Biden's Bellicose Foreign Policy In 2023 Was A Bust

Between Ukraine, Gaza, and the loss of US global authority, he won’t be able to boast much ahead of the election.

by Daniel Larison, Responsible Statecraft

The Biden administration’s foreign policy record in 2023 won’t give the president much to boast about in next year’s election.

The U.S. is even more overstretched at the end of 2023 than it was at the beginning, and the president has had very few policy successes. For most of the year, there weren’t any major debacles, but that changed over the last two months as the president gave the Israeli government a blank check to wage a brutal war in Gaza.

President Joe Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz bumps fist at Al-Salam Palace in Jeddah, on 15 July,2022.

The president committed Washington to support another foreign war in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel while the conflict in Ukraine settled into a stalemate. Even though the U.S. was under no obligation to support this war, the president made a point of turning it into one of his signature policies and linked it closely with support for Ukraine in his public rhetoric. Biden did not, and has not made a compelling case that unconditional support for Israel’s campaign is in the best interests of the United States, and the costs of that support have been rising ever since.