search
Ira Straus

Biden’s Gaza, Ukraine Wars: What to Do with Them

The Obama-Biden team have had a visceral aversion to America and Israel winning their wars.

Trump believes in winning wars and in making peace, not in having drag-on stalemates.

What to do with the string of wars that Biden has left us in Ukraine and the Mideast  – deliberately no-win wars, wars that were converted into unwinnable form by Biden’s restraints and delays?

The Biden policy was accurately described in both cases as the policy of the “bear hug”. It consisted of loudly talking of fully supporting our allies, while in reality imposing restrictions on them to stop them at a stalemate at every point where they could have won. It made sure in Ukraine that the enemy had plenty of time to consolidate the lands under its control and dig in until it was nearly impossible to dislodge it. And in Gaza, in giving the enemy plenty of time to regroup and prepare for the bloodiest possible battle in the next city that it was forced to retreat to.

It also meant relying on the nearly unanimous media support for the Administration to enable defamation of the critics of these tactics and restraints, depicting the Republicans as opposing our side of the war and supporting the enemy. It could always rely on a rogue faction among Republicans to be polemical enough that they would lose the thread and adapt to doing just that – de facto supporting the enemy — for the sake of spliting the media and the Democrats.

The underlying attitude problem

Obama-Biden – we could call it, honestly, the “collective Obama” — feel that it would be aggressive, dangerous, and outright immoral if we, the Western powers, were to win of our of force and impose our will. What they believe in instead is this: dragging out our wars; and feeling virtuous about holding off the evil enemy for “as long as it takes”, at a sometimes astronomical cost in blood and funds. If other forces – frenemies like Turkey and HTS – can win in our place, then that’s OK. Russia was also welcomed to win in our place in Syria, until Obama had to break with Putin for his invasions of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.

That is the underlying reason why Israel and Ukraine alike have been forced into wars that have been kept unnecessarily protracted, costly, and too often ineffectual.

The human cost has been enormous. 600,000 died in Syria under Obama and Assad and Putin. Hundreds of thousands have died in Ukraine under Biden and Putin. Tens of thousands have died in Gaza under Biden and Hamas. It is a lot, especially for wars that we have been determined not to win.

A decade later, and thanks only to Israel’s defiance of our restraints, Turkey and HTS have finally won in Syria, supposedly on our side. We will see how it turns out.

The situation we’re left with

Trump comes into office on top of two wars, in Israel and Ukraine, that could have been won, but that Biden has dragged out to the point that they are now nearly impossible to win. It does not bode well for either Israel or Ukraine.

Three years ago, when Ukraine surprised the world and stopped the Russian offensive, it could have easily reversed the field if we had given it weapons to win. But Biden refused to do that. He was viscerally opposed to Ukraine winning; he repeatedly equated this with World War III. Indeed, seemed positively offended when his expectations of a quick Russian conquest of Ukraine proved mistaken. When Russia was instead stopped, he waited for Russia to dig itself in, and then he gradually increased the weapons that Ukraine could have and use, calibrated each time as if deliberately intended no longer to work for regaining territory. Today, to improve its bargaining position, Ukraine cannot reconquer land. But it can perhaps destroy the Kerch bridge and cut Crimea off completely from Russia, if we finally arm it properly for that. That would at least allow it to bargain for a less unbearable peace.

Israel has fared better. Biden was less viscerally opposed to Israel winning than to Ukraine. To be sure, he still ran interference against Israel’s war effort. He delayed the Israeli advance at every point in Gaza, each time giving Hamas time to retrench and regroup in the next city. Were it not for that, Israel might have won the war much more quickly, completely and conclusively; and with less overall bloodshed, despite more rapid shedding of blood in the opening phase of the war. Biden succeeded in preventing that.

Nevertheless, it seemed that on the whole, Netanyahu was outfoxing Biden. Israel continued advancing. Having finally overrun all of Gaza though too late to pacify it, it proceeded to smash up Hezbollah in Lebanon – and there it did it far more quickly and effectively, with far less bloodshed; perhaps because Biden never had the time to get in the way.

Israel also partly disarmed Iran in a series of strikes. Here it had genuine back-up from Biden in deterring and defeating Iran’s attacks and counter-attacks on Israel. Yet even that came at the price that, for the time being, Israel had to renounce winning too clearly against Iran and following up on its wins.

Then came a massive renewal of pressures from Biden to bring an end to the Gaza war. The pressure was now backed by Trump, as well of course of the entirety of the Western media. And it was backed by the exhausted hostage families and the bulk of Israeli society, and even the Israeli military. This was in keeping with a theological tradition — truthfully, an ideological tradition, but preached by the media as if it were an indisputable religious truth — of making great sacrifices to save individual Israeli hostages, without regard for how high the costs or for the basic humanity of utilitarian calculation. It was a tradition that had just proved itself conclusively bankrupt, as the world witnessed, starting October 7, the deadly consequences on a mass scale from the release of Sinwar and other terrorists for the sake of saving an Israeli hostage. But it retained a great influence nevertheless, in tandem with the selfish interests of hostage families.

This proved too much for the Israeli government to resist. It yielded.

What can Israel do now?

Perhaps it can put Gaza to the side and move on to Iran. There it might find support from Trump: he prefers to do something new and win some glory, not get bogged down in an old unpopular war.

It would, in truth, be well-earned glory, if Trump were to lift the restraints on Israel that Biden has used to protect the Iranian regime.

About the Author
Chair, Center for War/Peace Studies; Senior Adviser, Atlantic Council of the U.S.; formerly a Fulbright professor of international relations; studied at Princeton, UVA, Oxford. Institutions named above for identification purposes only; views expressed herein are solely the responsibility of the author.
Related Topics
Related Posts