Armchair warrior

Joe Biden’s wars are not going well. The Ukraine-Russia conflict is stalemated, and Israel is losing its war on Gaza. While these wars kill soldiers and civilians and devastate the two countries involved, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) sitting at The Hague in the Nether-lands is considering whether genocide is being committed in either or both.

Biden is an armchair warrior. He has never fought in a war. Although he was of the right age to fight in the US war on Vietnam, he received multiple deferments as long as he was at university and was not drafted because he suffered from asthma. However, unlike millions of young compatriots Biden did not join the anti-Vietnam war movement.

As Biden prepared to visit Vietnam last September, The Washington Post dug up a quote from 1987 in which he summed up his view of that anti-war movement by saying he was not unconventional like many protesters whom he classified as hippies. “I wore sports coats. You’re looking at a middle-class guy. I am who I am. I’m not big on flak jackets and tie-dyed shirts and — you know, that’s not me.”

However, when campaigning in 1972 for a Delaware senate seat, Biden adopted a different line: he argued that the US should have pulled out of Vietnam years earlier. During 1990, Biden opposed the US-led war on Iraq to liberate Kuwait but later admitted this was a “mistake.” In 2002, Biden criticised the handling of then President George W. Bush’s 2003 war with Iraq but voted in favour of authorising Bush’s unprovoked aggression.

The Post article quoted a 1999 interview Biden had given to the Hill: “If you are going to make war, make sure there is a good reason for making war.

Once in the White House, Biden apparently thought the US, UK and NATO had a “good reason for making war” when Russia deployed troops along Ukraine’s border during late 2021 to deter Kyiv from joining NATO. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union – comprised of Russia with its satellite states - Moscow has warned Ukraine and the Western powers that Russia regarded Ukrainian membership in the Western alliance as an existential threat. Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did not listen.

So, on Feb.24, 2023, Russia invaded Ukraine, launching an unnecessary war which could have been avoided if Kyiv had said “No!” to NATO. The US, UK and Europe have funded and armed Ukraine, enabling it to wage a war Kyiv cannot win without their help. War weariness has set in while the front lines have frozen since spring with Russia in possession of swatches of Ukrainian territory in addition to the Donbas region and the Crimea.

On Friday The Washington Post reported that the Biden administration is drawing up a “new strategy that will deemphasize winning back territory” which is the stated war aim of Zelensky. Instead, the administration seeks to help Ukraine defend itself, build up its military, and boost its war-wounded economy. This approach amounts to a military defeat for Biden, NATO and Zelensky while Ukraine has suffered more than 10,000 civilian deaths and $135 billion in losses due to damage to infrastructure, housing, commerce, and the economy. The UN reports that out of a population of 44 million, 14.6 million Ukrainians require humanitarian aid, including 3.7 million displaced, and 5.9 million are refugees.

Although their national languages are different, Ukrainians and Russians are of the same Slav ethnic stock and many if not most Ukrainians speak Russian. Both are Christians. Russian President Vladimir Putin has not called for the extinction of Ukrainians but of “Nazis” who have formed Ukrainian militias. Therefore, it could be difficult for the ICJ to find Russians are committing genocide in Ukraine even though Russia may have perpetrated war crimes as Ukraine might have done by striking Russian cities. If the ICJ rules Russia has not committed genocide in Ukraine, Biden and NATO will sustain a stunning moral defeat.

A life-long Zionist, Biden provided Israel with instant arms and funds after it mounted war on Gaza following the October 7th attack during which Hamas killed 1,139 and abducted 240 from southern Israel. His administration has flown into Israel tens of tonnes of guided and unguided bombs, including 900-kilogram bunker-busters, and at least 60,000, artillery shells. Biden has pledged to send Israel $14.3 billion in addition to the annual $3.8 billion US donation to bolster Israel’s military.

This is a war which should have ended weeks ago if Biden had stopped the flow of arms and called a halt. In addition to feeding the war by providing the arms Israel needs to fight, Biden used the US veto in the UN Security Council to scupper demands for a ceasefire in Gaza. He has also used US political muscle to hollow out a General Assembly resolution urging a humanitarian truce in Gaza.

In three plus months, Israel’s Gaza war has killed 26,000 Gazans, 70 per cent women and children, wounded more than 60,000 and left 7-8,000 bodies under the rubble. Seventy per cent of housing, schools, universities, public buildings, roads, water pipes and electricity networks have been destroyed, nearly all the 36 the hospitals are damaged and unable to cope with the flow of wounded. Gazans are denied food, potable water, and medicine and 1.9 million out of 2.3 million have been forced to move from place to place by Israeli orders to evacuate. UN and international relief agencies argue, “No where is safe in Gaza.”

Gazans are indigenous Palestinians of ethnic Arab stock and most are Muslim. While most Israelis are Jews of European ethnicities, Israel has also gathered in Jewish minorities of Yemeni, Iraqi, Ethiopian, Indian, Turkish, and Moroccan backgrounds.

The ethnic and religious differences between Palestinians and Israelis which have made Israel an apartheid state combined with the the near total devastation wreaked by Israel in Gaza could compel the ICJ to find Israel has been and is committing genocide in Gaza as well as the West Bank. This will mean another major moral defeat for Israel and the Biden administration.

This would be far more damaging than the defeat in Ukraine. Israel could lose 75 years worth of immunity from accountability over its treatment of the Palestinians. Biden would have finished off the deeply compromised US claim to be the “indispensable nation” which, the US has argued gives it international leadership.

For Biden and his fellow warriors Volodymyr Zelensky and Binyamin Netanyahu, these wars have been lose-lose on the political level while Ukraine and Israel have suffered major losses on the military, political, economic, and moral levels. Ukrainians, Russians, Israelis and, above all, Palestinians have suffered death, dismemberment, displacement, and devastation.

Photo: TNS