A day before the government announced its decision on Saudi Arabia, Biden gave the first important indication of his presidency that he would be willing to use military force in the Middle East if he considered it fair. He ordered retaliatory airstrikes on Iranian-backed fighters in Syria, demonstrating his readiness to maintain a military presence in the Middle East while still supporting a web of anti-American militias across the region. .
In response to the strikes – which allegedly killed at least one fighter in the Kataib Hezbollah militia group, an Iranian-backed group that is also part of the Iraqi government’s official security forces – Iran invited a third-party United States of America dismissed. diplomatic negotiations.
During the campaign, Biden pledged to re-establish the nuclear deal in Iran signed by his former boss, President Barack Obama, and he emphasized his record as an opponent of Obama’s intervention in Libya and the rise of troops. in Afghanistan. (Biden also opposed the risky mission that Osama bin Laden had taken out, although he boasted about it less quickly.)
When he took office, one of Biden’s first steps was to announce an end to “all US support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including arms sales.” This was largely seen as a preventative step, as Congress is likely to reintroduce a bill that would stop Trump arms sales to support the war in Yemen. But it also reflects pressure from within his party – and from many Republicans who support Trump – to turn the tide of American intervention.
“For eternal wars”
Yet Biden has surrounded himself with veterans of the Democratic foreign policy movement in Washington, who has voiced criticism from some critics in his party that he will return to the kind of moderate-interventionist approach that defined Obama’s tenure.
Weeks before his inauguration, a number of progressive groups sent him a list of 100 staff recommendations as they became concerned about his choice of foreign policy. Critics have pointed to the appearance of former Obama administration officials with ties to the arms industry during their years out of public service.
Biden said he “wants to end the perpetual wars,” and he often talks about his experience as a parent of a service member deployed to Iraq (his son Beau, who died of cancer in 2015). But Biden is now seen as highly unlikely to make a promise to remove all US troops from Afghanistan by May 1, which will be a crucial test for his commitment to non-intervention – in a situation where the results in can be ugly anyway. . This can also be explained by his desire to concentrate on domestic policy, Parsi said, calling it a path of least resistance.