WASHINGTON Joe Biden had to be a president who could turn his eyes away from the Middle East for a moment.
Biden’s presidency began in a situation where the United States was finally breaking away from the 20-year war in Afghanistan. Hostilities in Syria waned.
And above all, Biden had a plan to pacify the Middle East in the long run.
Biden’s goal was to stabilize the relations between Israel and the surrounding Arab countries, and especially the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
If the plan had succeeded, Israel and Saudi Arabia would have officially sided against their shared enemy, Iran.
That would have been a huge relief for the US, which could have relied on the Saudis and Israel to keep Iran in check, and thus focus on China, Ukraine and the homeland.
The plan failed. When Biden arrives in Israel today, his mission is to prevent a major war in the Middle East.
That requires the United States, which has special experience with failed security policies against terrorism.
After the brutal attacks by Hamas Biden expressed his firm support for Israel. In a strong speech, Biden said the United States stands firmly behind Israel.
– Today, Americans around the country are praying for the families that have been torn apart. Many of us know how that feels, Biden said.
In the United States, Hamas attacks have been directly compared to the terrorist attacks of September 11, which killed approximately 3,000 Americans. In relation to the size of the population, Hamas’ attacks have been considerably larger.
Israel vows that Hamas must be destroyed at any cost. Also Biden said in a television interview over the weekendthat Hamas must be destroyed, but at the same time the path towards the official formation of a Palestinian state must be maintained.
Biden probably knows that these two goals are partly at odds with each other.
History has shown that the destruction of a terrorist organization by military action requires a total war. A lot of civilians die then.
Terrorism researchers often refer to Sri Lanka when they want to talk about the successful eradication of a terrorist organization by military action.
In 2009, the Sri Lankan army crushed the Tamil Tigers, a separatist group, with military action. At the same time, the army killed tens of thousands of civilians in unspeakable violence.
“Success” is therefore a very dubious term – especially when terror is not over in Sri Lanka. An ideology is harder to kill than a person.
The US has tried it himself, and failed.
Not even a month passed after the September attacks before the United States started the war in Afghanistan against the Taliban who ruled the country. A couple of years later, the war also started against Iraq.
In twenty years, hundreds of thousands of people died in the wars, and at least 70,000 civilians in Afghanistan alone.
The Iraq war fueled the rise of the terrorist organization ISIS. When the US withdrew from Afghanistan, the Taliban returned to power.
Barack Obama’s as vice president, Biden constantly campaigned for withdrawal. According to him, the problem was not Afghanistan, but actually Pakistan, in whose shelter Al-Qaeda languished. Originally, Biden had also supported the war, as had all but one of the US congressmen.
The war on terrorism has taught Biden and the Secretary of State To Antony Blinkenthat pain and rage are weak drivers of security policy.
In Biden’s first speech, less attention was paid to the part where the president demanded calmness between the lines.
– Terrorists deliberately try to kill civilians. We adhere to the rules of war. It matters. It separates us.
If Israel starts a full-scale ground attack on Gaza and trying to eradicate Hamas by killing, the number of civilians killed by Israel could be compared to the massacres in Sri Lanka.
The Afghans did not have time to gather international attention before the start of the sudden US war. Civilians caught up in the war were allowed to die without an audible international protest.
This is not the case with the Palestinians, because under decades of oppression, the people have gathered sympathy for their side all over the world.
As the past week has shown, Israel and Palestine polarize opinion almost anywhere. From the American point of view, the war endangers the unity of the international front that Biden has painstakingly put together.
Polarization is one of the tactics favored by terrorist organizations. Chaos and internal blame caused by attacks can erode societies from the inside, or push countries to make strategically unruly decisions.
In this case, mourning the deaths of hundreds Israel could ruin its chances of achieving its greatest goal: a secure environment in which neighboring states do not question Israel’s right to exist.
Washington’s foreign policy elite is almost certain that normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia is now a dead idea. It is impossible for the Arab countries to cooperate with Israel in a situation where children’s bodies are being dug up from the ruins of Gaza.
Nor is anyone suggesting that Israel could hold reasonable discussions about legitimizing a Palestinian state right after the Hamas attacks. It wouldn’t even be possible in the middle of a war.
Now the Biden administration is primarily trying to prevent the war from expanding. It is a difficult task, because Israel is led by a prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Relations between the countries’ leaders are already tense. Biden has criticized Netanyahu’s political reforms, which weaken the cornerstone of Israeli democracy, the legal system.
The total failure of Israel’s security apparatus occurred under Netanyahu’s leadership, and Israeli criticism of him has intensified. For Netanyahu, it’s about his own struggle for survival, where he has to show his own strength.
The danger is not only the death of thousands of innocents, but also that the war will expand. Iran is a bigger concern than Hamas in the endgame.
As the old wisdom says, wars are easy to start but hard to control – especially without any idea of what the desired outcome is.
Then the war cannot be withdrawn, and the United States cannot withdraw from the Middle East.