Biden's Middle East trip: Following in Trump's footsteps
WATCH: Biden looks poised to betray his campaign promise to sideline Saudi Arabia. Does this really serve America's interests?
Responsible Statecraft
Responsible Statecraft is a publication of analysis, opinion, and news that seeks to promote a positive vision of U.S. foreign policy based on humility, diplomatic engagement, and military restraint. RS also critiques the ideas — and the ideologies and interests behind them — that have mired the United States in counterproductive and endless wars and made the world less secure.
Top photo credit: President Joe Biden on the White House Lawn, July 14, 2023. (Shutterstock/Salma Bashir)
A bucket list for Biden
November 12, 2024
Freed of the constraints of the presidential campaign, the Biden administration can use the next two months to recalibrate U.S. policy abroad, clean up several messes, and — maybe — rehabilitate the reputation of his team and our country.
Here’s a bucket list of executive actions the Biden administration should take to leave the United States, the world, and its legacy in a better place.
Most immediately, demand a ceasefire and the withdrawal of the Israeli Defense Forces from southern Lebanon, Gaza and Palestinian Authority-administered areas of the West Bank, and an end to all aerial bombardment in order to obtain the release of hostages and protect the lives of U.S. citizens and others in the region. Use this ceasefire to test whether the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas halt their attacks on Israel.
If Israel refuses, announce the immediate cessation of U.S. arms shipments and aid flows other than those intended for the Iron Dome shield. This move would follow the October 13 letter from Secretary of Defense Austin and Secretary of State Blinken to their Israeli counterparts warning them that if Israel did not comply with its obligations to allow U.S.-supported humanitarian aid into Gaza within 30 days, there would be “implications” pursuant to U.S. law. The 30 days are up as of today, and not one of the conditions has been met.
It’s way past time to end U.S. complicity in the slaughter and starvation of tens of thousands of innocents.
Also clearly reiterate U.S. opposition to the continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank and to construction of new settlements in Gaza. Announce increased U.S. sanctions on individuals and entities complicit in settler violence or threats against Palestinians in the West Bank.
To de-escalate the spiral of violence across the Middle East, reach an interim deal with the new Iranian government on its nuclear program. At a minimum, revive the informal understanding worked on during the summer of 2023. This will hopefully serve as a break on further retaliation by Iran against Israel and offer an opening for further diplomacy by the Trump administration.
Draw down U.S. forces from Iraq. The United States does not need to maintain thousands of sitting-duck troops in Iraq to deter the return of ISIS. A plan for gradual withdrawal through 2026 has been announced. Recommit to the implementation of this plan and take the next step in transferring to the Iraqi government full responsibility for its national security.
Do not escalate U.S. support for the war in Ukraine and refrain from taking any action that could undermine prospects for a negotiated settlement. As Richard Haass and NYT national security reporters are now acknowledging, and my colleagues at Quincy Institute have long maintained, time is not on Ukraine’s side in the war. Russian forces are advancing, and this winter is going to be hellish unless the fighting is brought to an end and Ukraine’s electrical grid is repaired.
The war is also destabilizing politics in Europe and beyond. The Biden team should consult with the incoming administration on what assistance Ukraine needs, to be paired with outreach to incentivize a positive Russian response to bring both sides to the negotiating table.
End comprehensive sanctions on Venezuela. Hundreds of thousands of people are emigrating from Cuba and Venezuela, where U.S. sanctions have helped make life unbearable for large parts of the population. Instead of achieving the desired policy outcomes, counterproductive sanctions have hurt people and forced many to make the difficult decision to leave their homeland for the United States.
Take steps to normalize relations with Cuba. Remove Cuba from the U.S. list of State Sponsors of Terrorism; enable more normal travel by allowing cruises, use of hotels, independent people-to-people trips and performances; and suspend Title III of the Helms-Burton law, as President Obama did, to prevent nuisance lawsuits that interfere with U.S. investment and business in Cuba.
In his waning days in office, Trump imposed comprehensive sanctions on Cuba; Biden can undo them — better late than never. This is particularly pressing given public concern over unauthorized immigration to the United States.
Take additional steps to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp by overriding the decision by Secretary of Defense Austin to pursue further court action to reject the military commission plea agreement he authorized with the 9/11 masterminds. Put an end to the 22-year-long global public relations problem that Guantanamo has posed by escalating efforts to find third-country homes for those remaining prisoners who have never been charged.
Take steps to normalize relations with Afghanistan. Ending the U.S. war in Afghanistan was courageous and correct. Now President Biden needs to lead the way toward restoring diplomatic relations by empowering the Afghanistan Affairs Unit in Doha to proactively engage senior Taliban figures and set a positive precedent by sending a U.S. diplomat to meet with the Taliban in Kabul. The Fulbright program for Afghans should be reinstated, and processing of the remaining special immigrant visa (SIV) holders located outside the United States should be fast-tracked.
Reinstate the Fulbright and Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange programs with China/Hong Kong. We need to know more, not less, about China. President Biden should restore these important programs that Trump killed with a stroke of his pen.
President Biden has an extraordinary opportunity in this period to act on his conscience, free of domestic political constraints. For the good of the country and its reputation abroad, his historical legacy, and those who have suffered from destructive U.S. policies, I hope he will act with alacrity to check them off of his bucket list.
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REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
photo : U.S. President Joe Biden attends a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as he visits Israel amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Tel Aviv, Israel, October 18, 2023.
US groups to Biden: End aid if Israel won't stop brutalizing civilians
November 11, 2024
A group of 60 national, state, and local organizations sent a letter to President Biden on Monday urging him to “hold Israel accountable to U.S. law [by] ending arms sales to Israel to protect U.S. interests, achieve a ceasefire, protect civilians, increase aid access in Gaza, and work towards a stable future for the region.”
The policy, humanitarian, and faith-based organizations — which include Amnesty International, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, and the Quincy Institute, publisher of Responsible Statecraft — expressed disappointment with Biden’s policy of “unconditional support of Israel paired with empty threats,” saying the policy has not yielded any meaningful results and serves to harm America’s global reputation.
Rather than curbing Israel’s actions, the signatories say the Biden administration has enabled it to bomb hospitals, schools, and residential areas, block humanitarian aid, and kill tens of thousands of civilians, journalists, and aid workers, all at the expense of the taxpayer.
The organizations say a letter sent by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to Israeli Defense Secretary Yoav Gallant asking Israel to allow humanitarian aid in Gaza “provides an opportunity to course correct U.S. policy” and enforce U.S. law which would require the United States to withhold aid until humanitarian assistance is delivered.
“The longer the U.S. allows its power and global standing to be undermined by this conflict, the more cost the United States will bear in reputation, taxpayer dollars, and possibly servicemember and citizens’ lives,” they write. “In your final months in office, we urge you to do everything in your power to end U.S. military aid to Israel to stop Israel’s assaults on civilians and maintain regional stability.”
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Top photo credit: Sailors lift ammunition during an on-load aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS William P. Lawrence (DDG 110). William P. Lawrence is underway on its first operational deployment to the western Pacific region as part of the Nimitz Strike Group Surface Action Group. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Carla Ocampo) File# 130126-N-ZQ631-628
By the numbers: US missile capacity depleting fast
November 11, 2024
Regardless of the merits or demerits of the Biden administration’s policies on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the wider Middle East, it has become clear that the United States has been using and giving away its missiles faster than it can produce them.
It is also clear that from the perspective of missile inventories and production, the United States is far from prepared to engage confidently in a sustained direct conflict with a peer competitor like China.
This is demonstrated by the fact that U.S. missile and artillery shell reserves are currently inadequate to provide Ukraine with what it needs to keep its missile defense systems supplied with interceptors. Indeed, the inability of the United States and its NATO allies to provide enough air defense missiles — a.k.a. interceptors — has made it easier for Russia to attack and destroy key military targets, as well as cripple Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
This missile deficit parallels the well-documented lack of U.S. artillery shell production that has enabled Russia to increase the rate at which it’s taking control over territories in Ukraine today.
While the United States is not going to run out of missiles tomorrow, its missile inventory, both offensive and defensive, is dwindling. Further, although the U.S. government has not disclosed how many interceptor missiles have been given to Ukraine to supply the billions of dollars’ worth of NASAM, Hawk, and Patriot air defense systems Washington sent there, we do know that it has not been enough.
We also know that between Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, some 740 Patriot PAC-2/PAC-3 missiles per year will be made in 2025, with production theoretically ramping up to roughly 1,100 missiles by 2027. That sounds like a lot, but since February 22, 2022, Ukraine has faced attacks from thousands of drones and missiles.
Moreover, while our proxy war on Russia has strained our resources, an outbreak of hostilities with China could easily increase the burn rate of our ship-based missiles by an order of magnitude over what we have been seeing in the Middle East. And speaking of our supply of ship-based missiles, as of Feb 1, 2024, the U.S. Navy had used at least 100 of its standard series class missiles in the Red Sea.
A July 2024 report reveals that the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier strike group expended 155 multi-million-dollar standard series missiles, 135 multi-million-dollar Tomahawk cruise missiles, 60 multi-million dollar air-to-air missiles, and an additional 420 air-to-surface munitions with a cumulative cost likely in the hundreds of millions of dollars And this missile expenditure does not include the missiles used by warships not attached to that strike group during this period.
Naturally, since July, the Navy has continued to use overpriced, ridiculously expensive missiles to shoot down cheap Houthis drones and missiles. Adding to our Navy’s missile burn rate, on at least two occasions, April and October of this year, our warships used SM-2 and SM-3 missiles to protect Israel from Iranian ballistic missiles and drones. Additionally, since the beginning of the year, the U.S. Navy has been using the much more expensive SM-6 missiles, along with SM-2s, in its Red Sea operations.
We don’t really know how many missiles have been used to date, but what has been publicly disclosed should be viewed as a very conservative estimate. In addition, we don’t know the exact inventory levels of critical weapons, as such information could be of great use to our enemies. However, according to a report by the Heritage Foundation, up through 2023, the Pentagon had procured roughly 12,000 Standard Missile-2s (SM-2), 400 Standard Missile-3s (SM-3), 1,500 Standard Missile-6s (SM-6), and 9,000 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAM). During this same period, the U.S. Navy has expended at least 2,800 Standard Missiles and 2,900 TLAMs. And these figures do not include the previously mentioned expenditures of the last year or so.
Shedding more light on roughly what our current reserves of missiles looks like, the Wall Street Journal estimates that when training exercises and the retirement of older weapons are taken into account, only about 4,000 TLAM remained as of 2020 and since then the U.S. has only produced another 250 or so TLAMs. Consequently, with large numbers of TLAMS, SM-2 and other SM-type missiles having been expended in 2023 and 2024, our nation’s missile stockpile continues to be depleted.
Put another way, the entirety of our Navy’s warships, not including quad packs of shorter-ranged air defense missiles, can carry about 10,000 missiles in their vertical launch systems that can be used for wide-area defense or long-range attacks. So, as things stand, once we expend the full complement of our VLS launched missiles, we are roughly 3,000 missiles short of being able to fully replenish our ships.
Yet another aspect of how much stress could potentially be placed on our missile inventories is that, while we do have a relatively large number of SM-2 missiles, we only have some 400 SM-3 class missiles, the defense system most capable of destroying powerful ballistic missiles before they can threaten population centers or military targets.
And in April of this year, two of our Arleigh Burke guided missile destroyers used four to seven of these scarce SM-3 missiles to attempt the interception of ballistic missiles fired by Iran. Each of the SM-3s, depending on the model, costs between $13 and $28 million. Hence, that one engagement cost U.S. taxpayers in the neighborhood of $52M to $196M.
Of course, U.S. supplementation of Israel’s defenses has not been limited to expending shipborne missiles. On October 21, Israel received one of the United States’ seven THAAD air defense systems. Each of these systems costs over a billion dollars, and each THAAD interceptor missile costs $13 million. Given that the full load for the THAAD system we sent to Israel is 48 missiles, it is safe to assume Israel has received a minimum of $600 million dollars’ worth of interceptors.
For reference, as of December of 2023, the U.S. had built some 800 of these interceptors. This means if Israel ends up receiving a few reloads, we could easily see 25 percent of our THAAD interceptors inventory consumed at a replacement cost of $2.5 billion.
What’s more, as of 2023, Iran is believed to have over 3,000 ballistic missiles and many thousands of drones. Consequently, Iran could launch even larger attacks in the near future, necessitating the deployment of additional U.S. systems to supplement Israel’s strained air defenses to an even greater extent.
However, all of the above would amount to chump change should the United States become embroiled in a war with China. If such a disaster were to occur, Washington could easily find itself blowing through its missile stocks in a matter of months or even weeks. Indeed, a Center for Strategic and International Studies report found that, in order to counter China, the United States could end up expending 5,000 long-range missiles in just 3 weeks.
Consequently, with our defense industrial base already strained, it seems obvious that we should be doing everything we can to prevent escalation of the ongoing conflicts and instead be working to achieve a genuine, sustainable peace in the Middle East, as well as working towards a peace in the Ukraine war.keep readingShow less
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