Where Did Biden’s Foreign Policy Go Wrong?
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, David Klion on the president’s fatal flaw.
![President Joe Biden joined Israel's prime minister for the start of the Israeli war cabinet meeting, in Tel Aviv on October 18, 2023.](https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Biden-Israel-Getty.jpg)
President Joe Biden joined Israel’s prime minister for the start of the Israeli war cabinet meeting, in Tel Aviv on October 18, 2023.
(Miriam Alster / AFP via Getty Images)Writing in The Nation, David Klion recently reviewed Alexander Ward’s new book on Biden’s foreign policy, which offers a redemption arc whereby an administration wounded by the botched exit from Afghanistan made good by its handling of the Ukraine invasion.
But as Klion notes, the two-year frame of the book is too narrow. In conversation on this podcast, David and I contextualize Biden’s foreign policy, which is deeply unpopular and flawed, in the larger history of hawkish liberalism. We look at the attempt to revive a style of military Keynesianism and at Biden’s deep investment in Zionism, as well as the contradictions on issues of human rights that are hampering Biden’s presidency.
During the discussion, I alluded to this excellent Mother Jones article by Noah Lanard on Biden and Israel.
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Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation