By a strange turn of fate, on October 1, 2024, the day that Iran launched the largest ballistic missile attack ever against Israel, Foreign Affairs magazine published an article by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in which he claimed “the Biden administration’s strategy has put the United States in a much stronger geopolitical position today than it was four years ago” and that Iran is being held in check.
A year earlier, Foreign Affairs published another tragically erroneous article by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, which said, “Although the Middle East remains beset with perennial challenges, the region is quieter than it has been for decades.” Six days after this article was posted, Hamas launched a sneak attack against Israel, massacring more than 1,200 people and maiming and injuring many more. In a stunning violation of journalistic ethics, Foreign Affairs allowed Sullivan to revise his article after the Hamas terrorist attack. Here is a link to the original version.
In these articles, Biden officials are trying to rewrite history by manufacturing false narratives of a successful Biden national security doctrine that they claim has enhanced U.S. and global security.
This is, of course, preposterous. Not only has there been a huge increase in global instability since Donald Trump left office in January 2021, the Biden-Harris administration has brought the world closer to World War III because of an increased chance Russia could use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, the real prospect of an Israel-Iran War, a new Russia-China-Iran-North Korea Axis, a growing chance that China will attack Taiwan, and other current and potential crises.
Several Biden allies have tried to invent a so-called Biden Doctrine since 2021. Most made fatuous claims that Biden was reversing the damage done by President Trump to the country’s alliances, deterrence, and global leadership despite clear evidence that Trump strengthened alliances and had a successful foreign policy that brought global stability and kept U.S. troops out of new wars. Others asserted that Biden “restored trust abroad for the U.S.,” a claim that many U.S. allies would dispute. Several experts, including Blinken and Sullivan, wrote that President Biden enhanced American foreign policy by strengthening the American economy. The huge advantage that Donald Trump currently has in the polls over Kamala Harris on the economy proves this isn’t true either.
In January 2024, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote an article titled, “A Biden Doctrine for the Middle East Is Forming. And It’s Big” on a supposed new Biden Middle East peace initiative to quickly end the Hamas/Israel war. Under this plan, the Biden administration would bring peace to the Middle East with a tough stand on Iran, push for recognition of a Palestinian state, and greatly scale up the U.S. security alliance with Saudi Arabia. None of these things happened. Instead, Middle East security has deteriorated in 2024 to the worst level in decades.
If there is a Biden/Harris national security doctrine, it is a doctrine of abysmal failure. There are four reasons for this.
Incompetence. The Biden/Harris approach to U.S. national security has been dominated by profound incompetence. It was clear to the world at the start of Biden’s presidency that Joe Biden was not mentally fit to be U.S. commander-in-chief. This was obvious at a Biden-Putin summit in Geneva in June 2021, when Biden’s incoherent and doddering performance made him look weak to a huge global audience while Putin came off as competent and confident.
This was just part of many public displays of national security incoherence and confusion by this administration. This included Biden’s insults to the Saudi Crown Prince early in his administration, hostility toward the Egyptian government, mishandling of U.S. relations with China, and the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Biden undermined a key diplomatic mission to China by his secretary of state in 2023 by calling Chinese President Xi a dictator just after this trip. There has been little serious diplomacy between the U.S. and Russia and China. Biden has not spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin since February 2022 and has closed off the possibility of high-level talks with the Russian leader by calling him a war criminal and likening Putin to Hamas.
Biden’s worst foreign policy faux pas probably was when he made the bizarre statement in January 2021 that the U.S. might tolerate a “minor incursion” of Ukraine by Russia. A month later, Russia launched a massive invasion of Ukraine.
His extremely weak top national security advisers have exacerbated the effect of Biden’s mental decline on U.S. foreign policy: Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. This group does not include foreign policy geniuses like Henry Kissinger, James Baker, George Schultz, George Marshall, or Dean Acheson. It is a collection of third-string officials chosen to not outshine Biden.
Biden’s national security incompetence and mental decline have not gone unnoticed by world leaders. Russian officials frequently ridicule Biden over his mental health. The Wall Street Journal reported in October 2022 that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman mocked Biden in private and “made fun of his mental acuity.”
The perception of a mentally infirm American president with an incoherent foreign policy and surrounded by a weak foreign policy team has significantly damaged American and global security. Not only has this eroded American leadership and deterrence, Biden officials are now routinely ignored in global affairs. When Joe Biden calls for cease-fires in Gaza and Lebanon or tells Israel not to attack Iran’s nuclear sites, no one takes him seriously.
Knee-jerk rejection of Trump and his foreign policy successes. Trump-hatred has been a significant theme of Biden’s foreign policy, especially at the start of this administration. This led to several irrational and dangerous policy decisions.
Biden officials condemned and tried to reverse most of Trump’s foreign policies, even successful ones. These include Biden’s decision in May 2021 to reverse Trump’s sanctions that shut down the Nord Stream 2 pipeline built to transport Russian gas to Germany. In February 2021, Biden lifted Trump’s designation of Yemen’s Houthi rebels as a terrorist group. The Biden administration was forced to partially reverse this decision in January 2024 after the Houthis began firing Iran-supplied missiles at Israel and ships in the Red Sea.
President Biden also ended President Trump’s diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and downgraded U.S. diplomacy with the country by naming a part-time special envoy. This led to an increase in North Korean belligerence and the largest number of North Korean missile tests in a single year in 2022.
Other knee-jerk reversals of Trump policies include resuming funding for and rejoining the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which Trump officials cut off because of this organization’s anti-Israel bias and collaboration with and funding of Hamas. The Biden administration also rejoined the UN Educational, Science, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which the Trump administration withdrew from due to anti-Israel bias.
In addition, the Biden administration rejoined the World Health Organization that the last administration withdrew from due to its mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, its refusal to hold China accountable for the origin and spread of the COVID-19 virus, and China’s control of this international organization.
Naïve globalist and far-left policies. Related to the Biden administration’s reversal of successful Trump administration foreign policies has been the implementation of many naïve globalist and far-left policies that have hurt American global interests.
The first and most significant of these policies was Biden’s decision to designate climate change as the top threat to U.S. national security and to concentrate American diplomacy on this issue.
President Biden also decided to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord on his first day in office. I am sure that Chinese leaders have been very pleased that most Biden administration diplomatic missions to Beijing were sent to discuss climate goals that China never intends to meet instead of more serious issues such as growing military threats from China, Chinese threats to Taiwan, Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, China’s growing nuclear arsenal, intellectual property theft by China, origins of the COVID-19 virus, etc.
President Biden and Vice President Harris have promoted the moribund two-state solution for Middle East peace and the creation of a Palestinian state over the objections of the Israeli government. They continued to press for a two-state solution even after the Hamas massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023.
The Biden/Harris administration also resumed the Obama administration’s appeasement of Iran in an attempt to negotiate a new nuclear agreement. This included refusing to enforce oil sanctions against Iran, which made the country an estimated $100 billion richer than it was when President Trump left office. In September 2023, the Biden administration agreed to pay Iran $6 billion in ransom to free five innocent Americans imprisoned in Iran. Iran has used this windfall to expand its military missile and nuclear programs. These funds also were sent to support Iran’s terrorist proxies, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthi rebels.
The Biden administration has alienated many countries by using U.S. diplomats and diplomatic facilities to promote far-left positions on social issues. This includes flying Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ pride flags at U.S. embassies and U.S. ambassadors meddling in the politics of their host nations to promote liberal views on social issues. In June 2023, the U.S. diplomatic mission to the Vatican flew an LGBTQ pride flag outside its building in Rome. According to a Heritage Foundation report, the Biden administration has used U.S. Agency for International Development funds to promote far-left gender ideology and diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Third World.
Biden officials have also tried to reform the United Nations to make it “fair” for the Third World by changing the membership of the U.S. Security Council and the use of the council’s Permanent Member veto. These proposals would have weakened American power and influence in the U.N. Fortunately, they could not be implemented due to opposition from China and Russia.
Arrogance and lack of situational awareness. Another unfortunate characteristic of the so-called Biden/Harris national security doctrine has been instances of Biden officials ignoring the views and assumptions of other states and assuming that other states would automatically abide by or defer to the wishes of the Biden administration.
This was demonstrated by the abysmal mishandling of Russian President Putin before he ordered Russian troops to invade Ukraine in February 2022. Although Putin gave plenty of indications that he would never agree to Ukraine joining NATO and objected to Ukraine working with NATO, Biden ignored him and dangled NATO membership before Ukrainian President Zelensky. As Russia made preparations to invade Ukraine, the Biden administration threatened to respond with tough sanctions and to begin sending lethal aid to Ukraine. Although Putin probably was also motivated to invade Ukraine by the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden and his national security team miscalculated in believing Putin would defer to empty warnings from Biden not to invade and threats of new U.S. sanctions.
There have been many examples of arrogance and lack of situational awareness in the Biden administration’s Middle East policy. In addition to examples of this previously discussed, there are the weird warnings of “don’t” by Biden and Harris to Iran and its terrorist proxies not to engage in hostilities against Israel after the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack. This strange, incoherent one-word directive had no effect in lowering tensions in the Middle East and further undermined American deterrence in the region.
There has been similar arrogance in the Biden administration’s claims about promoting alliances. Although Biden officials deserve some credit for forming and strengthening alliances (such as AUKUS, the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the U.K., and the U.S.), most of the improvements in alliances were the work of other states in response to the Biden administration’s policy failures.
For example, NATO is stronger today in response to a war in Ukraine that the Biden administration helped cause and mostly due to the work of European NATO members.
Similarly, although President Biden helped promote a closer trilateral security relationship between the U.S., Japan, and South Korea, this relationship was mainly the work of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in response to the Biden administration ignoring the Asia-Pacific region in 2021 and 2022. Kishida and Yoon devoted a lot of time to building this alliance and put their reputations on the line. Biden played a very minor role.
President Trump was right when he said the Biden/Harris national security policies are so bad that they have brought us closer to nuclear war and World War III. The American people see this in the increasingly dangerous security situations in the Middle East and the Russia/Ukraine War. When most Americans cast their votes for president this fall, they will not be fooled by a fantasy Biden/Harris national security doctrine promoted by Biden officials and their allies to explain away one of the worst foreign policy records of any U.S. administration.
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Fred Fleitz previously served as National Security Council chief of staff, CIA analyst, and a House Intelligence Committee staff member.
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