President Biden fails to follow his own “integrated deterrence” strategy, which is outlined in the administration’s 2022 National Security Strategy. That approach calls for a whole-of-government effort to prevent aggression using a variety of instruments of statecraft. On virtually every account, the Biden administration has failed – and America and her allies like Israel are paying a severe price.
In April, the Wall Street Journal ran an article by Gerald Baker titled “When Biden says ‘Don’t,’ America’s adversaries do” – which states that under Biden “so many lines have been crossed that the world is running out of red paint.” Baker hit the bull’s eye with that statement! After all, Biden’s failure to deter led to the first major ground war in Europe in nearly 80 years, the deadliest attack on Israel in its history (October 7, 2023) and for the first time Iran launched missiles from its homeland that struck the Jewish state (April 14, 2024). Now, if that’s possible, we could see a full-scale war across the Middle East and one we might not avoid.
President Biden applies his “integrated deterrence” like former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain appeased Adolf Hitler until the Nazi’s Wehrmacht put that effort to death with its invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Alternatively, America and Israel ought to embrace former Teddy Roosevelt’s aphorism, “Speak softly, and carry a big stick.” Our failed deterrence policy is what our enemies – Russia, China, Iran and North Korea – understand and will continue to exploit.
So, what will happen at this point in the Mideast? Seems to me that Israel needs to ramp-up deterrence and that might only come from a preemptive strike on Iran’s most treasured capabilities: the Quds Force, the supreme leader’s personal army; and that nation’s oil infrastructure, which continues to rake in billions of dollars for its terrorist network. Otherwise, Jerusalem remains on the defensive playing whack-a-mole each time Iran or its proxies launch a missile or other type of attack on the Jewish state.
Meanwhile, expect Russia and China to defend, at least at first with rhetoric, but things could get out of hand. Then Katie-bar-the-door and a more global conflict might erupt that includes the already aging war in Ukraine, now an expanding conflict in the Mideast and gosh, the Chinese could expand kinetic operations in the Indo-Pacific because they smell Biden’s weakness.
This was all preventable had we had a meaningful deterrence policy that kept Iran isolated as did President Trump. However, today we are in a different place … and the evil alliance of authoritarian regimes is taking advantage of our weakened situation thanks to Biden.
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