The administration of Joe Biden and the current situation in the United States raises more concerns than hope.
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens this week published a comprehensive essay in Commentary magazine on U.S. policy in the Middle East, and his advice to the new president is: “Please Don’t Mess Up the Abraham Accords.”
But a more interesting part of the article is his description of the rise of Israel in the Middle East, and the retreat and recklessness of the United States.
Israel’s rise since the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007 has mainly occurred under the helm of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Whereas the goal of de facto ending the Israeli-Arab conflict was achieved together, with impetus from U.S. President Donald Trump. Both Netanyahu and Trump acted against globally accepted institutional perceptions.
The achievement came about after two terms of former President Barack Obama, who acted against the national interests of the United States, particularly where Middle Eastern countries were concerned. Now President-elect Joe Biden appears to be starting Obama’s third term.
He is being used by fanatics in a political party that is based on lies of systemic racism in society. The Republican Party, the right, the conservatives—anything that is identified as “white”—falls under the democratic ideology of “white supremacy,” at least in the best-case scenario. In the worst-case scenario: “Nazism.”
Co-founder of Black Lives Matter Alicia Garza has recently published a book. The revolutionary movement is the rear engine of the Democratic Party. She sees the new radical black movement as a generation of activists who are “being shaped by the conservative consensus and the right’s rise to power.”
This, 32 years after President Ronald Reagan’s retirement and after the lengthy terms of Democratic presidents Bill Clinton and Obama, who was obviously a leftist. According to Garza’s worldview, there are “increased repressions, a retrenchment of systemic racism, and increasingly predatory forms of capitalism.” One book reviewer wrote that her goal is nothing less than to uproot, transform and radically rebuild America as reflected in her vision.
Biden is considered a pragmatist, but thus far there have been forces stronger than he in the Democratic Party. Returning to the nuclear deal seems more like a belief of the party’s Obamist elite rather than part of the reexamination of U.S. policy in the Middle East.
If the United States jumps back into a nuclear deal, relations between Israel and the Arab countries will be strengthened, especially with those in the Abraham Accords. Meanwhile, America will bring us closer to the danger of war.
Biden has so much on his plate in rehabilitating the country’s inner workings and dealing with the pandemic, that there’s a good chance he will avoid fixing that which is not only not broken but is actually functioning well. Restoring the nuclear deal will not be seen as a success but as a surrender. Success—that is what everyone wishes for the new president. There is one surefire path to success in the Middle East, and it certainly doesn’t run through Tehran.
This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.
