Jake Sullivan's "Foreign Affairs" article on US foreign policy in light of the Israel-Gaza War
Emma Asford takes a look at the recent article in Foreign Affairs1 by Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
This is the second time that the administration has been overtaken by events in this way; many of you may recall that the National Security Strategy had to be redrafted after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, at least in part to re-emphasize Russia as a threat. This highlights a big problem with the administration’s approach to the world: they clearly recognize that there are trade-offs, and accept that some regions are less important than others. But they are unwilling to actually take the steps to deprioritize those regions. Even after the initial crisis, they have failed to push more strongly for European burden-sharing, both on Ukraine aid and on European defense more broadly, a huge wasted opportunity. They clearly failed in their attempts to build a more sustainable Middle Eastern order by subordinating the Palestinian problem to an anti-Iran and anti-China approach. In short, when a crisis arises anywhere, the administration rushes back, drawn by their inability to accept the consequences of deprioritizing certain regions. 2 [my emphasis]
Sullivan’s article itself is essentially an official position paper, so it has the blandness one would expect from extensive official vetting of every line. Essentially, Sullivan talks about how the post-1989 world was one in which the US was the preeminent power, or the sole hegemon in foreign policy jargon. And now we are moving into a more strategically competitive world with China and Russia as stronger challengers to US preeminence. It brags about the Biden Administration moving to a more assertive economic policy of stimulating the US domestic economy. And describes the Biden foreign policy of alliances, alliances, alliances.
Asford notes in a Defense News article:
Regardless of the ongoing speaker drama [in the US House], however, the breakdown of the supplemental [appropriation for more aid to Ukraine and Israel]– and the president’s rather unconvincing attempt to rhetorically link the Israeli and Ukrainian conflicts in the minds of American voters – tells us a lot about Biden’s priorities and suggests that the administration’s foreign policy continues to drift away from strategic planning, and into a reactive, all-encompassing approach to the world.3
Jeet Heer4 notes that the version at the Foreign Affairs website is revised from the print version.5 One notably embarrassing line in the print version was changed:
In truth, the article was more than just “updated.” It was substantially changed in ways that illustrate both the incoherence and bankruptcy of Biden’s foreign policy.
In the original print version, Sullivan boasted that the “disciplined” approach of the Biden administration to de-escalation and negotiation in the Middle East had borne fruit. According to Sullivan in the print version, “Although the Middle East remains beset with perennial challenges, the region is quieter than it has been for decades.”
This embarrassing line was excised from the online version. Some right-wingers have pounced on the revisions as proving that the Biden administration was a victim of overconfidence and naïveté. The Trump campaign
What right-wing critics fail to realize is that Sullivan’s delusions come from the bipartisan ideas that unite Biden with Trump. Underlying Sullivan’s article was advocacy for the Abraham Accords approach to the Middle East, an agenda that prioritizes creating a regional alliance system between the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia built on economic and military integration - with the whole problem of Palestinian statelessness and Palestinians’ lack of human rights sidelined for the indefinite future. [my emphasis]
“Bankruptcy” wouldn’t be the term I would choose for Biden’s policy. But it seems pretty clear here near the end of Biden’s first three years that to a large extent the Administration’s foreign policy approach has been one of inertia, continuing the “strategic pivot” to China that the Obama Administration officially began in a less blundering and incompetent manner than that of the Trump Administration.
The continuation of the Abraham Accords approach was inertial drift that carried on the Trump policy of more-or-less giving Netanyahu’s government whatever it wants - including the major diplomatic move by Trump of officially recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The Middle East always occupies significant time and attention of Presidential administrations, and each can point to a list of meeting, agreements, arrangements they undertook. But it would not be much of an exaggeration to say that since the Clinton Administration, the US policy on Israel has been to kick the can down the road, making no major effort to achieve a permanent peace arrangement.
Biden’s extensive knowledge and practical experience in foreign policy is valuable in an exceptionally ugly crisis moment like the current Israel-Gaza War. Certainly in comparison to Trump’s blundering, corrupt, and incredibly ham-handed approach to Middle East policy. But US policy since 1948 has yet to produce a permanent peace arrangement between Israelis and Palestinians. Getting a different result will require a different kind of policy. And one that can’t happen if the US continues its near-unconditional support for even the most destructive Israeli policies, even under an undemocratic, ethnonationalist Israeli leadership like that of Bibi Netanyahu.
This is a 2012 presentation from Fawaz Gerges about his book titled, Obama and the Middle East: The End of America's Moment (2012).6
The kick-the-can approach clearly fell apart on October 7. (Gerges in the video argues that Obama’s Middle East policy was characterized at that time by “timidity.”)
The basic problem is that the US policy “pivot to Asia” requires the US to give a relatively smaller priority to Europe and the Middle East. Ideally, that would take place with the European Union and European NATO members taking a more coherent and active role in foreign and military policy in Europe and the US being willing to reduce its support for the Israeli government if it does not achieve a lasting peace settlement.
But inertia is a powerful influence on foreign policy.
Jeet Heer observes:
The Abraham Accords approach was incoherent even before the latest horrific flare of violence between Israel and the Palestinians. For one thing, building an alliance between Arab autocracies and an increasingly authoritarian Israel belies Sullivan’s stated claim that the United States will “work vigorously to defend democracy across the globe” (a bromide found in both drafts of his essay). The Abraham Accords is an alliance between police states designed to clamp down on the democratic aspirations of people in the Middle East. It tries to wave away the problem of the region’s lack of democracy by promising economic growth. But even if this economic growth did materialize—and were broadly shared, an even more unlikely scenario—there’s no reason to think that would lessen popular demands, in both the Arab autocracies as well as Israel, for democracy and human rights. You can’t make people forget about the carnage in Gaza, or the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, with fantasies about pie-in-the-sky - or even with a few more real pie crumbs. [my emphasis]
Even beyond the Israel-Palestine conflict, it’s hard to see how making additional military security commitments in Europe and the Middle East is compatible to the pivot to Asia. Biden was offering Saudi Arabia a military defense commitment by the US as part of its attempt to normalize Israel-Saudi relations. And the NATO expansion policy since the Clinton Administration was essentially based on the assumption that this was a “freebie” in terms of assuming greater risk of direct war between the US and Russia.
Now, as a very practical matter, it’s clear that the US and NATO can’t safely assume that it will never need to go to war against Russia in defense of allies like Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, or Sweden. Whether Russia has the intent to move militarily against any of those countries doesn’t detract from the fact that the US has high-priority defense commitments under NATO with those countries at a time when NATO on its side is effectively engaging as a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. Obviously, Russia’s own participation is direct and not a “proxy” one.
Sullivan, Jake (2023): Foreign Affairs Nov./Dec. <https://www.foreignaffairs.com/system/files/pdf/2023/FA_102_6_ND2023_Sullivan_print_edition_version.pdf> Print version.
Ashford, Emma (2023): The Sources of American Exhaustion. What Is To be Done? (Substack) 10/27/2023. (Accessed: 2023-27-10).
Ashford, Emma (2023): Congress must scrutinize the US spending spree on global crises. Defense News 10/24/2023. <https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/2023/10/24/congress-must-scrutinize-the-us-spending-spree-on-global-crises/> (Accessed: 2023-27-10).
Heer, Jeet (2023): Jake Sullivan’s Rewrite Can’t Paper Over an Impoverished Foreign Policy. The Nation 10/30/2023. <https://www.thenation.com/article/world/jake-sullivan-foreign-affairs-middle-east/> (Accessed: 2023-27-10).
Sullivan, Jake (2023): Foreign Affairs Nov./Dec. <https://www.foreignaffairs.com/system/files/pdf/2023/FA_102_6_ND2023_Sullivan_print_edition_version.pdf> Revised web version. Currently behind subscription.
Obama and the Middle East: The End of America's Moment. WoodrowWilsonCenter YouTube channel 09/29/2013. (Accessed: 2023-14-11).
See also: Obama and the Middle East: The End of America's Moment. Wilson Center 05/21/2012. <https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/obama-and-the-middle-east-the-end-americas-moment> (Accessed: 2023-14-11).