Iranian government. Unfortunately, the administration later backed off from releasing Iranian funds that had been frozen under “maximum pressure” sanctions. Because it did not want to be seen as “rewarding” Iran following the Hamas attack.

The administration also recently reached another agreement with the Venezuelan government to release prisoners. The Biden administration has had greater success working with established allies. It developed the OKOS agreement to further share technology with Australia and Britain, and took advantage of the temporary improvement in relations between South Korea and Japan to strengthen relations with both.

The Biden administration's foreign policy in 2023 has been characterized by too much reliance on military tools and too little effort at diplomatic engagement. This may be one of the reasons that explains the public's widespread rejection of Biden's handling of foreign policy and the decline of his electoral chances in various opinion polls.

Source: Arabic Post