Biden's Foreign Policy Headaches in early 2024
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While Republicans voters start the process of determining who will represent their party in the November presidential elections this month, President Joe Biden will be busy dealing with not one, but two and possibly three big foreign policy crises. How these unfold may well determine who wins the elections come November.
The most immediate crisis will be Ukraine. Last week, the Pentagon announced its final tranche of military support for the embattled country. Absent a quick congressional vote on Biden’s requested $60 billion aid package for 2024, Ukraine will soon start to run out of the artillery shells, rockets, and air defense missiles that have enabled its defense against a 24/7 Russian onslaught of men, missiles, and fire.
No aid. No victory. It’s that simple.
Then there is the Middle East, where Biden’s number one goal (after supporting Israel in response to the horrific massacre that slaughtered 1,200 Jews on October 7) has been to avoid a widening regional war. Unfortunately, Hezbollah in the North, Iran to the West, and the Houthis in the South seem to have other ideas. Daily rocket attacks from Lebanon have forced 100,000 Israelis to seek shelter elsewhere. Iran has directed its militias to fire at US bases in Iraq and Syria, and helped Houthi fighters determined to confront the United States and Israel to target commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Israel with long-range drones. The risk of any of these fights escalating quickly is very real.
A wider war in the Middle East will make Gaza look like a small conflagration.
And then there is Taiwan, where presidential elections on January 13 may bring to power another DPP president who won’t accept Beijing’s diktat at a time when China’s president for live, Xi Jinping, has once again put China’s unification with Taiwan at the top of the agenda. “The reunification of the motherland is a historical inevitability,” Xi said in his New Year’s address. “China will surely be reunified, and all a Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose and share in the glory of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
Xi is unlikely to invade Taiwan. But he can make life on the island very difficult for its 23 million inhabitants.
Ukraine. The Middle East. Taiwan. All three issues could land on the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office within weeks. How Biden responds may determined whether he will still be sitting behind that desk come next January 20.
I explore all these issues in a bit more detail in my most recent column in Politico Europe.