Opinion | Biden sees himself as the essential world leader: With U.S. ruptured politically, will Biden treat Xi a cozy chat?

By Augustus K. Yeung

No other leader – on the world stage today – can boast of having sat in the Israeli prime minister's office 50 years ago with Golda Meir – or discussed dismantling Soviet nuclear weapons with Mikhail Gorbachev. But Biden.

It is no wonder that the twin wars in which Biden has chosen to involve the U.S. – defending Ukraine, and now promising aid to Israel in wiping out the leadership of Hamas – have brought out a passion, emotion and a clarity that is usually missing from the president's ordinarily "flat and meandering speeches".

It rang out on Thursday evening, as Biden combined the two struggles in his presidential Oval Office address, declaring that while President Putin of Russia and Hamas "represent different threats," they "both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy."

Throughout the speech, Biden toggled between the two crises, making the case that if America does not stand up in both conflicts – the result will be "more chaos and death and more destruction."

That argument reflects his certainty this is the moment – he has trained for his entire political career – a point he often makes when challenged about his age.

He seems determined to prove that for all the critiques – that the U.S. is a divided, declining power – it remains the only nation that can mold events in a world of uncertainly.

Whether Biden can bring the American population along, however, is a more unsettled question than at any moment in his presidency – and that uncertainty was the backdrop of his most recent address in his Oval Office.

Biden: American Leadership is What Holds the World Together…

Polls show that a growing number of Americans are uneasy – with the role of defender of the existing order and the existing rules – which Mr. Biden describes as the essence of America. In the generation in which he grew up, his Thursday declaration that "American leadership is – what holds the world together" would have been uncontroversial.

Today, however, it is a central point of debate, along with his insistence that "American alliances are what keep us, America safe."

For Biden, the democratic order is at risk – if the rest of the world balks at toppling Hamas and neutralizing Russia. But he is finding that a far harder case to make now than in February 2022, when Putin tried a lighting-strike attack in Ukraine.

In the Ukraine War, What Unifies Democrats and Republicans Is now Clearly Shattering…

The initial overwhelming support for Ukraine – one of the few issues that seems to unify Democrats and Republicans – is clearly shattering, with a growing part of the Republican Party arguing that this is not America's fight.

The slog across the Donbas and the prospect of a long conflict in which Putin is waiting – to see if America will elect former President Donald Trump – or someone of similar antipathy to the war effort, only complicates the picture.

Now Biden's whole-body embrace of Israel, so vivid in his seven-hour visit to Tel Aviv on Wednesday, may prove an equal challenge.

After the horrific scenes of burned babies and kibbutz residents shot or taken hostage by Hamas, he will almost certainly get the billions he is seeking.

But already his administration is hearing strident criticism – some within his own administration – that he has tilted too far – and done too little to restrain Prime Minister Benjain Netanyahu – from cutting off food, water and electricity in Gaza – and from preparing for a ground invasion that could kill thousands more Palestinians.

In private, even some aides around Biden say they fear the narrative around Israel and Hamas already is shifting – with memories of the horror of that recent bloody Saturday morning giving way to imagery of the destruction and desperation in Gaza.

Biden's response is that experience has taught him that the best way to moderate Netanyahu's behavior is to wrap him in support – and whisper a warning into his ear. He has made sure that members of his administration and allies are constantly in the country, and in Netanyahu's war room, to keep the Israelis from rushing into a broad invasion.

Biden's strategy has another element to it: While he is showing his support for Ukraine and Israel – he has ruled out putting Americans directly into the fight.

Note: That is drawn from the experiences of Afghanistan and Iraq, where support for the American effort was drained by the scenes of casualties that seemed increasingly pointless, and by the failure of American ambitions – a reality Biden alluded to in Tel Aviv when speaking of the mistakes that grew from a post-Sept.11 focus on vengeance.

On Thursday night, Biden made his most explicit case yet for why Americans, and the world, should rally behind four major goals. The first is to keep the aid flowing into Ukraine, so that Putin cannot wait out the West and strangle the country. The second goal for Biden is killing off Hamas. The third is to keep both wars from spreading. And the final objective is to accomplish all this – without bringing more death and misery to noncombatants caught in a world once again on fire. (Courtesy of NYT)

While it is true that Biden is probably the most senior U.S. politician who has got an audience with heroine Goda Meir 50 years ago, the fact that American presidents have over the decades waged and lost the wars, neglected the Americans' quality of life, and tarnished the nation's good reputation it has once got in subsequent years.

Today, Biden is in a double bind, a situation in which he is viciously Trump-challenged at home, and pompously ignored in the Middle East – amid world-wide pro-Palestine protests.

With media reports on the two-wars raging, only China has remained a faithful U.S. friend of the heroic Flying Tigers, "for old time's sake". Biden can only harp his cozy-posy tune to Xi in San Francisco summit.

 

The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.

To contact the writer, please direct email: AugustusKYeung@ymail.com

Read more articles by Augustus K. Yeung:

Opinion | Is this an act of patriotism? A case of the Philippines

Opinion | Wang Yi to visit Washington: Self-evidence of Xi-Biden summit in San Francisco

Opinion | An unobscured fact: Cooperation benefits both Chinese and Australian people