The Biden-Blinken Foreign Policy

Is Winning Allowed?

If one were to ask a question of the current administration or the State Department as to what the primary goal of US foreign policy is, the most honest answer would be-  to assure that America’s allies not win wars.   Time and again over the last 3 years the Biden administration has done all it can to (sometimes) support its allies in public while making sure that they do not have the tools to win the war they are currently fighting or potentially will have to fight.  

One of the first foreign policy acts of the current administration was to no longer support Saudi offensive operations against the Houthis and stop selling precision guided munitions to them. Since 2016, the Houthis have killed hundreds of  civilians living on Saudi territory and invaded the city of Najran.  Rocket and drone attacks continued including attacks on Saudi oil fields and cities.   The war goes on. 

Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia and piracy in the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea continue to this day.   They have added to this, rocket attacks on Israel.

The administration policy was to let the Saudi’s “defend” themselves but not permit them to go on the offensive and win the war.

After nearly 20 bloody years of fighting in Afghanistan the US consensus was that it has had enough.  There were plans for withdrawal that started in the Trump administration, but the Biden team pushed it further and faster by initiating a unilateral withdrawal and abandoning its long time allies in the Afghan government to its fate against the Taliban.   We don’t have to rehash this disaster other than to say that the Biden-Blinken team refused to allow the Afghani government any option to survive.   It negotiated with the Taliban as if there was no government in Afghanistan and as if the Taliban were the true legitimate rulers of the country.  

Moving on to Ukraine, the initial US response (after the embarrassing statement that the US would accept a minor incursion) was to offer Zelensky asylum.  Once that offer was refused by Zelensky and the Ukrainian people, the supply of arms started slowly.  Sanctions against Russia brought an initial hit on their economy but they have recovered.  Much like air power in trying to shut down enemy rocket fire, economic sanctions, while necessary, have limited utility in wartime if the enemy has major allies.   So, while Russia has, with the help of China, Iran and North Korea, overcome the sanctions, or at least limited its effect on the war effort, the US, according to Walter Russell Meade in the Wall Street Journal, has decided on a “Plan Stalemate” strategy of not letting Ukraine win the war.  

To make this clear – lets quote Meade directly:  Once it was clear that sanctions wouldn’t force Russia to end the war, and after several failed efforts to tempt Russia with “off ramps,” Team Biden cooked up Plan Stalemate. The West would dribble out enough aid to help Ukraine survive, but not enough to help it win. Ultimately, the Ukrainians would lose hope of victory and offer Mr. Putin a compromise peace. The White House would spin this as a glorious triumph for democracy and the rule of law.

It seems that from the start the Biden-Blinken plan has been to defeat Russia via denial of the Swift money transfer system instead of on the battlefield and once that failed (as all attempts to win wars by sanctions, fail), they figured let’s move to a strategy of stalemate.    Meanwhile the Chinese are helping to build a tunnel that will connect mainland Russia with the Crimean Peninsula since the Ukrainians keep on blowing up the bridge, Iran is selling drones and missiles to Russia and is providing hard cash to Russia by purchasing advanced fighters -  using money the US is providing by not sanctioning their oil production.  In the meanwhile the US is telling Ukraine, its ally, to sacrifice blood and guts for the glory of stalemate. 

Which brings us to Israel and its war against Iran being fought on five fronts simultaneously:  Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and the West Bank.     Let us go one by one on the various fronts. 

Gaza:   While ostensibly supporting Israel’s war aim of destroying Hamas in Gaza the US has continuously opposed many of the tactics Israel has used.   They supported using air power as long as civilians were not hurt.  Opposed a land invasion until the hostages were released.   Now they oppose continuing the fighting to the south of Gaza and in some reports are even encouraging Israel to stop the war itself.   One has to wonder if the Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is involved at all in the policy recommendations or if only the Blinken State Department (and the Biden re-election campaign) is running the show. 

The US Administration knew as well as anyone that Hamas’s strength lay underground  - often 50 meters (that is nearly 55 yards – more than half a football field) underground and all below homes, schools and hospitals.  There are open agricultural areas in Gaza but that was not where the main Hamas tunnels stand.   The entire world knew that unless the civilians left the combat zone there would be civilian deaths and yet Blinken and Co. still look shocked when civilian death figures come out.   And of course, we have no way of knowing the truth of those figures as they like to quote the “Palestinian Health Authority in Gaza” as if it were and independent group not controlled by Hamas.

If reports in the UK press are correct the US is even vetoing military operations to free hostages because it might lead to Gazan civilian casualties.  Again – if israel frees hostages without giving into Hamas, it is a win for Israel and for the fight against terror.  But diplomacy, in which your ally makes painful concessions, seems always to be preferable to actually winning.

When discussing, at the start of the war, if the US would stop Israel from destroying Hamas, I responded to my son that it is a vital US interest for its main ally in the region to defeat Hamas – a representative of the Russia-Iran-China axis.  However, have I misinterpreted US strategy?   Is the new Grand Strategy of the US government to prevent its allies from winning wars? 

West Bank:  The Biden-Blinken team and just about the entire media is worried about the opening of another front on the West Bank.   I have a secret to tell you -  there already is a hot front there.    Since Saturday night October7 the IDF has been conducting intensive raids into major terror centers of Jenin, Tulkarm and Nablus as well as in other cities like Bethlehem, Hebron and Qalquilya.  According to reports Israel has stopped close to 3,000 terrorists and killed nearly 200 more.   The main center of Palestinian terror in the West Bank is Jenin.  Over the past week the IDF, led by special forces, have conducted three major operations there and have stopped or killed 60% of the network including the two main leaders.  

Jenin is a war zone much like Gaza as the IDF faces machine gun and grenade fire as well as roadside bombs (in the IDF they refer to Jenin as “little Gaza”.    The tactics of these groups (which include Hamas, PIJ and the PA’s own Fatah) use children to plant bombs and throw grenades.  Two teens were killed two days ago as they were planting these bombs.  They also captured and treated a mentally disabled boy who was sent to plant a bomb. 

While Iranian funded and armed groups are trying to take over the West Bank and Israel is fighting a hot war there, the Biden-Blinken

team can only talk about the dangers of “settler violence”.   But the main problem with speaking about the risk of “settler violence” is that it is non-existent.   Over the past years there have been a group of juvenile delinquents who have connected to the Israeli far right and have instigated violence against Palestinians as well as the IDF.   The security forces and the courts have dealt strongly with them and the violence has now ended.  There is no settler violence. Rather, there continues to be attempts at terror attacks against Israelis, most of which are foiled by active IDF operations.   At least three have been successful over the last weeks – one outside the old city of Jerusalem, one a few miles south  and one this morning at the Western entrance to the city.

On this front too, the Biden-Blinken team ignores reality and tries to prevent its ally from winning by creating a false narrative that turns law abiding Israelis into the devil.   Leaving Hamas and other terror networks intact in the West Bank would make a victory in Gaza irrelevant. 

Lebanon: The US sent 2 carrier groups ostensibly to deter Hezbollah but in fact is deterring Israel from pushing Hezbollah from the Lebanese-Israeli border and maybe even destroying it.  Time and again the US has told Israel not to provoke Hezbollah into a hotter war.   The fact that Israel was responding to Hezbollah attacks and trying to prevent attacks did not seem to enter into the Biden administration thinking.    The only goal again, seems to be to prevent a US ally from any type of military victory.  

Of course “allowing” Israel to win or better yet, having the US encourage regime change in Iran which, in spite of everything including the Iranian hack of a Pennsylvania water utility, the Administration still does not seem to consider an enemy, is off the table not for military reasons but for false diplomatic ones.

Syria:  This was the front that was supposed to remain quiet since Syria is still in the middle of its endless civil war. Russia, Iran and Turkey are still heavily involved.   But Iranian backed militias including Hezbollah, and by some reports Iranian Revolutionary Guards themselves, have set themselves up opposite the Israeli Golan Heights.   Rockets have come in from Syria and Israel has been responding but Israel has not attempted to destroy these militias.    What Israel does, and has been doing for years, is to try to interdict Iranian arms supplies to Hezbollah by bombing convoys and Syrian airports.   The latest reports though have Russia threatening Israel if they continue to put the Damascus airport out of service.   Russia is officially on the Iranian side of the war in the middle-east.  As we just said – the key country here is Iran.

There are US forces in Syria and Iraq, too.  They were put there to fight ISIS and have remained.  And yet, in spite of constant attacks on the US there has been only moderate responses so as not to “provoke” Iran and create a regional war.  But there already is a regional war.  The fact that Biden-Blinken have decided that they don’t want to win or allow its allies to win this regional war is the main lesson we get from their tepid response to Iranian backed attacks.

Yemen: As mentioned above the Houthi’s in Yemen are at war with their rivals in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Israel and international shipping.   The US Navy has done great work in helping to down rockets and drones sent to Israel and also helped free a ship that was overtaken by Houthi backed pirates but there are no offensive operations at all.  There has been no attack on Yemen by the US or by Israel.  

US policy in the middle east now seems to be to prevent a regional war, but as we have seen a regional war exists.   Even the State Department and the CIA must understand this and must understand that the main force behind all of the fronts in this ongoing regional war is Iran.   And yet, the actions (and many of the words) of the Biden-Blinken foreign policy team point to one common denominator:  Prevent the US and its allies from winning.

This is the message that China is getting from US foreign policy.  If at first we all thought it was just incompetence now it is pretty clear that there is an actual policy objective – but sadly it is not one that promotes the interests of the US or its allies.

In the Mideast, the impression we are getting from the Administration is that Israel=Hamas/Hezbollah/Yemen/Shiite Militias while the US=Iran.   The US is treating Iran as its equal, as if it were the same threat that China is, or the Soviet Union was.   In Ukraine, it seems that it respects Russia more than Ukraine.

Does this come due to some respect for Russia and Iran’s radical anti-Western ideology which the progressive left seems to like, or is it due to Biden-Blinken’s contempt  for America and its allies?