Biden's war record

by Erhard Crome

[This article posted on 7/15/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://das-blaettchen.de/2024/07/bidens-kriegsbilanz-69337.html.]

On the night of Friday, June 28, 2024, the TV duel between US President Joe Biden and his predecessor and challenger Donald Trump took place in the USA. It was the first TV debate of the 2024 US election campaign, and both candidates made serious accusations against each other. The lasting impression, however, was that the 81-year-old Biden had difficulty following the discussion, formulating clear sentences and repeatedly stumbling. Later, he talked his way out of it, saying that he was tired, exhausted from world travels in the name of world politics. Since then, the media and even politicians from his own party have been asking whether he is still fit to serve for another four years.

However, the more important question is what Biden has achieved in terms of global politics in recent years. First of all, there is his war policy. The war in Ukraine has been raging since February 2022. The USA has basically achieved all its goals: Ukraine is permanently separated from Russia, at least for two generations. The decades-long good relations between Germany and Russia have been reduced to a minimum; above all, Germany is cut off from cheap Russian energy supplies, which visibly weakens the German economic and export model, not least in competition with the USA. German foreign policy, which had achieved a comparatively large degree of freedom of action under Chancellors Schröder and Merkel, is again subordinated to instructions from Washington, as was once the case with the FRG during the Cold War. Germany and the EU have committed themselves to financing the reconstruction of Ukraine – the USA, on the other hand, has not. Russia's reputation has been ruined in large parts of the Western world and its allies. Even though most of the global South does not follow the sanctions against Russia, there have been clear majorities in the UN votes condemning the Russian attack.

This means that the USA could actually withdraw from this war without delay. If it were not for the full-bodied promises made to Ukrainian President Zelensky over the years, which were also made by NATO. However, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg failed in his attempt at the beginning of July to guarantee Ukraine long-term military aid of at least 40 billion euros per year in the run-up to the NATO summit that has just ended. Such a commitment was only made for the coming year. This means that it is subject to the outcome of the upcoming presidential election in the US in November.

On the battlefields in Ukraine, Russia has reportedly managed to extend the front line and is conquering individual swathes of land every day. The Ukrainian armed forces have had to further thin out their limited resources of people and material. It seems extremely unlikely that a sufficient number of men who left the country in the face of the war will now voluntarily return. In short, a military victory for Ukraine is not in sight. Whether Trump will simply end US support for the war after he takes office, as Biden did in Afghanistan, is not certain, but it is possible.

Israel has been waging a brutal war in the Gaza Strip since the Hamas attack and the killing of around 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023. The Palestinian territory is a wasteland, with 1.9 million people, more than 85 percent of the population, on the run. As of the beginning of July 2024, around 38,000 Palestinians had been killed and over 87,000 injured. Around 500 healthcare workers died when the Israeli army destroyed hospitals, and 200 UN staff were killed. The Israeli government has ignored the resolutions of the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to end the war. At the end of June, Spain became the first EU and NATO country to join South Africa's lawsuit before the ICJ to condemn Israel for genocide.

In the first six months of the war, the Israeli army lost 650 of its own soldiers and 3,200 were injured. The war is now the longest ever waged by Israel. The many reservists who are deployed to fight are not working and are not contributing to the gross national product. Tourism, normally an important source of income for the country, is almost non-existent. Large sections of the Israeli population living near the Gaza Strip and in the north, on the Lebanese border, have been evacuated and have been living in hotels in the interior of the country for months. Overall, the economic consequences of the war are unforeseeable. How long can Israel continue this war without foreign assistance, not only military but also financial? The question seems impossible to answer at the moment.

The willingness of the secular majority to send their sons and daughters to war and, in the worst case, to death, while ultra-Orthodox Jews have so far been exempt from military service, has further decreased in this situation. “At the height of a tough war, the burden of an unequal distribution of the burden is greater than ever and requires a solution,” the Israeli Supreme Court stated at the end of June and issued a ruling: There is no legal basis for exempting ultra-Orthodox Jews from compulsory military service, which applies without distinction. Since then, there have been mass protests against this, the dispute has escalated, and police officers have been injured. The divisions within society are continuing to grow.

The Gaza war was a turning point for all those involved. Israel is weakening itself through this, and with it the positions of the USA in the Middle East. This is continuing, with Netanyahu ostentatiously refusing to comply with Biden's wishes to end the war and Israel not respecting international law, in particular the laws of war. The emancipation process of the Arab countries is continuing, and Iran is becoming stronger. Those sections of the US population that used to vote for the Democrats and are now in favor of solidarity with Palestine and against supporting Israel in its war could tip the balance and prevent Biden from getting enough votes to be re-elected (assuming he remains a candidate).

In terms of global politics, these two wars are distracting the US and its allies from the intended concentration of the forces of the Western world against China. The global South has freed itself and is increasingly deciding its own fate. The BRICS group is continuing to form and is increasingly conducting its economic and financial relations among themselves and without Western intermediaries. Other states want to join the BRICS. Although the Ukraine war is a war of the whites in Europe for the South, many of these states consider the peace proposals of China and Brazil to be a serious basis for ending the Ukraine war. This also applies to the Middle East, where China has already mediated between Iran and Saudi Arabia and both have joined the BRICS.

In the end, Biden, an experienced global politician, took office with the aim of strengthening the US's position in the world. However, the result of his presidency is that the US's position has weakened overall. This is more a result of objective factors than of Biden's age-related lapses.

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On July 5, a television interview with Biden was broadcast that was intended to blur the impression of his failure in the face of Trump. He rejected the suggestion that he undergo a cognitive fitness test along with neurological examinations: “I take a cognitive test every day. You know, I'm not just campaigning, I'm governing the world.” No US president has ever had such a fit of megalomania. But such a thing is also part of the feared clinical picture. So will humanity have a demented old man in the White House for the next four years, with trembling fingers on the infamous nuclear button?

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Take a deep breath! Reflections on a disastrous presidential debate

by Stephen Eric Bronner, New Brunswick, New Jersey

[This article posted on 7/15/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://das-blaettchen.de/2024/07/durchatmen-ueberlegungen-zu-einer-desastroesen-praesidentschaftsdebatte-69342.html.]

The anti-fascist world was immediately thrown into turmoil by President Joe Biden's terrible performance in the TV debate with former President Donald Trump. In America, even formerly enthusiastic supporters of Biden are abandoning the ship. It's always the same: “Biden is too old!” – “He's too weak!” – “He's demented!” The vast majority of Democrats recognize the achievements of his administration. However, as became abundantly clear in the debate, the problem lies in his apparent inability to communicate these achievements to the people; as long as he is unable to do so, the argument goes, Trump will win.

All the critics agree: Biden is a “good and decent person, but he's screwed up!” They say, “It's time for Biden to go!” Realism dictates the need for a new candidate, male or female. The political pros admit that there could be some technical problems during the Democratic Party's August convention, which will determine the presidential candidate, but they know that these problems are solvable.

But this realism also has its flaws. For more than a century, no candidate who emerged from an open party convention has gone on to win the presidency, except for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the greatest campaigner of all time, who ran against Herbert Hoover's “Great Depression” in 1932.

There are reasons for this. Such an open convention can end in a political “massacre”. Is Vice President Kamala Harris a consensus-building replacement for Biden's succession? She has not exactly shone in her role as his deputy, and the left wing of the Democratic Party would certainly be up in arms. The party elites can try to exert their power. But running the convention with an iron fist will surely leave scars, create distrust and increase the disillusionment of grassroots activists. Such a convention will in any case produce a weak and compromised candidate. His or her defeated rivals will most likely only support him (or her) half-heartedly. They may even secretly hope for a Trump victory, as this would increase their chances of winning the party's presidential nomination in 2028.

Anti-fascist forces need to sit back and take a deep breath! Biden's critics were silent after the president's rightly celebrated State of the Union address in March 2024. Perhaps Joe Biden, who has never been a particularly good debater, really just had a bad day this time. That will become clear as the campaign progresses. About 150 million people voted for him in 2020, while 51 million watched the current debate. This debate has certainly changed the minds of only a few people among Trump supporters and opponents. Biden is too old. But Trump is no spring chicken either. It is time to emphasize the age, volatility and megalomania of the ex-president in the argument.

Under the circumstances, it makes little sense to drop Biden. None of the candidates who have a realistic chance of succeeding him pursues a completely different policy than the president. None of them will satisfy left-wing activists, let alone the self-righteous, sectarian supporters of third-party candidates such as Robert Kennedy Jr., Jill Stein and Cornel West. The election will be decided by a minority of “uninformed” and “independent” voters. Any replacement for Biden will be identified with his concerns and will remain tainted with the same discontents as the current administration.

In the meantime, Biden's failure in the debate could even work in his favor. His campaign could gain momentum by showing wavering voters what is at stake. It could scare the hell out of them when they realize that they have to choose between a decent human being who stands up for democracy and working people and a depraved subject whose greed for power is only surpassed by his fascist tendencies. A poor showing in a debate does not change the clear dividing line between these two men and the fact that, no matter who replaces Biden, grassroots solidarity is and remains more important than the arrogant prophecies of the party elites from above.

Stephen Eric Bronner is co-director of the International Council for Diplomacy and Dialogue and professor emeritus of political science at Rutgers University, New Jersey.