Joe’s modest Middle East medicine
The Biden administration’s foreign policy realism leaves little room for peacemaking
DONALD TRUMP TRIED to be as different from Barack Obama as possible. But on the Middle East he ended up in the same place. In their different ways, both men tried and failed to reduce America’s commitments in the region. Joe Biden has the same aim—and has emphasised his alternative priorities, China and the climate, even more clearly than his predecessors did. The current violence between Israelis and Palestinians, the worst since 2014, is an early test of his prospects of succeeding where they fell short.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Joe’s modest Middle East medicine”
United States May 22nd 2021
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