The United States and the Future of the Middle East: Gone Are the Days of ‘Any Price, Any Burden, Any Hardship’

The United States no longer has the strength, the resources or the will to take on the full defense of freedom that John Kennedy promised in 1961. The two political camps are now guided by the fear of World War III. It shows up in almost every speech Donald Trump gives, and Trump is driving Biden to the point of imposing limits on aid to Ukraine.

No, this is not the best time to test the sincerity of U.S. intentions about its readiness to become involved militarily overseas. In the midst of a dramatic election campaign in which the tables may have been turned, a tie hovers in the air, and the search for weaknesses by both sides has never been more intense, at least one thing is clear: Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are not competing to incite war in the Middle East.

Israelis’ wishful thinking is not useful in trying to understand what is happening there. Trump is ready to use Israel to add to his repertoire of personal attacks against Harris, but at the center of his foreign policy he continues to stand staunchly, as he has for years, against military involvement overseas.

Joe Biden is not only an “Irish Catholic Zionist,” as he calls himself, but he is also a product the Cold War era. America’s readiness to assume the central role of defending Western democracies against the Soviet Union’s spreading aspirations was at the heart of this era. Trump unequivocally rejects this approach.

Israelis have had repeated difficulty understanding what Trump thinks because he represents an unknown model of the American approach to the outside world: keeping a distance. This model went out of fashion more than 80 years ago when America was dragged into World War II. However, the war taught America an important lesson about the futility of isolationism and its existential dangers, although you could still find traces of it many years later. Such remnants of isolationism are prominent in parts of the American right-wing, which, although anti-Communist, does not believe in a global mission to save Western democracy.

The isolationist right-wing emerged from hibernation at the beginning of the 1990s and wrapped its opposition to an active foreign policy in terms of opposing immigration with a wholesale rejection of international trade agreements and conservative Christian values.

With his rise to power in 2017, Trump found himself surrounded by Cabinet members and advisers who supported an activist foreign policy and placed restraints on his initiatives and desires. National Security Advisor John Bolton later claimed repeatedly that activists had barely prevented Trump from withdrawing the United States from NATO, for example. Trump is determined not to allow those who would constrain him to take part in the next administration. It is clear that Trump has no interest in saving democracies regardless of whether this is a political, ideological or sentimental interest. He wants to establish an international order that will free the United States from the need to be “the world’s policeman,” an idea that spread widely right after the Cold War.

It is good to remember that when Biden rushed to help Israel after Oct. 7, one of the main Republican contenders for the presidency, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, opposed deploying the American fleet to the Middle East. He thought this fleet could not defend itself and the ships would be easy targets (“sitting ducks” as the Americans put it).

It is useful to note that DeSantis, a right-wing politician who is much younger than Trump ( by more than 30 years) thought that this type of thinking would help his candidacy. The defenders of an activist foreign policy tend to be much, much older. It is doubtful that they represent the coming generation.

Strategic Capitulation

At almost every rally, Trump warns that the Democrats are dragging the United States into World War III, and only he can prevent this. How? His only answer so far is that he will bring peace overnight in all arenas of war. He reiterates that his presence in the White House will deter enemy states from going to war. If he were president, Afghanistan would not have fallen into the hands of the Taliban, Vladimir Putin would not have invaded Ukraine, and Hamas would not have invaded Israel. However, it is absolutely clear that his way of preventing World War III is not based on peace agreements, but on strategic capitulation. Warnings about World War III stood at the center of America’s refusal not to arm Ukraine with long-range ballistic missiles and advanced aircraft, or to permit its use of those weapons to strike targets inside Russia.

Moreover, during the first days of the Russian invasion, when the Russian army approached the gates of Kyiv, Biden explained his refusal to send “offensive equipment” or American soldiers by saying “we will not fight World War III in Ukraine.” He reiterated this position four times in two speeches that he delivered in one day.

Biden’s repeated public concern about World War III started to worry NATO allies, not because they wanted a world war, but because they thought the statements represented a cognitive fixation that would harm Ukrainian defense capabilities. They successfully moved Biden away from this line of thought, but only somewhat. Since Biden has used such language since February 2022, it is difficult to ascribe his use of it to the needs of his campaign. However, it is logical to assume that Biden also concluded that American voters had lost the appetite for overseas military commitments.

20-Year-Old Cliches

Ukraine continues to be the most important geopolitical lesson of our day. It shows us the extent to which the United States has distanced itself from Kennedy’s famous pledge in 1961 that “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” It’s clear even in Biden’s case, that the days of “any price” have passed. The United States has no more strength, resources or desire to take on the full defense of freedom.

Although Republican members of Congress applauded Benjamin Netanyahu when he spoke of the need to oppose Iran in the interest of the free world, it is best to understand this as applause for rhetoric, not for a political or strategic program that would require the United States to go to war against Iran. Israel does not benefit from the tendency to interpret the world according to its needs and to serve this need by using 20-year-old clichés or others that even date back to George W. Bush’s (“Axis of Evil”) presidency.

The United States today understands the limits of the use of force in a way that it did not recognize during the Bush administration, or at least it recognizes the lowered expectations of using force. Israelis wonder what the American fleet has done over the past nine months off the coast of Yemen, before the bombing of Hodeida by the Israeli air force. It is possible Israelis read with exaggerated interest editorials in The Wall Street Journal advocating that the United States destroy the Iranian fleet, but instead of this, perhaps it is better to weigh the significance of Biden and Trump’s warnings about a world war.

The popular distinction these days in Israeli media between “tactical achievement” and “strategic achievement” may give the impression that there are serious options for Israel to completely defeat its enemies. The message from the two political camps in America is that there are no such options, at least not on the part of the United States. America wants to go home. Until it returns, it has no intention of fighting another holy war on behalf of freedom. Some see this as isolationism; others see it as realism or pragmatism or Trumpism. These are the facts.