Biden’s Transformation From a Dove to a Hawk
In the January 2025 issue of Reason, we’re giving performance reviews of Joe Biden’s presidency. Click here to read the other entries.
President Joe Biden came to office promising to end “forever war,” and that’s the promise that could have been the easiest to fulfill. When it comes to war and peace, the U.S. president is more powerful than anyone else on earth. His promise was put to the test with the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. With each crisis, Biden seems to have grown more hawkish, embroiling the United States deeper in foreign wars.
Biden’s most courageous foreign policy decision was also the one he received the most political punishment for. By the early 2020s, the war in Afghanistan had become unwinnable without a major escalation by U.S. forces. Biden, like his predecessor (and successor) Donald Trump, decided to cut America’s losses. He followed through with Trump’s agreement to withdraw U.S. military advisers from the country.
The fall of the Afghan republic caused a heartbreaking refugee crisis, and postwar U.S. sanctions on Afghanistan nearly led to famine. Biden deserves criticism for failing to prepare for the humanitarian consequences of withdrawal. But continuing the war would have meant death and suffering on a far greater scale. The fall of Saigon in 1975 came after months of Vietnam War combat that killed tens of thousands. In avoiding a similar outcome, Biden’s courage was commendable.
It is hard to grade Biden’s performance in Ukraine, because much depends on the outcome of the war—whether U.S. aid wins Ukraine better peace terms than what Russia was offering at the beginning. Much of the crisis has been outside the U.S. president’s hands. Russian leader Vladimir Putin, of course, made the fateful decision to invade his neighbor. Eastern
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