Biden has ‘done more damage to the foundations of international law than Trump did’
No foreign policy issue has been more divisive for Mr. Biden than his support for Israel throughout its war in Gaza. Emma Ashford [a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan research group] said the administration’s hypocrisy was exposed by “the split-screen much of the world sees on Gaza and Ukraine — with an administration who says one conflict is an unacceptable war crime, and the other self-defense.”
The Israeli military, supplied with American weapons, has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians and destroyed most of Gaza, according to officials in the strip and satellite images. Mr. Biden has tried to persuade Mr. Netanyahu to moderate some of his actions and has even used curse words to describe the Israeli leader privately. But his administration has never withheld substantial amounts of arms.
Critics say Mr. Biden failed to use the only real leverage he had to shape Israel’s actions, and so Mr. Netanyahu ignored him.
“He has stood by Israel unconditionally, even as Israel has done the same things that Russia did in Ukraine,” said Matt Duss, the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and a former adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont. “The damage that Biden has done to the rules-based order, we have not even begun to imagine the extent of that damage yet.”
Mr. Duss added that Mr. Biden had “done more damage to the foundations of international law than Trump did.” Because Mr. Biden, unlike Mr. Trump, was seen for decades as a champion of an American-led global order — “a high priest in the church” — his actions in particular showed that international rules “are hollow,” Mr. Duss said. [Continue reading…]