Podcast / The Time of Monsters / Apr 21, 2024

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.

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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Jeet Heer

Jeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The GuardianThe New Republic, and The Boston Globe.

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