“The failure of the Carter administration’s foreign policy is now clear to everyone except its architects, and even they must entertain private doubts,” opens “Dictatorships & Double Standards,” Jeane Kirkpatrick’s seminal Commentary essay of 1979. Substitute “Carter” for “Biden-Harris,” and her lede is as true today as it was forty-five years ago. Biden and Harris inherited peace and stability and, in under four years, have created war and chaos. The world is in a much more precarious state with them at the helm.

One reason for this is their fundamental misunderstanding of international crises. Biden and Harris have made de-escalation a pillar of their foreign policy. The word appears often in their public statements. As the vice president put it in a recent X post, their administration has been furiously “working to de-escalate regional tensions and prevent further conflict.” The idea is to limit conflicts before they spiral out of control. Countries really don’t want to fight one another per this line of thinking. If they try hard enough to lessen tensions, they won’t come to blows. There should always be an off-ramp from the escalatory highway. War is invariably a failure of de-escalation, the Biden-Harris administration believes. De-escalating, not winning, is the objective.

Their foreign policy is based on a fallacy. What Biden, Harris, and their subordinates don’t get is that de-escalation doesn’t de-escalate. It escalates. When the administration invests so much in “de-escalation”—which means appeasing adversaries, proscribing the United States’ own intervention in conflicts, and proscribing the behavior of its wartime allies—the bad guys try to get away with even more. This has been so time and again throughout the Biden-Harris presidency. 

Even when the administration correctly deduces which countries are the source of global instability, it puts astonishingly little pressure on them to stop their depredations. Whatever pleas the administration makes in foreign capitals fall on deaf ears. In its search for de-escalation at any price, the Biden-Harris administration is giving malign actors carte blanche to go ahead with their ambitions. Its de-escalatory campaign does not check their aggression. Rather, it emboldens it. Only the willingness to impose costs would make them think twice.

That leaves wartime allies as the real recipients of the administration’s de-escalatory barbs. For all the talk about the administration’s commitment to international alliances, it has made a point of denying allies victory. It has criticized their conduct of defensive wars, declined to send them weapons, and told the world what it would not do in support of their war efforts, all in the name of de-escalation. Because they want to stay in Washington’s good graces, these countries can’t simply ignore what it says. The administration’s push for de-escalation works on allies in that they heed the United States’ leverage over them. This creates a pattern: the administration keeps hounding allies not to escalate without applying proportionate pressure on adversaries. De-escalation fails because the bad actors have no incentive not to escalate.

Nowhere is the de-escalation delusion more on display than in the Middle East. The region is riven by a struggle between an anti-American axis led by Iran and America’s democratic partner, Israel. The Iranian mullahs want to dominate the Middle East and see Israel and the United States as the principal obstacles to their doing so. Although the Iran-Israel shadow war predates the Biden-Harris administration, the latter has exacerbated the former, not least through its quixotic quest for de-escalation.

Even before October 7, the administration was extremely soft on Iran. Biden and Harris ran in the 2020 campaign on kickstarting a new nuclear deal with Iran. Once in office, they resumed talks without any concessions from Tehran, dispatching now-disgraced Special Envoy Robert Malley to get a deal done. The administration revoked the Iranian-backed Houthis’ Foreign Terrorist Organization and Specially Designated Global Terrorist designations in February 2021 (only to reimpose the latter designation three years later amid their attacks on global shipping). Most egregiously, the administration waived billions of dollars worth of sanctions on Iran and let its oil exports swell. It expected that Iran, in return, would moderate its destabilizing activities. This was all part of the administration’s de-escalatory strategy. Show goodwill to the Iranians, and they will reciprocate.

Coinciding with the administration’s coddling of Iran was its spurning of Israel. In the administration’s view, supporting the trigger-happy Israelis could very well precipitate regional war. That’s why it has sought daylight in the relationship. In May 2021, the administration pressured Israel to accept a cease-fire, ending a brief war with Hamas. It sent a $235 million aid package to the Palestinians, $150 million of which went to UNRWA, whose employees were later found to have participated in the October 7 attacks. It also reportedly unfroze over $360 million for the Palestinian Authority in contravention of counter-terrorism law. Biden also declined to invite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House until July 2024 in a flagrant diplomatic snub. Besides these anti-Israel measures, the administration privately urged the Israelis not to take military action against Iran’s nuclear program. There needed to be de-escalation no matter what.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, himself a high priest of the de-escalation church, espoused its tenets even before this latest war. He outlined the administration’s “goal of regional integration and de-escalation” at AIPAC’s policy summit in June 2023. As for the two-state solution, which Blinken called “vital,” he advocated “de-escalation” as well as no “unilateral measures that increase tensions” in an implicit criticism of so-called Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Yet Yahya Sinwar and Hamas undertook the unilateral measure of all unilateral measures in launching their surprise attack on October 7. Washington’s desire for de-escalation had the reverse effect.

October 7 temporarily snapped the administration out of its stupor. It got its response mostly right in the attack’s immediate aftermath. It sent two carrier battle groups to the Mediterranean as a deterrent to Iran. Biden had a one-word message—“don’t”—for the Iranians lest they attack Israel in its moment of vulnerability. “The United States has Israel’s back,” he said on October 10. His administration rightly feared a regional conflagration and deployed the hard power needed to prevent one.

But the administration’s support for Israel lasted little more than a few weeks. “How Israel does this matters,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on November 2, just a few days after the IDF began major offensive operations in Gaza. What followed were increasingly critical statements of Israel. Biden called the IDF’s campaign in Gaza “indiscriminate” and “over the top.” On March 3, Harris decried “the immense scale of suffering in Gaza.” Blinken, two months later, noted the “horrible loss of life of innocent civilians” and practically blamed Israel for all the damage in Gaza. This harsh rhetoric served a purpose. The administration was forcing the Israelis into accepting a permanent cease-fire. It wanted an end to the fighting, much more than an Israeli victory.

If the administration were honest about the war, it would lay the blame wholly at the feet of Hamas and Iran. It doesn’t do anything of the sort. Biden, who reportedly has called Netanyahu a “bad f–king guy,” has leveled many more verbal broadsides against the Israelis than Hamas. His State of the Union address was perhaps the most anti-Israel speech ever given by a U.S. president and implied that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza was Israel’s fault. Harris has done the same in calling for an end to the fighting. “Now is the time to get a cease-fire deal,” she said on the campaign stump to anti-Israel protesters. Every time she and other administration officials do this, they imply that Israel is to blame for the breakdown in negotiations. They’re loath to put any pressure on Hamas, the party responsible for the war.           

All the while, the de-escalation dream has persisted. “It remains a central locus of our strategy... [to] get on a path of diplomacy and de-escalation,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said of the Middle East crisis in January. The administration had little to show for its efforts. After the temporary November 2023 ceasefire, which Hamas accepted because the IDF was pummeling it into oblivion, the administration failed to broker a second one. Sinwar recognized the subsequent U.S. pressure on Israel and rejected subsequent proposals. The administration also failed to de-escalate other Middle Eastern crises. The Houthis, whose assaults have all but eradicated container shipping in the Red Sea, have now attacked Israel directly. Hezbollah has attacked the Golan Heights and other places in northern Israel.

Most of all, Iran is emboldened to strike. In April, it launched an unprecedented drone and missile assault against Israel in what could only be called an act of war. Yet the administration’s response to Iran’s escalation was to call on Israel to de-escalate. “Take the win,” Biden reportedly told Israel after the attack. In the administration’s view, taking the win meant not retaliating against the mullahs. How can a country win on the battlefield without hitting its enemy?

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.