Is Biden Blowing It in Gaza and Ukraine?

Matt Kroenig: Hi, Emma. Last weekend was Memorial Day and the unofficial start of summer. I assume you are spending your days sunning by the pool?

Emma Ashford: Oh, if only. It’s so swampy here in D.C. that it’s hard to be productive even when we’re meant to be working. Perhaps that’s why the Biden administration finds it so hard to solve any big foreign-policy problems?

MK: You mean the major ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East? Yes, I would say those are big problems. I remember the good ol’ days, 15 years ago, when we only worried about counterinsurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan and Iran’s advancing enrichment program.

Should we start with the war in Gaza?

EA: Unfortunately, yes. Three big topics I think we need to address here. First, the Israeli military has now pushed into Rafah, which U.S. President Joe Biden had previously said was his “red line.” Now the administration is frantically backpedaling, arguing that this isn’t a major or large-scale incursion and so isn’t a violation. Biden’s red line keeps moving west and south inside Gaza as the Israelis advance; at this rate, pretty soon his red line will be the Egyptian border.

But with significant violence in Rafah and constant news of civilian deaths, it’s hard to see how long the Biden administration can keep this up. There was a strong outcry after an Israeli strike on refugee tents a few days back caused a massive fire and killed around 45 civilians, including children.

How long can Israel really expect to keep this up? I’d say world opinion has turned pretty firmly against it.

MK: To paraphrase Stalin, how many divisions does world opinion have? I don’t think bad press is going to stop Israel from waging its war against Hamas.

I think there are a lot of unfair criticisms of Israel’s war effort. But I do think there are several fair criticisms. First, the Israelis have not laid out a plan for rebuilding and governing Gaza after the war is over. Second, despite repeated requests, they haven’t provided a plan for how they will both eliminate Hamas and protect innocent civilians in Rafah. And third, they failed to hold northern Gaza after clearing it, and now Hamas is resurfacing there. Despite what the International Criminal Court (ICC) might say, it is not a war crime, but it is bad strategy.

EA: It’s really notable how the exact problems people pointed out back in October of last year—that Israel should not invade Gaza without a plan for postwar governance or a plan for protecting civilians—are the things that are clearly hurting the Israelis now. And it’s utterly damning on the part of the Netanyahu government that it apparently still does not actually have a strategy for either of these problems!

But it does seem that the Biden administration, despite repeatedly pointing this out, seems to have had little impact on the Israeli government. It’s not even doing a good job of making sure that U.S. weapons are used in a responsible and ethical way. You ask how many divisions public opinion has? None, but the U.S. military certainly has many.

The Israeli military routinely uses 2,000-pound bombs that are devastating in densely populated areas and the attack on Rafah came after the Biden administration has promised to stop sending certain weapons to Israel. Certain munitions are fundamentally unsuited to urban combat of the kind seen in Gaza because of how it hurts civilians. Why aren’t U.S. officials applying more pressure here—beyond Biden suggesting a cease-fire in a speech?

MK: The Biden administration’s approach is muddled. It is trying to have it both ways, as you point out, drawing and then moving red lines, and in the process it is angering both Israel’s supporters and its critics. Israel’s supporters are outraged that the White House is threatening to withhold aid to an ally fighting a war against a dangerous terrorist adversary. And Israel’s critics are outraged that the White House is continuing to support Israel’s war effort even as the casualties mount in Gaza.

EA: I understand it’s difficult in an election year, but it can’t have it both ways. To be frank, Biden is at risk of alienating both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian voters with this middle-of-the-road approach. No one is happy, and it’s certainly not good for U.S. strategic interests, either.

Another problem has been the completely incompetent aid plans put in place by the administration. The newly built Gaza pier, designed to deliver aid to civilians, has apparently broken apart and is drifting out to sea. The whole thing was a PR stunt to help the administration cover for the fact that Israel isn’t letting enough humanitarian aid into the conflict—and now it has backfired while making the United States look incompetent. Israel now has control of all of Gaza’s land borders, meaning that any aid has got to come through it.

MK: We seem to be agreeing too much this week, but I agree.

Both of these problems have the same source: making national security decisions to placate public opinion. The job of leaders is to determine what is in the best interests of the country and then make the case to the American people, not bend the strategy according to the public mood. Biden’s initial instincts were correct right after Oct. 7, to have Israel’s back in its war against Hamas. But with an eye to the election calendar, the administration has produced a confusing and ultimately ineffective strategy.

In other words, Biden is right to demand that Israel produce a viable strategy to defeat a dangerous terrorist group consistent with the law of armed conflict, but he is wrong to demand that Israel act in order to appease low-information voters in Michigan.

EA: Yikes, well, perhaps the fact we agree here should be a sign that the Biden administration really needs to shift course to something—literally anything—more effective.

I know what we’ll disagree on! The ICC recently announced that it is seeking arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity in Gaza, and against three Hamas leaders for the atrocities of Oct. 7. That implies it has some credible evidence of war crimes and is now seeking warrants, similar to the one the ICC issued for Russian President Vladimir Putin last year.

MK: You are right. We disagree. It is outrageous to suggest a moral or legal equivalence between Hamas and Israel, as the Biden administration has also argued. Hamas is a terrorist group whose driving purpose is to slaughter innocent Israeli civilians, as we saw in brutal fashion on Oct. 7. Israel is a democracy that scrupulously follows the law of armed conflict.

The ICC’s flimsy case rests largely on the charge that Israel is intentionally starving a civilian population as a method of warfare. If true, then the Israelis are pretty incompetent in executing this strategy given that they have facilitated the delivery significant amounts of aid since the war began.

Moreover, Israel is not a member of the ICC, so, as the U.S. government also argues, the ICC has no legal jurisdiction over this matter. Israel has its own effective judicial system and can prosecute any illegal actions taken by its service members as it has done in the past. But these flimsy charges do not deserve a hearing. The better debate is whether Republicans in Congress are right to want to sanction the ICC over this ridiculous charge.

EA: Why start with sanctions? Why not jump straight to the Hague Invasion Act?

Look, the U.S. relationship with the ICC has always been fraught, as the very existence of the Hague Invasion Act implies. You’re right that, legally speaking, the ICC probably has no jurisdiction here. But that’s the kind of thing lawyers argue, and I think this is much more a public relations problem than a legal one, both for the United States and for Israel.

A few things stand out. First, it seems clear that the ICC has credible evidence of war crimes committed by Israeli forces; proving that that is tied to—or directed by—senior leaders is likely to be much harder, but the existence of atrocities is pretty clear and is something that U.S. policymakers need to consider, if only because they risk violating American domestic laws on selling weapons.

Second is the significant public relations problem this poses: Biden has made promises to uphold a liberal international order the central component of his foreign policy. But as H.A. Hellyer pointed out in Foreign Policy recently, “The breaking of the rules isn’t new—but Washington’s failure to even acknowledge that such violations are even plausibly going on destroys trust in that system on the one hand and demolishes U.S. credibility on the other.”

The United States tells other countries they must comply with ICC rulings when they concern Russia or China but refuses to do so when it comes to Israel? If your entire strategy is based on being the “good guys” in the way that Biden’s strategy is, then sanctioning the ICC will make America look hypocritical and ridiculous—and undermine whatever international norms around conflict do exist.

MK: For a realist, you seem overly concerned with “public relations” on this issue.

And I agree that the United States should not sanction the ICC, but the ICC is often an obstacle to a functioning rules-based system, not a part of it. Upholding a rules-based order does not mean following any and all rules, even those that are counterproductive and that are not embraced by the creators and leaders of the system. A central element of a rules-based system is the need to defend it from those, like terrorist groups, who want to tear it down.

This requires enabling the United States and its mostly democratic allies and partners, like Israel, to use force against revisionist autocracies and terrorists. The ICC in this case is being used to prevent the defense of the system. The fear that the ICC would be abused to prosecute Americans for doing the right thing is why there has been long-standing bipartisan opposition to the ICC in the United States.

EA: You’re a scholar of Machiavelli; surely you know that part of being a realist is keeping the public happy with your strategy?

But perhaps we should turn to the other big crisis that’s bogging down the Biden administration. Things in Ukraine are pretty rough at the moment. The Russians are making small gains, and Ukraine increasingly seems to be struggling even to maintain a defensive strategy. That doesn’t seem to be dissuading Western policymakers from arguing that Ukraine can still defeat Russia and evict it from every inch of Ukrainian territory.

Faced with poor performance on the part of the Ukrainian military, these policymakers are now pushing escalation, arguing for Western troops to be deployed to Ukraine in support roles, and for restrictions on weapons usage to be lifted.

It sure seems like what realists predicted over the last two years is playing out: Ukraine cannot win a conventional war against a much larger opponent, and Western leaders are tempted to escalate rather than admit that their goals may be too ambitious.

MK: I think it teaches a different lesson: The restrictions on Ukraine’s weapons usage never made much sense, and Western leaders are finally coming to that realization.

For the past two years, the White House has prohibited Ukraine from using U.S.-supplied weapons to strike into Russian territory—although today’s belated announcement may start to change that. But Russia is massing troops on Ukraine’s border and striking Ukraine from bases inside Russia. Prohibiting Ukraine from hitting back gives Russia a sanctuary from which to attack Ukraine with impunity. It is essentially forcing Ukraine to fight a war with one hand tied behind its back.

The White House’s reasoning is that it wants to avoid “escalation” with Russia, but these fears are overblown, and the West is essentially deterring itself.

I and many others argued against these restrictions for more than two years. Whether the goal is for Ukraine to fight for a total battlefield victory or to fight to a stalemate along the current line of contact, either way, Kyiv will need to put pressure on Russia by striking military targets in Russia and making Putin feel the pain.

EA: In the past week, the Ukrainians used drones to hit a Russian early-warning radar system that forms part of Russia’s ability to detect incoming nuclear ballistic missiles. That’s a profoundly destabilizing choice, and one I would not want to see repeated!

I don’t have a particular problem with Ukrainian forces using artillery or shorter-range systems to strike across the border when Russia is massing troops, or to attack supply lines. The ongoing fight at Kharkiv, near the border, is one example of a place where that makes a lot of sense. But many of these long-range strikes have been on facilities that aren’t as important to the Ukrainian war effort, and—like the nuclear radar—may have other, destabilizing consequences, whether that’s in the nuclear space, energy prices, or something else.

My bigger concern is that Washington appears to be sleepwalking into escalation because it’s unwilling to dial down its war aims. Ukraine is struggling to fight off an attacker that’s much bigger; that’s pretty much what we’d expect. But policymakers in Europe are trying to escalate instead, apparently assuming that if they just send troops behind the lines, or allow long-range strikes, it will somehow magically overcome Ukraine’s natural disadvantages in this fight. It’s foolish.

MK: Well, I am glad you agree that Ukraine should be able to strike massing troops and supply lines across the border in Russia. You are more forward-leaning on this issue than the White House.

But my disagreement with the analysis from you and the Biden administration is that vagaries like “destabilizing” and “escalation” are doing all the work in your arguments. What exactly do you fear Russia will do if Ukraine strikes radars or other targets deep inside Russia? I think the answer is not much. Putin does not want escalation with NATO, either. He will continue the war effort in much the same way, but Ukraine will be in a stronger position.

EA: This is a really important assumption about the war that I think doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. People assume that there is nothing Putin can do in response to Western escalation without either starting a direct war with NATO or resorting to nuclear use. But that’s completely inaccurate. Just look at the reports from the last few weeks of apparent Russian sabotage efforts in European states! A German munitions plant, warehouses in London that were used to store supplies for Ukraine, etc. Russia has plenty of asymmetric escalation options available before it goes nuclear. Is this really the path the West wants to go down?

MK: Russia trying to burn an IKEA in Lithuania is worrisome to be sure, but not significant enough to cause me to rethink Western strategy for the biggest war in Europe since World War II. And the West should deter future such attacks by letting Putin know that if he keeps playing with fire in NATO countries, he is bound to get burned. 

EA: How is the West going to do that? Escalate in Ukraine? But if they were going to escalate already regardless, then how does threatening that deter Putin?

The fundamental problem with U.S. Ukraine strategy—as my colleagues Stephen Wertheim, Josh Shifrinson, and I argued here at Foreign Policy recently—is that Biden has substituted a debate about escalation and assistance to Ukraine for the real questions: What is it that the United States wants to achieve in Ukraine? And is that actually achievable in practice?

I would hope that the administration is looking at all of this and questioning whether further escalation is a good idea. I take their caution on long-range strikes inside Russia as a good sign in that context. But as Americans start to edge into election season here in Washington, it’s hard not to escape the impression that the world is on fire and Biden is not responding particularly well to any of it.

MK: Indeed, the public opinion polling shows Americans trust former President Donald Trump more than Biden to handle many foreign-policy issues. After all, both Europe and the Middle East were at peace during the Trump administration, but engulfed in war under Biden. I am sure that is an issue we will be debating over the next several months.

EA: Sounds like a plan. Making Trump look good by comparison is definitely an achievement— I’m just not sure it’s the achievement the Biden administration was aiming for.