Joe Biden’s Muddled Middle East Policy
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, David Klion on a president’s mix of hawkish policy and moderate rhetoric.
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Joe Biden’s Muddled Middle East Policy | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, David Klion joins Jeet Heer to discuss the President’s mix of hawkish policy and moderate rhetoric.
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US President Joe Biden shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as they meet at the 78th United Nations General Assembly in New York City on September 20.
(Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images)Joe Biden has often been described as among the most pro-Israel politicians in America, a characterization that has a large element of truth but misses some important nuances. As David Klion argues in a deeply researched essay for The Nation, Biden’s support for Israel has long been accompanied by rhetorical gestures indicating opposition to aspects of Israel’s policies, particularly the building of settlements. How do we make sense of this disjunction between action and rhetoric? Is Biden simply trying to placate his liberal base with cheap words? Or does his thinking on the topic indicate a fundamental incoherence in his worldview?
David joins the podcast to talk about Biden’s Israel policy, which leads into a wide-ranging discussion of the internal contradictions of Cold War liberalism and Biden’s larger policy thinking.In addition to David’s piece, we talk about topics that address this by Jonathan Guyer in The American Prospect and Noah Landar in Mother Jones.
The Nation Podcasts
Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
Fighting Trump’s Corruption w/ Chris Lehmann / The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
Donald Trump is corrupt on a scale that puts all other criminal presidents, including Richard Nixon, to shame. One recent example is the so-called Anti-Weaponization fund of $1,776,000,000, being deployed to reward convicted criminals who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Trump and his cronies are also profiting from billion-dollar deals with foreign governments and engaged in stock market trading while in office.
My Nation colleague Chris Lehmann has written about this in a recent column. We talk about both the corruption, and the political tools Democrats can use to fight it.
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