Another informal adviser to Biden put it more bluntly: ‘They are just very purposeful not to be dragged to the Middle East. ‘
The shift of energy and resources away from the region reflects what advisers have described as a deliberate attempt to prioritize what they see as more urgent global issues. This is an approach that Biden’s immediate predecessors tried, often unsuccessfully. And at the heart is a sense of dismay that U.S. foreign policy is often overwhelmed by swamps in the Gulf.
This is especially true for Biden. The president has a long and tortured history in the Middle East. He voted against the first war in Iraq in 1991, which the US quickly won. As chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, he insisted on the congressional decision authorizing President George W. Bush to invade Iraq in 2003 – a vote he said he regretted.
In 2007, Biden proposed a plan to divide Iraq into three semi-autonomous regions held by the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. It has been widely criticized by experts in the Middle East and foreign policy analysts who have said it could lead to more bloodshed.
After years of traveling back and forth between Washington and the Middle East – handling the Iraqi portfolio for President Barack Obama, waging a lone struggle to prevent a planned US boom in Afghanistan after the Syrian civil war, and the rise of ISIS to settle. Biden took on the allies against allies in 2014, blaming them for the rise of the terrorist group and exposing its general frustrations with the region.
“The Turks … the Saudis, the Emirates, etc., what did they do?” he told Harvard students during a speech that fell. ‘They were so determined to take off [Syrian President Bashar] Assad and essentially a proxy Sunni Shia war, what did they do? They dumped hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into each one that would fight Assad. ‘
Allies were incensed, and Biden quickly apologized.
Now, President, Biden will have to deal with some of the thorny issues that plagued him a decade ago.
He has so far given little indication as to whether he will complete the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, scheduled for May, under a peace deal the Trump administration has made with the Taliban.
Although Biden undoubtedly opposed an increase in U.S. troop levels in the country while serving as vice president, his newly appointed Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, gave the slightest hint that U.S. withdrawal might not proceed as planned in remarks at a meeting this week of NATO defense ministers. According to the Pentagon, the Pentagon would not “undertake a turbulent or disorderly withdrawal”. The US currently has only 2,500 troops there, but Pentagon officials have indicated that violence remains too high to justify going to zero.
Austin seemed to not want to get stuck in the Middle East either. He recently kicked off a review of the deployment of U.S. troops worldwide that is expected to reevaluate the U.S. military presence in the Gulf, but is unlikely to diminish U.S. troop representation in the Asia-Pacific region, a senior administrative official said. official said last week.
Austin also indicated that the Middle East was not one of its top priorities when it installed three special advisers on key issues: China, Covid and climate. His deputy, Kathleen Hicks, and his chief of staff, Kelly Magsamen, are both well-known experts in China.
The Pentagon is not the only place where staff offer tips on a new set of priorities. In the National Security Council, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan downsized the team dedicated to the Middle East and enlarged the unit that coordinates U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific region. And the possible appointment of a Bernie Sanders adviser, Matt Duss, to a senior position at the State Department, has also raised suspicions that the government is not too concerned about traditional domestic policy around Middle Eastern policy. .
A staunch adviser to Biden said he opposed the appointment, arguing that Duss and other progressives were too willing to relinquish US leadership and lament US opponents such as Iran, Syria and Russia in the name of decalcification. But Rep. Tom Malinowski (DN.J.), who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor in the Obama administration, said the concern is overwhelming.
Biden ‘wants people in this government who represent different schools of thought within the broad democratic party coalition,’ he said. “It does not change the commitments he has made or the beliefs that define him, it just means that there will be healthy debate.”
In his short time as president, Biden has already noted that he is prepared to stick to some diplomatic breakthroughs that his predecessor mediated between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain. But the big test he faces – one that could very well determine whether his efforts to put the Middle East in the background are successful – is how or if former President Donald Trump’s decision to leave Iran to draw agreement, to undo.
Accession to the joint comprehensive plan of action is described by Sullivan as a ‘critical early priority’ – one that the government will not negotiate with the UK, France, China, Russia and Germany, known as the P5, until next month. +1. Some of the president’s allies are worried that Biden and his team may be too quick to re-enter the agreement, see it as a victory, and then watch for issues such as Iran’s abysmal human rights record, the ballistic missile program and the attacks on the US. and coalition forces in the region.
Sullivan insisted that this would not happen, and noted at an event last month that the government’s goal was to ‘return to diplomacy’ with Iran and put its nuclear program ‘in a box’, so other ‘significant threats’ posed by Iran could be addressed by the US and its allies.
The issue was already urgent. Iran claimed on February 21 that a deadline for oil and gas sanctions could be removed from the country, otherwise the UN inspectors would be forced. But it became urgent again last Monday when three rockets hit an Iraqi air base in Erbil where US troops were stationed, killing a non-US contractor and injuring five Americans. The Shia militia group that demanded recognition for the attack is widely known to have close ties with Tehran.
But in another sign that the government wants to withdraw itself from the thorny region, US officials say intelligence has not yet pointed to a clear culprit, suggesting they will let the Iraqis lead the investigation and any military response.
“While there is a sense of urgency, there is also a very strong interest in making sure that we are deliberating in the process here, the decision-making process, and that we are on track with our Iraqi partners,” the Pentagon spokesman said. , John Kirby said Thursday. “We want to give them the time and space they need to explore.”