Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently wrote a long piece for “Foreign Affairs” arguing that the Biden administration has put the U.S. back on the map as the guardian of the rules-based international order. This is a theme President Joe Biden has run with since his first month in office, when he gave a speech extolling the U.S. as the “indispensable nation” and promising stronger American leadership abroad.
Yet for all the talk about reasserting its leadership in the world, the U.S. is often remarkably hesitant to exhibit those leadership qualities when dealing with friendly states. In what is one of the most blatant paradoxes in international relations today, the strongest country in the world frequently finds itself being led by smaller powers whose interests and agendas contrast with its own.
The U.S. is a superpower seemingly stripped of agency, and American policy on Israel and Ukraine demonstrates this well.
The U.S. has taken on the role of Israel’s big brother, ensuring the Israel Defense Forces has what it needs to defend itself and deepening its already strong intelligence partnership as Israel seeks to destroy the command structures of both Hamas and Hezbollah. Less than two weeks after the Oct. 7 attack, Biden traveled to Israel to show his personal support. Washington has sent Israel nearly $18 billion in military aid over the last year, which the Israeli military has used to prosecute its military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon. At the United Nations, the U.S. vetoed three resolutions that sought an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza war.
But if Washington’s unconditional support was designed to give America influence to restrain Israeli policy, that gamble has not paid off, in large part because the U.S. has refused to use that leverage. As a result, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken American aid but neglected to take American reservations seriously.
Although the U.S. managed to get Israel to allow some humanitarian aid into Gaza after it became clear that a massive catastrophe would ensue without it, this was a low bar. Netanyahu is executing his war strategy despite knowing full well that a regional war in the Middle East is the last thing the U.S. wants.
Israel has crossed so many of Washington’s “red lines” that one wonders whether the Biden administration was sincere about them to begin with.
American defense officials counseled Israel early on to take a discriminatory approach during its counterterrorism operations in Gaza; instead, Israel bombed the entire enclave into an uninhabitable wasteland. Biden warned that an Israeli invasion of Rafah was a personal red line for him; Israel invaded nonetheless. When Biden presented his three-phase Gaza cease-fire plan in May, he claimed Israel accepted it; months later, that proposal is all but dead thanks in part to Netanyahu’s additional demands. The U.S. repeatedly stated that it didn’t want to see the war extended to Lebanon; Israel invaded anyway. Last month, less than a day after the U.S. insisted Israel accept a three-week cease-fire with Hezbollah, Netanyahu ordered the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the militant group’s leader.
Through it all, American officials have conveyed their disapproval behind closed doors and leaked their frustrations to the media, but have otherwise done little to make Israel think twice. Weapons continue to flow, diplomatic support remains ironclad and whatever annoyances policymakers register are dismissed.
America has demonstrated a similar lack of leadership on Ukraine, even if it comes in a different context. Ever since Russia’s 2022 invasion, the American message has been consistent: Russian President Vladimir Putin can’t win the war and Washington and its allies in Europe will do all they can to ensure Ukraine will remain a sovereign, independent state.
American defense aid to Kyiv has reached more than $61 billion. The U.S. organized a multi-country sanctions regime against Russian oil at considerable risk to supply disruptions. After initial resistance, Washington provided the Ukrainians with the kind of weapons systems — F-16s, to name one — that treaty allies are lucky to get.
As with Israel, the U.S. seems all too comfortable outsourcing its foreign policy to Ukraine, a junior partner. Instead of spelling out reasonable, attainable objectives, American officials vocally perpetuate the delusion that Ukrainian forces will ever liberate all of their land from the Russian occupiers. Instead of conditioning Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into accepting the compromises required to end the war diplomatically — even if they may include territorial concessions — the Biden administration equates those concessions to surrender. And rather than being brutally honest with Ukraine about the low odds of winning a war of attrition against a much larger power with greater manpower and resources, Washington avoids having a difficult conversation.
Leadership in the true sense of the word is all about sizing up benefits and costs, making hard choices and being brave enough to evolve when those choices aren’t working. With Israel, this translates into putting more conditionality into the relationship. With Ukraine, it means dropping the maximalist rhetoric and basing policy on a realistic assessment of what is and isn’t possible on the battlefield.
The U.S. prides itself as the world’s most powerful nation. It’s time for reality to catch up to the rhetoric.
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.