Aharon Friedman is a lawyer in Washington, DC and formerly served as senior adviser at the Department of the Treasury and senior counsel to the Committee on Ways and Means. He also clerked on Israel's Supreme Court.
The Biden-Harris foreign policy combining de-escalation and purported international humanitarian law, driven by theoretical ideals of a utopian world order run by experts amounts to empty, but very dangerous, virtue signaling. The policy lacks any strategic underpinning and undermines America’s national security. The Administration exalts the idea of alliances and lets favored progressive allies in Europe freeload off American taxpayers but won’t support allies strategically defending themselves in the Middle East.
With one short statement demanding the unconditional release of Israeli hostages on Monday, President Trump highlighted the strategic and moral bankruptcy of the Obama-Biden-Harris foreign policy. “There will be ALL HELL TO PAY” by those responsible for carrying out the October 7 “atrocities against Humanity,” who will be “hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America.” October 7 could only have happened under an Administration that presumably considers such statements to be escalatory, provocative, and, because of the lack of any caveats about protecting Gazan civilians, violating “humanitarian law.”
For decades, the “team of experts” running U.S. policymaking for the Middle East insisted Arab countries would not make peace with Israel absent the blessing of the PLO and its fervently anti-American and antisemitic terrorist leaders Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas. But these experts passed off a tenet of their deeply held ideology, namely that Arab countries should not make peace with Israel without meeting demands of the PLO, as expertise that they would not. President Trump unheeded these experts in favor of innovative and nimble advisers who put America first and prioritized opposing Khamenei and supporting Israel and Gulf countries willing to resist Iran. The Trump team disregarded the vehement objections of the PLO and achieved the Abraham Accords.
Biden belittled Trump’s toughness and discarded Trump’s successes, funding, and unleashing Iranian aggression, including the 10/7 massacre. Biden’s “experts” cannot admit Trump’s achievements or their own failures and therefore pressure America’s allies to forgo victory, while defending themselves, if at all, in a very limited but costly manner that rewards war crimes and drains U.S. resources.
Appeasement and De-escalation
President Biden promoted the type of rules-based international order under which America and its allies must shun military operations to avoid escalation and civilian harms. Kinetic military attacks against the U.S. and its allies, short of full-scale war, may generally only be addressed by political solutions, in other words making concessions to the aggressor. The mantra is that there are no military solutions to political problems.
Kinetic defense is generally limited to hyper-reactive measures, such as shooting down missiles. And even when Biden permits a more active military response, operations must be limited to avoid escalation, such as precision low-explosive air strikes and small commando raids. Maneuver of large heavy ground forces to capture and hold territory is escalatory and inhumane.
Remaking International Law to Handcuff the United States and Our Allies
The Biden Administration has been developing new progressive ideology on harms to noncombatants in military strikes and humanitarian aid during war that it sometimes disguises as international law. Such so-called “best practices” in armed conflict purport to improve international law protections for noncombatants.
Under international law, attacks may generally not specifically target noncombatants. Under the vague principle of proportionality, a combatant must avoid attacks expected to cause civilian harm clearly excessive to the military advantage in the context of the attack or the entire war. Each side has the primary burden of protecting its own civilians by separating them from military facilities. On humanitarian aid, Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention only requires a combatant to allow “free passage of all consignments of essential foodstuffs, clothing and tonics intended for children under fifteen, expectant mothers and maternity cases.”
Defense Secretary Austin issued a “Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan” on August 25, 2022, “that createsnew institutions and processes” to refocus our military from defeating the enemy to protecting foreign civilians. In practice, the plan discards the existing rules, and disfavors any attack on military targets that may endanger noncombatants.
Apparently, the Biden Administration believes that promoting these best practices in warfare could only raise the bar internationally and result in American adversaries adopting similar practices, resulting in far fewer harms to noncombatants from military operations.
Iranian Equities, JCPOA, and the Houthis
President Biden's top foreign policy priority was reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the crown jewel of the progressive “rules-based order.” Under this unsigned agreement (designed to circumvent the Constitution’s requirement that the Senate ratify treaties), Iran is to temporarily limit the pace of its nuclear weapons development (under the fiction that such development is for purely peaceful purposes) in exchange for massive sanctions relief. An unstated but central part of the JCPOA was that the U.S. would respect Iranian “equities” in the Middle East, that is, increasing control over most of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen.
President Biden’s election heralded a restoration of “diplomacy and liberal values to US foreign policy” celebrated by Biden’s progressive European allies, including the reversal of President Trump’s policies in the Middle East. In this view, the subsequent increase in Iranian aggression and nuclear enrichment was not the result of Biden’s new policies but a lingering effect of Trump’s belligerence that would be peacefully resolved by the return of foreign policy “experts” to the halls of power.
The Biden Administration collapsed sanctions, resuscitating Iran’s economy, and turned against American allies opposing Khamanei, especially Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Biden took the Houthi regime, closely allied with Iran, off the Foreign Terror Organization list, citing “humanitarian” purposes. The Administration also heavily pressured the UAE and Saudi Arabia to stop fighting Houthi aggression, cutting off arms sales on the grounds their military operations harmed civilians.
Biden reversed Trump's policy, sending over one billion dollars to UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority, by arguing this was “humanitarian” and outweighed the likelihood, which it acknowledged, that such assistance would fund terrorism.
The Biden Administration also returned to the Obama policy of rewarding hostage-taking, such as sending $6 billion to Khamenei in a September 2023 deal.
Appeasement and the “Humanitarian” Principles Underpinning October 7
The hubris of Biden’s “team of experts” in relegating Trump’s national strategy focused on strengthening America and its allies to the ash heap of history encouraged Hamas to carry out the 10/7 massacre, and Iran and its other proxies, led by Hezbollah, to join in.
Our enemies are weaker than America but neither powerless nor stupid. They understand all too well that Biden’s de-escalation at virtually all times and all costs means it is they, regardless of their relative weakness, who have effective military options against the US and its allies.
Biden’s attempt to unilaterally handcuff America and our allies with onerous “humanitarian law” restrictions forms the primary underpinning of our enemies’ strategy. It took Israel six days to defeat Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in 1967. Hamas is exponentially weaker but realized that Biden’s view of “humanitarian law” would provide a powerful shield.
On October 7, Hamas exposed as fantasy the Administration’s attempt to advance utopian global best practices on civilian harm mitigation, publicizing its war crimes with GoPros. But Austin issued the “DOD Instruction on Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response” in December 2023 to further address the concerns of experts that America and our allies pose the primary threat to non-combatants in war.
Hamas’s understanding of the Biden Administration was accurate. Israel has achieved major battlefield successes, but Hamas survives under Biden’s “humanitarian” shield.
The Administration sent high-ranking military personnel to “advise” Israel into doubling down on U.S. military practices following the Cold War, which aimed to win hearts and minds and love, and deprioritized or even wholly disregarded the need to make our enemies fear America. However well-intentioned, these practices did not attain unalloyed success. Whatever one’s views on the geopolitical and military strategy and tactics in America’s campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Taliban rules the former, and Iran dominates the latter. Our strategy and tactics are not a model of perfection we should impose on our allies.
Biden pressured Israel to only employ targeted operations in response to October 7 and not send troops into Gaza to take and hold territory and root out Hamas. Despite his “solidarity” trip to Israel on October 18, he opposed every step of Israel’s Gaza operations and cut off vital weapons in response to Israel choking off Hamas’s supply route by entering Rafah.
The Administration, as Hamas correctly anticipated, has pressured Israel to restrict military operations to provide “humanitarian” aid to Hamas and reward the war crime of human shields by not engaging enemy combatants operating near civilians, under Austin’s guidelines. These restrictions, which the Biden Administration has made a condition for the delivery of weapons, have cost the lives of Israeli troops and civilians and also have a high financial cost.
International law only requires passage of humanitarian aid if “there are no serious reasons for fearing that the consignments may be diverted from their destination” or would otherwise help the enemy. But the Biden Administration is nonetheless flooding Gaza with aid (over $1 billion since October 7) despite Hamas seizing the aid to help remain in power.
In April, President Biden demanded Israel “Take the win” and not respond to a massive Iranian attack on Israel because most of the missiles and drones were intercepted. How this is supposed to deter military attacks against the US is a mystery, most of all to Iran. President Biden threatened “don’t, don’t, don’t” regarding regional escalation. Iran was not deterred but emboldened, as Ayatollah Khamenei saw the threat as primarily directed against Israel.
Weakening the United States and the “rule of law”
Pressuring allies into standing down, while promising to protect them, does not serve American interests. America has neither the resources nor capabilities to hold the world at equipoise, allowing enemies to fire at will while an omnipresent and omnipotent America harmlessly downs their bullets and missiles and prevents harms to noncombatants on all sides.
Once U.S. deterrence failed, opposing Iran and its proxies was inevitably going to cost some U.S. resources. But the U.S. should have allowed Israel to win quickly, instead of handcuffing the IDF and keeping Israel’s entire population under missile attack for more than a year. Biden’s fear of escalation is itself escalatory, giving Iran and its proxies a free hand to attack American allies and interests while protected under Biden’s shield.
The U.S. has fought piracy threatening American shipping since its independence, including two Barbary Wars at the start of the 19th Century. Biden’s elevation of so-called humanitarian principles allows the Houthis to wreak havoc on international shipping and shut down key trade routes.
Biden has turned the U.S. Navy into a laughingstock, reduced to trying to shoot down Houthi missiles instead of leveling all facilities supporting the Houthi military. Using expensive air defense systems to knock down exponentially cheaper projectiles while shielding the aggressor from our allies is not cost-effective. And this is draining U.S. resources that should be devoted elsewhere, especially to East Asia.
“Historically, reciprocity has been the major sanction underlying the laws of war,” State Department Legal Adviser Abraham Sofaer said in 1987. Biden is destroying the foundations of international law by effectively advocating harsher rules for America and its allies while rewarding lawlessness and war crimes by adversaries.
Make America Safe Again by Prioritizing Strategy Over Virtue Signaling and Fake Law
President Trump’s first-term policies reflected his view that prior presidents embroiled the US in too many wars and that America should practice far more restraint in sending servicemembers on overseas deployments. Nonetheless, when US interests were at stake, Trump was willing to use kinetic military force and to do so decisively, such as killing long-time Iran terror leader Soleimani. Trump understood that the U.S. could and should leverage its ability to use overwhelming military superiority in most of the globe to deter its enemies. The mere threat of force was usually enough because those enemies feared Trump would act.
Trump warned Putin not to invade Ukraine because the US would respond militarily. Putin replied that Trump would likely not. Trump responded, “I might.” Putin did not test Trump, a president he feared. The presidents preceding and succeeding Trump occasionally employed harsher rhetoric against Putin, but he didn’t fear them and invaded his neighbors under their watches. Other countries were also afraid to cross the U.S. because they feared Trump would react harshly without constraint and delay caused by excessive reliance on international institutions or so-called norms.
Trump understood that America’s military protects the United States, not an amorphous “rules-based order.” America is served by strong allies strategically defending themselves, not weak vassal states dependent on the U.S. and subsumed to American appeasement of our common enemies. International law and institutions have a role, but we must also not forget that the League of Nations, Kellogg-Briand, and Munich did not stop Hitler.
President Trump’s emphasis on Israeli victory is simple common sense that would advance U.S. interests, along with returning to other successful policies mocked by the experts, such as encouraging Arab countries to make peace with Israel. This requires sidelining, if not dismantling, the Palestinian Authority run by the PLO and its controlling Fatah faction, which claims the Abraham Accords was “one of the reasons” for October 7. Fatah boasts of having joined the massacre, which it hopes will undo the Accords.
Biden’s Middle East policy exemplifies the progressive determination to kneecap America and its allies in the name of moral grandstanding and to validate the theology of his “experts” that America has no military solutions against military attacks by our enemies. In contrast, Trump promised to restore weapons supplies to Israel, removing Biden’s handcuffs. On January 20, the Trump Administration should bolster America’s security by also unhandcuffing the US military and revoking Austin’s failed “humanitarian” rules.