‘The Biden/Harris Doctrine’ Has Brought the World Closer to World War III

By a strange turn of fate, on October 1, 2024, the day that Iran launched the largest ballistic missile attack ever against Israel, Foreign Affairs magazine published an article by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in which he claimed “the Biden administration’s strategy has put the United States in a much stronger geopolitical position today than it was four years ago” and that Iran is being held in check.

A year earlier, Foreign Affairs published another tragically erroneous article by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, which said, “Although the Middle East remains beset with perennial challenges, the region is quieter than it has been for decades.” Six days after this article was posted, Hamas launched a sneak attack against Israel, massacring more than 1,200 people and maiming and injuring many more. In a stunning violation of journalistic ethics, Foreign Affairs allowed Sullivan to revise his article after the Hamas terrorist attack. Here is a link to the original version.

In these articles, Biden officials are trying to rewrite history by manufacturing false narratives of a successful Biden national security doctrine that they claim has enhanced U.S. and global security.

This is, of course, preposterous. Not only has there been a huge increase in global instability since Donald Trump left office in January 2021, the Biden-Harris administration has brought the world closer to World War III because of an increased chance Russia could use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, the real prospect of an Israel-Iran War, a new Russia-China-Iran-North Korea Axis, a growing chance that China will attack Taiwan, and other current and potential crises.

Several Biden allies have tried to invent a so-called Biden Doctrine since 2021. Most made fatuous claims that Biden was reversing the damage done by President Trump to the country’s alliances, deterrence, and global leadership despite clear evidence that Trump strengthened alliances and had a successful foreign policy that brought global stability and kept U.S. troops out of new wars. Others asserted that Biden “restored trust abroad for the U.S.,” a claim that many U.S. allies would dispute. Several experts, including Blinken and Sullivan, wrote that President Biden enhanced American foreign policy by strengthening the American economy. The huge advantage that Donald Trump currently has in the polls over Kamala Harris on the economy proves this isn’t true either.

In January 2024, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote an article titled, “A Biden Doctrine for the Middle East Is Forming. And It’s Big” on a supposed new Biden Middle East peace initiative to quickly end the Hamas/Israel war. Under this plan, the Biden administration would bring peace to the Middle East with a tough stand on Iran, push for recognition of a Palestinian state, and greatly scale up the U.S. security alliance with Saudi Arabia. None of these things happened. Instead, Middle East security has deteriorated in 2024 to the worst level in decades.

If there is a Biden/Harris national security doctrine, it is a doctrine of abysmal failure. There are four reasons for this.

Incompetence. The Biden/Harris approach to U.S. national security has been dominated by profound incompetence. It was clear to the world at the start of Biden’s presidency that Joe Biden was not mentally fit to be U.S. commander-in-chief. This was obvious at a Biden-Putin summit in Geneva in June 2021, when Biden’s incoherent and doddering performance made him look weak to a huge global audience while Putin came off as competent and confident.

This was just part of many public displays of national security incoherence and confusion by this administration. This included Biden’s insults to the Saudi Crown Prince early in his administration, hostility toward the Egyptian government, mishandling of U.S. relations with China, and the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Biden undermined a key diplomatic mission to China by his secretary of state in 2023 by calling Chinese President Xi a dictator just after this trip. There has been little serious diplomacy between the U.S. and Russia and China. Biden has not spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin since February 2022 and has closed off the possibility of high-level talks with the Russian leader by calling him a war criminal and likening Putin to Hamas.

Biden’s worst foreign policy faux pas probably was when he made the bizarre statement in January 2021 that the U.S. might tolerate a “minor incursion” of Ukraine by Russia. A month later, Russia launched a massive invasion of Ukraine.

His extremely weak top national security advisers have exacerbated the effect of Biden’s mental decline on U.S. foreign policy: Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. This group does not include foreign policy geniuses like Henry Kissinger, James Baker, George Schultz, George Marshall, or Dean Acheson. It is a collection of third-string officials chosen to not outshine Biden.

Biden’s national security incompetence and mental decline have not gone unnoticed by world leaders. Russian officials frequently ridicule Biden over his mental health. The Wall Street Journal reported in October 2022 that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman mocked Biden in private and “made fun of his mental acuity.”

The perception of a mentally infirm American president with an incoherent foreign policy and surrounded by a weak foreign policy team has significantly damaged American and global security.  Not only has this eroded American leadership and deterrence, Biden officials are now routinely ignored in global affairs. When Joe Biden calls for cease-fires in Gaza and Lebanon or tells Israel not to attack Iran’s nuclear sites, no one takes him seriously.

Knee-jerk rejection of Trump and his foreign policy successes. Trump-hatred has been a significant theme of Biden’s foreign policy, especially at the start of this administration. This led to several irrational and dangerous policy decisions.

Biden officials condemned and tried to reverse most of Trump’s foreign policies, even successful ones. These include Biden’s decision in May 2021 to reverse Trump’s sanctions that shut down the Nord Stream 2 pipeline built to transport Russian gas to Germany. In February 2021, Biden lifted Trump’s designation of Yemen’s Houthi rebels as a terrorist group. The Biden administration was forced to partially reverse this decision in January 2024 after the Houthis began firing Iran-supplied missiles at Israel and ships in the Red Sea.

President Biden also ended President Trump’s diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and downgraded U.S. diplomacy with the country by naming a part-time special envoy.  This led to an increase in North Korean belligerence and the largest number of North Korean missile tests in a single year in 2022.

Other knee-jerk reversals of Trump policies include resuming funding for and rejoining the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which Trump officials cut off because of this organization’s anti-Israel bias and collaboration with and funding of Hamas. The Biden administration also rejoined the UN Educational, Science, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which the Trump administration withdrew from due to anti-Israel bias.

In addition, the Biden administration rejoined the World Health Organization that the last administration withdrew from due to its mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, its refusal to hold China accountable for the origin and spread of the COVID-19 virus, and China’s control of this international organization.

Naïve globalist and far-left policies. Related to the Biden administration’s reversal of successful Trump administration foreign policies has been the implementation of many naïve globalist and far-left policies that have hurt American global interests.

The first and most significant of these policies was Biden’s decision to designate climate change as the top threat to U.S. national security and to concentrate American diplomacy on this issue.

President Biden also decided to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord on his first day in office. I am sure that Chinese leaders have been very pleased that most Biden administration diplomatic missions to Beijing were sent to discuss climate goals that China never intends to meet instead of more serious issues such as growing military threats from China, Chinese threats to Taiwan, Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, China’s growing nuclear arsenal, intellectual property theft by China, origins of the COVID-19 virus, etc.

President Biden and Vice President Harris have promoted the moribund two-state solution for Middle East peace and the creation of a Palestinian state over the objections of the Israeli government. They continued to press for a two-state solution even after the Hamas massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023.

The Biden/Harris administration also resumed the Obama administration’s appeasement of Iran in an attempt to negotiate a new nuclear agreement. This included refusing to enforce oil sanctions against Iran, which made the country an estimated $100 billion richer than it was when President Trump left office. In September 2023, the Biden administration agreed to pay Iran $6 billion in ransom to free five innocent Americans imprisoned in Iran