A week after the Hamas attack on October 7, the US president was asked, Joe Biden will his country be able to deal with both the war in Ukraine and the new crisis in the Middle East. “We’re the United States of America for God’s sake,” he told CBS News, “we can handle both of those and still maintain our overall international defense.”
Politico reported that US government officials say recently that the White House has been forced to divert attention and resources from other foreign policy issues because it is focused on the conflict between Israel and Hamas and that Biden’s support for Israel has also complicated US efforts to build relationships in other parts of the world.
“More than any other crisis, it exposed the limits of US power,” said Comfort Euro, president and CEO of the International Crisis Group think tank. As a senior administration official said about the conflict between Israel and Hamas: “It has become our preferred foreign policy, whether we like it or not.”
“October 7 changed everything,” said another senior official in the administration, “of course we intended to support Israel, that’s not a question. The president believes in it very much. But then things started to change, Bibi continued to walk away from a cease-fire deal and we were placed in an impossible situation that distracted us from everything else.”
In some cases, US attention and resources have been diverted from the administration’s priorities in Asia, Europe and Africa. The US approach to Israel has harmed its position vis-à-vis countries it is trying to distance from rivals Russia and China.
“Our response to Ukraine really helped restore our global credibility after Trump,” said the senior administration official, “and I still think we are moving forward, even after what happened in Gaza. But there is no doubt that it is seen as a more confused picture now.”
The official said much of this stems from anger in some parts of the world over the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s attack despite rising civilian casualties. According to him, “the president managed it as well as anyone could, he both supported and restrained Israel, but he paid the price on the world stage and politically here at home.”