[W]hat we’re seeing every single day in Gaza is gut-wrenching, and the suffering we’re seeing among innocent men, women, and children breaks my heart. The question is, what is to be done?
(US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the 2024 Davos Forum[i])
If Blinken were the Foreign Secretary of, say, Malta, his statement would not be absurd — an official of such a tiny country would have little to no ability to influence Israel in any significant way. Yet here is the representative of the President of the United States, Israel’s patron and supplier, saying, in effect, “My heart breaks for all these innocent people, but what can I possibly do? I’m as helpless as you are!”
Of course, his boss, President Biden, is far from helpless, and could be doing a lot, but is not. The question is why. The answer to that question reveals the means by which civil society and Israel’s neighbors can unblock action and cause President Biden to compel a permanent ceasefire.
Three concepts are sufficient to explain Biden’s inaction: foreign policy hysteresis[1], his psychological stasis, and the Israel lobby. These three factors are responsible for the frozen US Middle East policy, but as will become clear below, they are poised in a state of unstable equilibrium. The right exogenous pressure will cause a regime shift in US foreign policy.[2]
AIPAC, the America-Israel Political Affairs Committee, is working tirelessly to stave off this regime shift because it will mean the end of unconditional support for Israel, the beginning of a re-balancing of power in the Middle East, and a fundamental reconsideration inside Israel and without of what it means to be a Jew in the Holy Land.
US Middle East Foreign Policy Hysteresis
US Middle East foreign policy is in a state of hysteresis: It has been stuck in a rut since the first Bush Administration that it can’t backtrack out of and that it can’t see a way forward out of.
Israel’s growth and commitment to local military superiority intersected with American interests in regional dominance until the 1970s. But Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank provided a cause for Islamic groups to organize around, thereby raising significant additional threats to US interest in regional stability. Official US policy opposed the illegal settlements in occupied territories, but domestic US support for “heroic” Israel turned criticism into a third rail of US politics. President George H.W. Bush’s delay of a loan guarantee to Israel, which forced Israel into the Madrid negotiations, was American policy’s last gasp of independence from Israel.
After 9/11, support for Israel as America’s principal ally in the fight against terrorism became an immutable requirement. Subsequently, virtually all Palestinian liberation organizations were defined as terrorist organizations, depriving American policy of almost any semblance of nuance and realism. Diplomacy as a tool of policy fell to a distant second place to military action. The US remained formally committed to the creation of a Palestinian state, but in fact the process of gradual annexation of the West Bank, along with the political neutering of American politicians with respect to Israel, has rendered the US impotent in advancing progress. American policy in the Middle East has become subordinate to Israeli preferences and decisions, irrespective of American interests.
Perhaps worse, it has lost its bearings. Biden’s hasty support for Israel and warm physical embrace of a man he is known to despise can be explained by his psychology and career track. But Secretary Blinken’s trip to Jordan and Egypt to request that Palestinians “be expelled into their territory,”[ii] thus openly advocating illegal ethnic cleansing, cannot be explained this way. At minimum it indicates a failure of State Department lawyers to intervene; at worst it indicates an utter subservience to the expulsion goals of Israel in both Gaza and the West Bank and a failure even to care about international law and the human and strategic consequences that expulsion undoubtedly would produce.
The lack of persuasive ideas for how to break out of this counterproductive stable state means that Israel essentially exercises a veto on US policies with which it disagrees. Thus, when Antony Blinken admits that he doesn’t know what to do, he is admitting that the State Department lacks the imagination to figure out how to overcome Israel’s veto, and how to transition to an alternative regime state in which American interests are not held hostage.
Biden’s Psychological Stasis
In 1986 then-Senator Joe Biden advocated passionately for aid to Israel, saying “If there were no Israel the US would have to invent an Israel.”[3]
Joe Biden has spent his entire political life working under the assumption that Israel is essential to American interests in the Middle East. Perhaps he was correct then. The USSR was still a threat to American interests in the Middle East, Islamist movements were growing and Arab governments weren’t strong enough to keep them in check, and the US needed Israel’s ability to gather intelligence.
In the meantime, the world has changed, Israel arguably has become as much a threat to American interests as an asset, and domestic opposition to support for Israel has grown, especially among Democrats.[iii] Yet now-President Biden has not updated his thinking. He repeated the same statement in 2022,[4] he maintains his rash pledge of unconditional support for Israel even as Netanyahu humiliates him, and he orders attacks on Houthi who say they will suspend attacks on shipping if Israel will just stop its genocidal war on Gazans.
Biden may be experiencing cognitive dissonance, possibly ignoring, denying, or reinterpreting information that contradicts his existing beliefs.[5] As president it is not difficult to avoid contradictory information: If support for Israel in American politics was showing some fault lines, it was not dramatic until recently, and his political peers would only reflect the needs of the status quo vis-a-vis AIPAC. Furthermore, the State Department has not been feeding him better ideas. Finally, if reliance on military action as America’s almost sole policy lever was not accomplishing much, at least it was not obviously counterproductive. Recent military action, however, is looking more and more ineffective if not counterproductive, and Israel’s utility as an asset is shrinking relative to the costs and risks it is generating.
And Israel’s assault on Gaza has been a bridge too far for many Americans. This changes the electoral equation. Grim reports are coming in, of tumbling Biden poll numbers, Senators breaking ranks, “uncommitted” primary votes demonstrating that his electoral margin in Michigan and elsewhere may be evaporating. And when high IDF officials criticize Netanyahu’s political leadership,[iv] this increases American politicians’ latitude to speak out without seeming to criticize Israel. Biden’s world view is coming under increasingly great strain.
AIPAC and the Israel Lobby
The American Israel Political Affairs Committee is the institutional head of a rich and powerful lobbying body comprised of pro-Israel Jews, evangelical Christians, and allied civil society organizations around the United States, in liberal and conservative areas alike. The effectiveness of AIPAC and its affiliates rivals that of the National Rifle Association — and it uses the same tactics as the NRA: Richly reward candidates who unconditionally support Israel, and destroy those who do not. This has produced a population of US politicians and officials who can be herded as if by a Yorkshire sheep dog.[6]
As a result no U.S. president can afford to seriously criticize or pressure Israel, especially not after October 7, when the Israel lobby is extraordinarily motivated to attack anyone, official or civilian, who does. President George H.W. Bush famously pressured Israel to start the Madrid negotiations by delaying for only 120 days a $10 billion loan guarantee. This cost him dearly in Jewish support, dropping from 35% to 11%.[v] In America’s evenly divided electorate today such a drop would be fatal to Biden’s chances of reelection, both in the presidential race and in the struggle to maintain control of the Congress.
Summary
President Biden is continuing to supply Israel with arms shipments on demand, but cracks are showing in Congressional support for American enabling of Israel’s assault. Biden’s call in his State of the Union address for a temporary ceasefire, his order that aid be delivered by air and sea, and his temporary suspension of shipments of 2000-pound bombs indicate that he is reading the changing political landscape.
I suspect, however, that even this provision of aid has the potential to further erode his political support. The ease with which the US was able to implement air drops demonstrated convincingly the US’s relative power over Israel. This demonstration of power eviscerates the argument that Biden and his officials make constantly: that the US is doing everything it can to ensure the safety of Gazan civilians.
President Biden’s reelection is balanced on the points if his dilemma, and the right exogenous pressure will knock it off. What is that exogenous pressure? It’s the disaffection of vital voting blocs.
There is a way for civil society to knock Biden in the right direction. I explain that in a strategy document here. Please feel free to comment and critique, your suggestions may improve the strategy.
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[1] “Hysteresis”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteresis
[2] “Alternative stable state theory”,Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_stable_state
[3] US President Joe Biden: “If there were not an Israel, we’d have to invent one”, at 00:32, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HZs-v0PR44
[4] Ibid at 00:21.
[5] “Cognitive dissonance”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
[6] “Round up your mates for a GUINNESS on St Patrick’s Day”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y07at1bU89Q&t=1s
[i] A Conversation with Antony Blinken, United States Secretary of State | Davos 2024 | World Economic Forum, Jan 17, 2024, at minute 17:38. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQaK9PRaa48
[ii] Interview, “Rashid Khalidi on the Israel-Hamas War”, ForeignPolicy.com, December 1, 2023, https://foreignpolicy.com/live/rashid-khalidi-on-the-israel-hamas-war/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=FPlive_TehranVasrSanampost_02022024&utm_term=fp_live
[iii] Al Lawati, Abbas, “Why American Jews are distancing themselves from Netanyahu’s government”, CNN World, March 24, 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/24/middleeast/us-jews-israel-smotrich-mime-intl/index.html.
[iv] Bergman, Ronen, and Patrick Kingsley, “In Strategic Bind, Israel Weighs Freeing Hostages Against Destroying Hamas”, New York Times, January 20, 2024.
[v] Cortellessa, Eric, “How ‘lonely little’ George H.W. Bush changed the US-Israel relationship”, Times of Israel, December 2, 2018.
Daniel Wolf is a Political Scientist (Ph.D. (abd) University of California, San Diego), attorney (J.D., Harvard Law School), and serial entrepreneur. He specializes in analyzing and solving complex sociopolitical problems. He founded Democracy Counts, Inc., a nonprofit tech company that develops software and processes that allow Americans to conduct legitimate near-real time audit checks on their local election machinery.
His proposed strategy for pushing Biden in the right direction may be downloaded here. The comprehensive peace plan he wrote, from which this article was adapted, may be downloaded here.