Laurel-less Biden limps for the exit. Will Albanese be next?
Jan 21, 2025
Joe Biden’s inaction and diffidence has made him a party to Israel’s atrocities.
Joe Biden leaves office as the president of the United States this week, largely unmourned. He did not suffer the ignominy of defeat by Donald Trump, but only because his own supporters threw him out of the firing line, alas all too late. Kamala Harris, a vulnerable replacement was decisively beaten, seeming to actually lose votes to Trump as the campaign progressed. Her failure was emphatically not for want of advertising dollars, or by the end, a want of recognition of her face or her message.
The market was simply not buying either. Early, one might have expected that Trump might have been sullenly elected as a least worst choice,. By the end, it has become clear that the return of Trump was, for his supporters, success in a profound crusade – a decisive and conscious endorsement of a completely different style of government. Voters did not want continuities or the old style of politics. That they preferred the very character defects and appalling record of Donald Trump underscores the chasm between Democrat opinion about the issues and the ones actually in the minds of voters.
Incumbency and the resources of the state were of no help; indeed Trump seemed to take advantage of pretending to be an outsider and an outlaw. An array of court cases had laid bare his defects of character and his willingness to lie and break the law. Voters knew this, but that did not deter them from preferring him to Harris.
Biden had a defensible domestic record, but not a glorious one. Like Anthony Albanese in the election coming up. Biden revived a broken economy after Covid and various economic disasters of Trump’s first term. But Biden seemed unable to market his achievements, or to counter campaign claims of Trump that the 2021 US economy had been booming because of Trump, and had been brought to ruin by Biden in the years after.
A party with a campaign budget of more than a billion dollars, and the bully pulpit of incumbency can blame only itself if its version of reality did not sell. An old man in decline stayed in power too long, least of all for all the good that he was doing. It was not only a matter of failing to ensure a winning position for himself. It was a matter of being unimpressive and unpersuasive. (Like another contender I can think of.) Biden failed to set up a democratic Democrat succession. Kamala Harris, the one the party installed, late in the piece, was also unable to enthuse voters, despite the greatest voter turnout in America history. That usually would be a predictor of a great Democrat victory. But that presupposed that traditional supporters stayed loyal to the party. In fact they mobilised around Trump.
Biden must also wear the blame for the foreign policy disasters during his term. Strictly, he might claim that his disasters – such as the mismanagement of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, his strong support for the massacres in Gaza, his failures, until the end to put real pressure on Israel to cease fire, and the probable defeat in the Ukraine were not planned but bad luck.
The most powerful nation seemingly unable to control conflicts it had started
Defeat in Afghanistan – nearly as shameful (and predictable) as Britain’s in the first Afghan war nearly two centuries ago – saw the mightiest nation on earth humbled by one of the poorest. It was much as in Vietnam 50 years ago, and as in Iraq and Syria in the years between. In all of these cases, America’s enemies, for good or ill, were motivated by the power of ideas (mostly wrong ones). The US, and its allies, including Australia, put might and money above any attempt to understand their enemy, its motivations and its geographic situation.
America was the key western player in Ukraine, and valiantly as it defended the right of its people to resist unambiguous aggression by Russia, it was treated by Russia as the actual enemy calling the shots. Perhaps the US saw it as an opportunity to enmire by proxy a weakened Russia. That’s what it thought Russia and China had done to them in Vietnam, though truth be told, the Vietnamese had done most of it by themselves. In Ukraine, the US poured billions into the struggle without actually deploying its own military. But despite surviving much longer than expected Ukraine is being slowly driven back by the overwhelming superiority of Russian manpower and weaponry. The relative indifference of Trump, and the Republican Party, is an extra handicap they now bear.
Ukraine had united local, European and NATO support, including from Australia which has wagered more than $1 billion on its struggle with no noticeable payoff. Ukraine had, in Zelensky, a popular leader and cause and very effective PR, a lot of which was propaganda. Peace will be achieved on terms similar to those Biden encouraged Ukraine to reject two years – or about 200,000 Ukrainian casualties, ago. None American of course.
But it has been the war on Gaza which has most discredited Biden. It was consciously started by Hamas, which effectively controlled Gaza and which has long been provoking Israel, including by rocket attacks. On October 7, 2023, a breakout from Gaza by Hamas troops saw more than 1000 Israelis, mostly civilians, killed, and several hundred hostages taken.
An enraged Israel declared war on Hamas and vowed to wipe it out. It soon became clear that if any civilians were in the way of Israeli bullets or bombs in Gaza it was their own bad luck. No restraint was discernible. Air and military attacks soon began, and caused the destruction of more and more swelling and facilities such as schools and hospitals, as well as deaths of hundreds, probably thousands of Hamas soldiers, but also the casual deaths of thousands of civilians, including women and children. Israel insisted it was using precision targeting. It also insisted that the targeting of schools and hospitals were a consequence of the wickedness of Hamas troops hiding in the civilian milieu. This, it said, legitimised the targeting of schools, hospitals and dwellings. It didn’t.
The disproportion of the response was staggering. Perhaps 50,000 Moslems and Christians in Gaza, including more than 20,000 children, have been killed, and hundreds of thousands more injured. Israel has severely restricted Gaza’s access to food, medicines and shelter. The relentless response has seemed designed to rid Israel of Palestinians altogether. The disproportion and relentlessness has deprived Israel of any moral advantage it might have had after the initial massacre. It has lost international sympathy and increased anti-semitism, in part because it insists on labelling any criticism of Israel as a state, and any criticism of the political aims of the Zionist movement as an attack on a people and a religion. Many Israelis are not Zionists and disagree with its philosophy.
Biden is not to blame for Israel’s tactics. But he could have restrained them by cutting off a limitless supply of arms and ammunition
The war on Palestinians has now framed the whole affair as but another incident in a century-old struggle between Jewish settlers and Palestinian inhabitants over their respective rights on the land of old Palestine. When Israel was granted nationhood 75 years ago, it was on conditions of respecting continuing Palestinian rights and a two-state solution. Israel has effectively repudiated both.
The October 7 attacks saw most of the western alliance, including Australia condemn Hamas without equivocation. That unanimity, and the effective “understanding” of the ferocity of the response quickly brought on an international counter-reaction focused on Israel’s history of abuses, including murders of Palestians.
Belatedly some countries, including Australia became more even-handed. But much of the third world is suspicious of faux western neutrality, or commitment to a two-state solution. Those suspicions have been heightened by Israel’s extension of its conflicts to the West Bank (which is to say occupied Palestinian land) Lebanon, Syria and Iran. Almost by definition (and despite the provocations) these encounters have been unequal struggles.
The struggles have not been unequal because of any moral superiority or lesser right of self-defence for Palestinians. It has been because Israel’s military activity has long been underwritten by the United States. It is by how he has done this, rather than directly controlling the Israeli response, that Joe Biden will be condemned by history. He called, very ineffectually for a ceasefire from early in the struggle. The form of the ceasefire he has announced right at the end of his term is the same as the one he proposed nearly a year ago. Israel ignored him.
The prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has used the war to prolong his power and to put off corruption charges. He has contemptuously played US politics, including over his relationship with Trump. He rebuffed Biden’s pleas to stop the endless bombardment, and for lifting the siege and is only reluctantly involved even now.
But Biden could have at any time pulled the plug on the endless resupply, from American military stocks, of the ammunition and ordnance that is killing the population of Gaza, Or for that matter Lebanon, or, now, opportunistically Syria.
His inaction and diffidence has made him a party to the atrocities. This failure has not been one of principle. It has been purely a matter of playing American domestic politics, where the Jewish lobby is powerful. Biden assumes (and probably hopes after his experiences) that Trump’s term will be a disaster for America and its interests, including the future of Israel. His expectations are probably right. But that will undercut the standing of Trump. It will not promote a favourable re-assessment of Biden’s role. (Nor Albanese’s.)
When Trump takes office on January 20, one can expect that he will, if anything, be even more understanding of Israeli intransigence. Early on, he threatened that the heavens would fall on Hamas if there were no immediate hostage returns. But Trump’s intentions have to be seen against his reluctance to see the US any longer engaged in military conflict in the region, or elsewhere. He has seen at first hand how close engagement with and military action alongside allies and “friends” has led to strategic defeats, diplomatic humiliations, and loss of American prestige. Domestic political considerations, rather than personal political principle, may cause him to treat Israel as a close friend. But that is something he will always weigh against America’s interests in retaining access to Middle East energy, its strategic interests in the Mediterranean, Africa and Southeast Asia, and its superpower conflicts with Russia and its allies. Israel may have closer access to his advisers and a better feel than Biden for his whims. But his fidelity to causes has always been flexible, and his enthusiasms fickle.
Australia shares the US experience. But Albanese won’t benefit from playing Biden. Nor will Dutton playing Trump
As Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton gear up for a full-blooded election campaign, both would do well to contemplate Biden’s fate and the dangers of Trump’s ascendancy. International observers would agree that Australia is in fairly good shape, particularly by comparison with similar economies. Labor can claim some credit for that, and attribute some of it to restraint with public spending instead of a great splurge with some early big export numbers. It can criticise the profligacy,indiscipline and waste of the Morrison years of coalition government. It can remind Australians of where interest rates and inflation stood at the transition.
From other perspectives, however, the economy could hardly be said to be going gangbusters. Most Australians do not yet think that the government is set on a course for prosperity. There are labour shortages, but pandering to anti-immigration sentiment has restricted access to the skilled foreign labour essential for coping with housing shortages, and increased demand for childcare, pre-school education, and disability and aged care systems. These shortages may deprive the population of the benefit of extra public investment, in these fields as well as in health. Instead they may dissipate the investment in inflation. Labor has failed to market its achievements, and it has not dealt with perceptions that its achievements have been minor and disappointing, its lack of ambition a consequence of a lack of vision.
Labor may point to a lack of detail, and the limited scale of Dutton’s plans. It may deride nuclear power plans, the dog-whistling, and the lazy dependence on tropes about reducing the public service by making efficiencies. Dutton has opposed virtually every proposal made to promote economic growth or the public welfare. But the Trump campaign, (which Dutton is imitating, suggests that it is the appearance of purposeful action and intention that attracts support rather than detached and objective assessment of special promises or proposals. There is no area in which Albanese looks as vulnerable than in his refusal to discuss his plans, and his unwillingness to consult before he announced.
Dutton has also seemed to suggest that words, tough talk, and accusations of “weakness” and indecision on Albanese’s part, substitute for policy on defence, foreign affairs and law and order. The Biden and Harris experience suggests that there is more to success than that, and that jumping into foreign beds will be judged more by long-term results than the look and feel of the thing. Dutton’s weakness is China, particularly if Trump’s approach is more at the mercantile rather than the military end.
He must know that Labor can hardly go into the campaign as the true believers in an unlikely British and American promise of nuclear submarines, sometimes far into the future even if any of the nations involved could get a project going without delays and cost ove-runs. Dutton can pretend to believe but play the skeptic about “management” of commitments.
The three original proponents of the daft idea will all, by next week, be off the political stage, forever, leaving the other side as the political dummies carrying the burden. It is a measure of their political wit that they embraced the idea for fear of being wedged. They too will be out of office long before we can see what fools they have been.