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Did Biden just escalate the Gaza War?

Did Biden just escalate the Gaza War?

The chances for Americans to get dragged into the conflict just got greater

Analysis | Video Section
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On Thursday night, President Joe Biden — acting without congressional approval — ordered airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, an escalation in the regional spillover from Israel’s war in Gaza that now directly involves US military personnel.

Biden chose to escalate the conflict and bomb Yemen in response to Houthi fighters' Red Sea attacks. His unconditional support and steady flow of weapons to Israel appears to be increasing the likelihood of a regional war. Instead of using the U.S.’s considerable leverage over Israel to push for a ceasefire, Biden is enabling a brutal war that has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians, and ties his administration to Israel’s decisions as it inches toward an all out war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Biden should be honest with Americans: the longer Israel's siege of Gaza persists, the greater the chances of a regional conflagration that will put American lives in danger.


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Analysis | Video Section
Vice President JD Vance Azerbaijan Armenia
U.S. Vice President JD Vance gets out of a car before boarding Air Force Two upon departure for Azerbaijan, at Zvartnots International Airport in Yerevan, Armenia, February 10, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/Pool

VP Vance’s timely TRIPP to the South Caucasus

Washington Politics

Vice President JD Vance’s regional tour to Armenia and Azerbaijan this week — the highest level visit by an American official to the South Caucasus since Vice President Joe Biden went to Georgia in 2009 — demonstrates that Washington is not ignoring Yerevan and Baku and is taking an active role in their normalization process.

Vance’s stop in Armenia included an announcement that Yerevan has procured $11 million in U.S. defense systems — a first — in particular Shield AI’s V-BAT, an ISR unmanned aircraft system. It was also announced that the second stage of a groundbreaking AI supercomputer project led by Firebird, a U.S.-based AI cloud and infrastructure company, would commence after having secured American licensing for the sale and delivery of an additional 41,000 NVIDIA GB300 graphics processing units.

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United Nations
Monitors at the United Nations General Assembly hall display the results of a vote on a resolution condemning the annexation of parts of Ukraine by Russia, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, New York, U.S., October 12, 2022. REUTERS/David 'Dee' Delgado||

We're burying the rules based order. But what's next?

Global Crises

In a Davos speech widely praised for its intellectual rigor and willingness to confront established truths, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney finally laid the fiction of the “rules-based international order” to rest.

The “rules-based order” — or RBIO — was never a neutral description of the post-World War II system of international law and multilateral institutions. Rather, it was a discourse born out of insecurity over the West’s decline and unwillingness to share power. Aimed at preserving the power structures of the past by shaping the norms and standards of the future, the RBIO was invariably something that needed to be “defended” against those who were accused of opposing it, rather than an inclusive system that governed relations between all states.

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President Donald Trump announces the creation of a critical minerals reserve during an event in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC on Monday, February 2, 2026. Trump announced the creation of “Project Vault,” a rare earth stockpile to lower reliance on China for rare earths and other resources. Photo by Bonnie Cash/Pool/Sipa USA

Trump vs. his China hawks

Asia-Pacific

In the year since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, China hawks have started to panic. Leading lights on U.S. policy toward Beijing now warn that Trump is “barreling toward a bad bargain” with the Chinese Communist Party. Matthew Pottinger, a key architect of Trump’s China policy in his first term, argues that the president has put Beijing in a “sweet spot” through his “baffling” policy decisions.

Even some congressional Republicans have criticized Trump’s approach, particularly following his decision in December to allow the sale of powerful Nvidia AI chips to China. “The CCP will use these highly advanced chips to strengthen its military capabilities and totalitarian surveillance,” argued Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), who chairs the influential Select Committee on Competition with China.

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