When Israel retaliated, the administration did not support Jerusalem. Its words were less than laudatory after Israel took out Hezbollah’s Fuad Shukr, who had helped orchestrate the 1983 bombing of a U.S. barracks in Beirut that killed 241 servicemen. “We still must work on a diplomatic solution to end these attacks,” Harris said of Hezbollah while noting that she “unequivocally support[ed] Israel’s right to remain secure.” Some unequivocal support. The administration responded even worse to the killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. “It has not helped,” Biden said when questioned about Israel’s skillful operation. According to reporting from The Washington Post, the administration was irate upon hearing that Israel killed Haniyeh. Rather than defend Israel’s targeted killings of terrorists, it wants them to stop. It fears provoking Iran and its proxies so much that it won’t support Israeli defensive operations, let alone offensive ones. 

The administration has kept demanding de-escalation even as the storm of regional war gathered. According to the White House read-out of the Biden-Netanyahu call on August 1, “the importance of ongoing efforts to de-escalate” was one of the president’s key messages for the prime minister. Blinken called on everyone in the Middle East to “refrain from escalation” after Israel took out Shukr and Haniyeh. “Escalation is not in anyone’s interests,” he said. Repeating the platitude won’t make the agents of escalation stand down. Iran and its proxies have concluded that there won’t be much punishment for their actions. Only convincing them otherwise will secure the de-escalation that the administration so desires.

The tragedy of the administration’s Middle East policies is that they have enabled escalation. Its fear of regional war has prevented the administration from seeing that regional war is already here. The administration should have stood shoulder to shoulder with Israel after October 7. It should have provided unwavering support until the war’s conclusion. It should have armed it to the hilt instead of halting weapons shipments. It should have given no quarter to the Iranian mullahs. Until the administration does as much, its de-escalatory strategy will make peace harder.

Also, thanks to its obsession with de-escalation, the administration has botched its response to the war in Ukraine. Its weak policies toward Russia helped beget its invasion and eroded Ukraine’s position. The administration demanded Kyiv de-escalate while Moscow was escalating willy-nilly. Two-and-a-half years on, the war shows no signs of ending anytime soon.

Much as it did to Iran, the administration went out of its way to conciliate Russia after Biden and Harris took the reins. It immediately agreed to a five-year extension of New START for nothing in return from Moscow, giving the Russians license to continue their arms control cheating. It also lifted sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The administration wanted to reassure the Russians by giving them what they wanted. President Vladimir Putin basked in his good fortune. He and Biden met in June 2021 at a summit in Geneva, supposedly to set the terms of U.S.-Russia relations. “The tone of the entire meeting was good, positive,” Biden said afterward.

Putin played the administration like a fiddle. Believing he could continue exploiting the administration’s lust for de-escalation, he repaid its weakness with aggression. He quickly amassed troops on the border with Ukraine, whose territory he had long coveted. The administration’s de-escalatory instincts kicked in. “Diplomacy is the only responsible way to resolve this potential crisis,” said Blinken on December 1, adding that “we urge Russia to de-escalate.” Blinken neglected to mention that Washington, a few months earlier, had suspended an arms package for Ukraine as a gesture of goodwill to Putin. Look at how that turned out.

The administration’s efforts to avert war came to nothing. Vice President and wannabe peacemaker Kamala Harris went to the Munich Security Conference in hopes of defusing the crisis. “The United States, our NATO Allies, and our partners have been and remain open to serious diplomacy,” Harris told the room of European grandees on February 19. It was revealed that she kept emphasizing diplomatic measures that had thus far failed to sway Putin. Relatedly, Harris vowed to “impose significant and unprecedented economic costs” on Russia in the event of an invasion. Perhaps she was unaware of the many sanctions Western countries had placed on Russia since it devoured Crimea in 2014. About American military power, the one thing that could have deterred Putin, Harris had nothing to say.

What was missing in all this was a credible threat of real costs on Russia. In fact, the administration signaled that Putin might avoid any consequences whatsoever. Western countries might not respond to “a minor incursion” into Ukraine, Biden said on January 19. That was no way to stop a tyrant from steamrolling his neighbor. Sure enough, Putin was undeterred and invaded Ukraine on February 24. 

The de-escalation mania compounded the damage in the war’s opening stages. After the Ukrainians defied expectations by stopping Russia from swallowing them whole, the Biden-Harris administration could have gone all in on supporting President Volodymyr Zelensky’s war effort. It instead hamstrung the Ukrainian leader. Biden announced earlier what the United States would not do to assist Ukraine. He refused to send advanced fighter jets and vetoed a move by Poland to transfer MiG-29s of its own. “The idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks and trains going in . . . that’s called World War III,” Biden remarked a few weeks after the war began.

An acknowledgment of its own failure came when the administration changed course on the MiG-29s. It had deprived Ukraine of vital arms for nothing. Despite Poland’s delivering the jets to Ukraine in early 2023, there was no World War III. The administration notably also refused to supply Patriot missile systems and ATACMS munitions before belatedly sending both. These weapons could have made a difference earlier in the war. But instead, the administration withheld them to hamper the Ukrainians’ conduct. It put restraints on Ukraine’s war effort that served no purpose other than making victory more elusive.

In case the administration’s de-escalatory aims weren’t clear enough, Biden took to the opinion pages of The New York Times on May 31 to outline what it wouldn’t do in Ukraine. Barring a Russian attack on the United States or NATO allies, “we will not be directly engaged in this conflict,” Biden wrote. He added that the administration was not “encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders.” The point of his op-ed was to pledge American restraint to Putin. As long as the Russians did not have to worry about a hot war with the United States, then it wouldn’t happen.

There was no need for the administration to pursue this course. It committed a massive unforced error. By forswearing American direct engagement, it removed the one threat that could have made Putin stop in his tracks. War with the United States would be so devastating for Russia that even a tiny chance of it is a powerful deterrent. Nevertheless, the administration eschewed it because of its faith in de-escalation. 

The administration’s fear of provoking Putin worked to his advantage. He was given free rein on the battlefield. De-escalation, the administration thought, would come by insisting not to escalate. This was wishful thinking at its finest. Russia escalated on its own terms, using chemical weapons and hitting civilian targets. Ukraine would be in a much stronger position today had the administration backed it entirely from the beginning. It is only now receiving long overdue weapons and attacking Russian territory in pursuit of better terms at the negotiating table. De-escalation served the Ukrainians terribly.

Ditching its de-escalation dream would do the Biden-Harris team good. It should look to the example of previous administrations that did not fall prey to the same delusions. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger successfully resupplied Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War while averting Soviet military intervention. Bill Clinton sent two carrier battle groups near Taiwan in response to provocative Chinese missile launches. Donald Trump, in his own retelling, said that he had warned Putin he’d have “a bad day” if he went into Ukraine and vowed to do scary “things” to Russia in the event of an invasion. These men weren’t hell-bent on de-escalation. They knew how to make the bad guys back down and support their allies. 

Biden and Harris might say they want Ukraine and Israel to win, but their actions show otherwise. They’re more into feel-good talk of de-escalation than allied victory.

Daniel J. Samet is an analyst living in Washington who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, where he wrote his dissertation on U.S. defense policy toward Israel.

Image: DT Phots1 / Shutterstock.com.