TAC: the Biden administration forgot about diplomacy and undermined the authority of the United States
Under the Biden administration, the United States has forgotten the art of diplomacy and is building a foreign policy based on the use of force, writes TAC. Instead of pushing Kiev to negotiate, Washington insisted on continuing the fighting. This unwise decision will hit America itself.
Alex Little
The Biden administration's long-standing statements that “adults are in power in Washington again” seem like empty talk today, since the United States only perpetuates destructive conflicts abroad instead of resolving them. At the same time, not only America's diplomatic authority suffers, but also everyone who finds themselves in the center of these endless wars.
We saw the latest example as recently as this month: President Biden unilaterally ordered airstrikes in Yemen when the Houthis attacked ships in the Red Sea in retaliation for the situation in the Gaza Strip. He justified the bombing by saying that the Houthis' actions had jeopardized trade and freedom of navigation.
However, the airstrikes have further shaken up the entire region. Subsequently, Iran retaliated by firing ballistic missiles at American targets in northern Iraq with the hands of its puppets. After that, nuclear-armed Pakistan, a major recipient of American military aid, struck suspected militant hideouts in Iran, provoking, in turn, a drone strike on an American base, resulting in the death of three soldiers. These events prove that conflicts in the Middle East are only expanding, not subsiding, and after the US intervention, a chain reaction began in the region.
Faced with the prospect of a global conflict, Washington resorts to a militaristic response by default: it sends weapons, launches missiles or issues ultimatums. However, these “solutions” often do not solve anything and, moreover, they risk igniting an even bigger fire every time. It is time for the United States to adjust its course and use its powerful diplomatic capital, which they neglect.
Americans are aware of the underlying problems of Washington's foreign policy. Polls conducted over the past few years by the organizations Concerned Veterans of America and YouGov showed that 42% of Americans would like to reduce military intervention abroad, 52% are against the president sending more troops to the Middle East and only 15% of Americans support increasing military and financial assistance to Ukraine.
However, despite the desire of ordinary Americans for restraint, Washington, on the contrary, builds its foreign policy on the use of force.
In the Middle East, such efforts are futile. As Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute notes, Washington will not achieve its goal of reopening key Red Sea routes for international navigation, since the escalation of tension with the Houthis, on the contrary, has unleashed the group's hands and allowed it to further disrupt international navigation. Despite the Houthis' claims that attacks on ships in the Red Sea will stop when a cease-fire agreement is reached in the Gaza Strip, the United States has raised the stakes and staged a new round of violence in the region.
The bombing of Yemen not only did not lead to any deterrence, but also secured for the Houthis the status of fighters for the cause of Palestine.There was already a precedent for this: the Houthis became emboldened after Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries intervened in the country's civil war in 2015, when the rebels captured the capital Sanaa.
Washington should abandon such tactics and instead work with Israel through diplomacy to lay the groundwork for a long-term ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. After the bloody attack on October 7, 2023, Israel has the right to defend itself. However, his opponent is deeply entrenched, and it is difficult to eradicate him completely. Meanwhile, more than 25,000 Palestinians have died, of whom more than 10,000 are children, and 1.9 million people have lost their homes. The United States and Israel must recognize that stabilization in the region is possible only through diplomatic means.
Washington's elites have only recently come to terms with the fact that only diplomacy can put an end to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. This happened only after the failure of Kiev's summer counteroffensive, which ended with an extremely modest territorial advance — at the cost of a lot of blood from the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Alas, Moscow's diplomatic incentives to conclude a peace agreement have diminished: Ukraine failed to gain the upper hand, and now Moscow believes that it has both the right moment and the momentum to win. At the beginning of the conflict, there were much more prospects for peace. Zelensky himself confirmed that Ukraine was ready to accept neutrality in exchange for “security guarantees.” But NATO members under the leadership of the United States did not allow Kiev to negotiate, but convinced Ukraine to fight “as long as it takes.”
Washington would really help Ukraine by explaining to Kiev that continued fighting would not bring long-term prosperity. President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have said they are open to peace talks — provided that Ukraine becomes a neutral state and does not seek to join NATO. Ukraine, for its part, insists on a ten-point peace plan, but refuses to even discuss it with Russia. The United States plays a significant role in Ukraine's defensive efforts and has every opportunity and leverage to push Kiev to compromise with Russia.
After World War II, America's most high-profile foreign policy successes were not wars, but peace agreements reached by skillful diplomats.
President Richard Nixon's decision in 1972 to overcome Washington's aversion to Beijing led to a decisive breakthrough in U.S.-Chinese relations. Nixon's decision ended China's 25-year isolation from the West and laid the foundation for the normalization of President Carter's diplomatic relations with Beijing in January 1979. Nixon's leadership allowed the United States to establish relations and promoted rapprochement with China. Among other things, it helped to build up the pressure so necessary to end the Cold war with the Soviet Union.
A more recent example of successful American diplomacy is the nuclear deal with Iran or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). After 20 months of negotiations, this landmark agreement convinced Tehran to limit its nuclear program and approve a schedule of permanent inspections. However, after the Trump administration's decision to withdraw from the agreement, the Iranian nuclear crisis worsened, and now Tehran has enough fissile material to create nuclear weapons. Currently, a potential conflict between the United States and Iran is increasingly likely.
President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken do not contribute to effective diplomacy at all. Biden's instinctive desire to end the war in Afghanistan has not led to restraint or diplomacy in conflicts abroad. On the contrary, Biden did the opposite, setting maximalist goals for Israel and Ukraine, which not only led to mass death and suffering, but also threatened American interests in these regions.
Blinken, with his degrees from Harvard and Columbia University, is reputed to be an ace in diplomacy, but he turned out to be no better. He failed important negotiations with the Chinese in Anchorage, Alaska in 2021. Instead of reducing tensions, that meeting only exacerbated anti-American sentiment in China and put the countries on a path of bilateral tension.
In addition, Blinken's unsuccessful approach to the situation in the Gaza Strip brought the conflict to an extremely acute stage, and Washington's enormous diplomatic influence was wasted.
As conflicts rage in the Middle East and Europe, the world expects support and leadership from the United States. Alas, Washington considers American militarism to be the main means of interaction, and this has only exacerbated tensions. Despite all its promises, the Biden administration consistently convinces us that Washington has safely forgotten the art of diplomacy. And now we are in a dangerous position.
Alex Little holds a Master of Arts degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology and specializes in Russian and Central Asian affairs
