A Foreign Policy Adrift

JUNE 2024—Rough seas recently tore loose parts of the floating pier President Joe Biden ordered to be built to deliver humanitarian aid into Gaza. The U.S. military is now trying to repair the structure. The well-intentioned humanitarian operation, which involved 1,000 U.S. personnel and cost $320 million, serves as a metaphor for the Biden administration's overall foreign policy—a foreign policy of half-steps and half-measures that is now adrift.

No then Yes
Let’s start in Ukraine, where the president started off well. Even before the Russian onslaught, Biden administration officials shared intelligence with Kiev and other European capitals to sound the alarm and brace them for war. Washington rushed anti-tank and anti-aircraft defenses to Ukraine, and the Ukrainians held onto Kiev and held back Russia’s invasion force.

But then the Ukrainians asked for additional weapons to protect their cities and liberate their territory—tanks, fighter-jets and missile-defense systems. In response, U.S. officials maundered and mumbled that Ukrainians couldn’t learn how to fly F-16s or A-10s “in time” to be of any help in the battlespace, that Patriot missile-defense systems were too sophisticated, that M-1 tanks were too difficult to maintain, that HIMARS rocket artillery and then ATACMS were escalatory.

The pattern was always the same: Kiev asked for more to defend its people, then Washington would say “no,” then Washington would finally relent and say yes.

Predictably, this delayed approach wasted time and lives, prolonged the war, and likely pushed out of reach Kiev’s objective of full liberation of all Ukrainian territory. It pays to recall that while the White House tried to micromanage and modulate Ukraine’s war of self-defense—and while Congress dithered—Russia changed tactics, reconstituted key units, rearmed and dug in.

And it pays to recall that even as Washington was encouraging Ukrainians to fight for their freedom and territory, Washington was warning Kiev not to use U.S. weapons to strike Russian territory. Only in the past few days has the Biden administration grudgingly relented and approved the use of U.S. weapons to attack military targets inside Russia—and even this comes with an asterisk: Such strikes must be limited to a swath of territory adjacent to the Russian assault on Kharkiv.

Add it all up, and the Biden administration did the right thing by supplying Ukraine with weapons, but did it in the wrong way by delivering those weapons too late and with too many strings attached.

For and Against
Turning back to Israel, again the president started off well. After the beastly Hamas attacks of October 7, Biden described the “pure, unadulterated evil” unleashed on Israel: “more than 1,000 civilians slaughtered…parents butchered using their bodies to try to protect their children…babies being killed…women raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies…Holocaust survivors abducted and held hostage.” He vowed, “We will make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself and respond to this attack.” He declared, “Israel has a right to go after Hamas.” And he reminded Americans that “Hamas unleashed this terror...My commitment to the safety of the Jewish people, the security of Israel and its right to exist as an independent Jewish state is ironclad.”

Biden backed up his words with actions: The last three months of 2023 saw some 244 U.S. cargo planes and 20 ships deliver 10,000 tons of military hardware to Israel.

But then, Biden and his administration began to publicly criticize Israel’s tactics and objectives, larded Israel’s response with caveats and constraints, failed to stand up for Israel at the UN, and publicly lectured Israel to “take the win” after Iran’s unprecedented and massive missile attack failed to inflict significant damage inside Israel.

Worst of all, Biden announced last month that he was halting weapons shipments to Israel just as the IDF was preparing to enter Rafah, where Hamas is cornered.

In an echo of Ukraine, the message to Israel is: Defeat Hamas, defend your freedom and territory, but don’t go into Rafah and don’t use American weapons to carry out your mission. Deflect and weather Iranian missile attacks, but don’t respond in kind and don’t strike the launchers or command nodes in Iran.

Similar Message
It appears a similar message has been delivered even to the U.S. military.

Since October 2023, Iranian-supplied Houthi drones, missiles and rockets in Yemen have targeted U.S. vessels and civilian cargo ships across the Red Sea. Likewise, militias trained, funded and armed by Iran have pelted U.S. land forces in Syria, Iraq and Jordan with drones, missiles and rockets for even longer. Tragically, three American soldiers based in Jordan were killed by an Iranian-supplied drone in January.

Rather than following traditional military doctrine and neutralizing the source of these attacks, Biden has, with a few limited exceptions, constrained the U.S. military to instead deflect the inbound threats—to shoot the arrows but not the archer: It pays to recall that since last October, the U.S. Navy has put personnel at risk and expended large amounts of resources scrambling to intercept Houthi drones and rockets in the air. After the drone attack on the U.S. base in Jordan, Biden ordered retaliatory strikes against militias in Iraq and Syria—not against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which funds and arms those militias.

After waves of Yemen-based, Iranian-backed Houthi missile and drone attacks against international shipping, Biden belatedly authorized limited strikes against some of the launching systems ashore—but not against targets that Iran’s outlaw regime holds dear. Those targets, by and large, are not located in Yemen, Syria or Iraq: the command-and-control ship Behshad that relays intelligence and targeting information to the Houthis, drone-production facilities in Iran, IRGC supply lines, IRGC bases, IRGC fast-attack boats in the Persian Gulf.

President Ronald Reagan’s Operation Praying Mantis (which sank most of Iran’s navy on an afternoon in 1988) offers a template for a serious, at-the-source response to Iran’s aggression. The counterpoint to those who worry that such a response will trigger escalation is that Iran has already climbed the escalation ladder.

Symptoms or Root Causes
To be sure, the administration’s half-steps in the right direction are preferable to moving in the wrong direction. But they are no substitute for a cohesive and strong foreign policy. Taking half-steps in response to aggression, applying half-measures in hopes of modulating that aggression and trying to treat symptoms rather than root causes ends up wasting time and lives—and like the humanitarian-aid pier now drifting in pieces off the Gaza coast, ultimately fails to achieve the intended objective.