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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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.

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.
Many of Joe Biden’s closest advisors are now well-ensconced in the sinecures reserved for the elite, working at think tanks, academia, and major media outlets. Normally, they could expect to have future jobs when the Democrats retake the White House. But this cozy situation is being disrupted by ongoing reporting showing the extent of their complicity in the Gaza genocide and other US crimes in the Middle East. I spoke about this with Connor Echols, managing editor of Responsible Statecraft, who wrote an excellent article on the efforts to hold these officials accountable.
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