Joe Biden’s new military activism

Diplomacy is back”, President Joe Biden said recently. But then in the middle of a delicate diplomatic dance with Iran he goes and bombs a small, politically inconsequential, Iranian surrogate in Syria, in retaliation for the killing of one American soldier.

This seems to go against everything he said during his presidential campaign on moving towards fashioning a quick agreement with Iran so that the deal made by President Barack Obama that froze Iran’s nuclear activities could be resuscitated after Donald Trump’s decision to blow it up.

 Biden’s bombing has made the chance of simultaneous choreographed moves by both sides to get back to the deal made by Obama more difficult.

Why should Iran, its politicians say, have to take the first step when it was the US who broke the china? It makes no sense.

After this incident it makes even less sense, say Iran’s hard-liners. Indeed it is odd. Wendy Sherman, Obama’s former lead negotiator for the Iran deal and now deputy secretary of state said in 2009 that “she would be shocked if Iran agreed to a meeting without some sanctions relief”.

Perhaps it is an American thing. It appears no president is sure of his self- regard until he has bombed someone, somewhere.

 Jimmy Carter has been the only exception in post war times, although he did order the traffic of guns to the Taliban and other insurgents who were then fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

 I can’t imagine Chancellor Angela Merkel or President Emanuel Macron or even Boris Johnson behaving like this. This is not the way to impress the Europeans with the Biden slogan that “America is back”.

Biden has a record of peace-making tendencies, according to Obama, writing in his memoirs, usually being the lone advocate in the inner circle who argued against military intervention.

Now he is president does he think he has to win his military spurs to make his reputation somewhat more fearful?

Does this explain why his senior foreign policy appointments are more hawkish than he has been in his  pre-presidential political life?

 Haven’t we had enough of fighting to secure America’s “credibility” in Vietnam, Cambodia, Central America, Iraq and Afghanistan, all of which ended (apart from Afghanistan where fighting persists) with a loss of this cherished credibility?

 It is not only Iran. There is Biden’s decision to halt the supply of offensive weapons for use by Saudi Arabia in its devastating, child-killing, war in Yemen.

Only defensive weapons will be sold, says the White House. But who can tell the difference when weapons are used in a Saudi attack?

 What is the difference between an attacking and defensive bomber? When the Saudis fudge it what will Biden do? We are still waiting to see what Biden will do about the under-reported war he has inherited in Somalia. The US has been intervening in Somalia for decades.

First in the name of fighting communism and Soviet influence. Then in the early 1990s in the name of humanitarianism which led to the American forces fleeing Somalia after a savage attack on American helicopter gunships- the so- called “Black Hawk down” incident.

This left behind a lone body of UN soldiers on whom President Bill Clin- ton heaped blame for not doing a better job. Then when it came to George W. Bush in the White House the US fought in the coun- try in the name of the War on Terror.

The US upped its funding to brutal athe- istic warlord groups which fought against terrorist Islamic insurgents. In fact it merely strengthened the hand of the terrorists. 

Whatever the reason du jour, the successive US’s interventions have further destabilized and devastated Somalia.

The last few years have been an unmitigated disaster for the people of Somalia. Obama and Trump continued their predecessors’ policies and now, without mention of Somalia publically, Biden appears to be doing the same.

Chris Albin Lackey, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, reports that “the conflict pits US forces and Somalia’s ineffectual, internationally backed, transitional government against a powerful but fragmented insurgency.” He adds that all sides have committed war crimes.

The result of years of upheaval are over a million displaced from their homes, thousands of civilians killed and millions teetering on the edge of famine.

Aid workers are targeted and killed.

For 17 years Jonathan Power was a foreign affairs columnist for the International Herald Tribune/New York Times