Alternate histories are always speculative, so I cannot prove my assertion.
But let’s face it, most rational people know–even if they won’t admit it–that Biden has been extraordinarily weak when it comes to foreign policy.
Even in Ukraine, where he has the best claim to being assertive in his foreign policy, Biden’s evident weakness in Afghanistan comforted Putin and helped inspire his invasion in 2022. It likely led him to believe he could get away with invading Ukraine with minimal consequences. There is a reason why Russia’s two incursions into Ukraine happened during Obama’s term and then Biden’s. He feared Trump because he was unpredictable and strong.
Putin had good reason to believe that Biden would be, if anything, weaker than Obama. He had demonstrated that fact in Afghanistan and his policy of appeasement toward Iran. Obama had an unerringly bad strategic sense, but he also liked killing America’s enemies. Biden was weak on every level.
Trump, on the other hand, sent weapons to Ukraine during his term, making clear that he was willing to support the country in its conflict with Russia. We will never know what Trump would have done if Putin invaded Ukraine in a second Trump term, but neither would Putin. He probably would have waited for a more predictable and weaker president.
Strength is the essence of deterrence, the best way to avoid military conflict with adversaries. Biden couldn’t deter a puppy.
He obviously can’t deter Iran because Biden has been obsessed with appeasing them. Even his Iran envoy was an actual Iranian spy. His administration still has Iranophiles.
He has sent money, reduced sanctions, and tolerated attacks on Americans from Iranian proxies, including strikes on American troops and warships. He has bent over backward for the Mullahs, and they have taken his weakness to heart.
Now, Americans are dying at the hands of Iranian proxies–groups that are directed and supplied by Iran, who also sponsored the Hamas attack on Israel.
Would this have happened under Trump? No. I assert that these attacks most certainly would not have occurred.
I cannot be certain, but Trump’s foreign policy was extraordinarily effective and prescient, while Biden’s has been the opposite. When Iran crossed a red line, Trump struck in an extremely painful manner, killing Qasem Soleimani, who led the IRGC’s Quds Force–the division of the Iranian military that directed “external” actions–exactly the kind of actions in which Iran is engaged right now.
The assassination, which took place in Iraq, was a devastating blow to Iran’s ability to conduct terrorist operations and was a signal that the US was unwilling to sit back and take blows to our interests.
Biden, instead, has signaled weakness time and again.
Ironically, now that Biden is the guy put in the box, chances are that the US will be dragged into a larger and more dangerous conflict with Iran have escalated enormously. Rather than using early and proportionate responses to Iran’s proxy attacks, Biden will have to strike much harder now that an unambiguous red line has been crossed.
Assuming he doesn’t just take the hit.
Worse, if he doesn’t strike back hard now, he will be put into a position where he will have to strike harder yet when Iran strikes again.
The American public will not tolerate a modest response to the killing of US troops, nor should they. Biden should have been laser-focused on deterring, not appeasing, Iran. His policy of appeasement–trying to lure Iran into better relations with the US–was never going to succeed. Iran sees the US as its primary adversary, even more than Israel is.
Strategies of appeasement do not work with an adversary that fundamentally objects to the status quo. You can appease a country that wants something but does not object to the overall balance of power. When an adversary wants a fundamental reordering of the balance of power–Iran, North Korea, the old Soviet Union, and today’s China, only deterrence can prevent conflict.
To prevent conflict, the price of challenging the status quo must be too high to risk. Biden has, until now, made clear to Iran that it could challenge and even harm the US and our allies without consequence. They certainly did not feel that way once Trump made it clear that their core interests were at risk when challenging us.
Biden’s weakness is getting Americans killed. His border policy is getting Americans killed at home, and his foreign policy is getting Americans (and others) killed abroad.
If I am right and Putin would not have invaded Ukraine and Iran would have shown restraint were Trump president, then Biden has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and made the world tremendously riskier.
European leaders are now predicting a conflict between NATO and Russia in the next five years. Had Europeans followed Trump’s advice and ramped up their military spending and preparedness years ago, that conflict would have been less likely, and European countries would have been better positioned to deter or fight Putin.
If Putin does challenge NATO, the likely outcome would not be a massive land war in central Europe but rather the dissolution of NATO, which is Putin’s primary goal.
Until recently, I thought a Putin incursion into NATO was almost impossible. In my next post, I will explain why I have changed my mind.
