A high-stakes diplomatic mission for Biden

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This week, Joe Biden travelled to Israel, becoming the first U.S. president to visit the country. At a time of war, I come to Israel with a single message You're not alone. It followed a marathon act of shuttle diplomacy by his secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, who'd spent days travelling in the region. Touching down in over seven countries. Amid rising tension following the brutal attack on Israel mounted by Hamas on October 7th, Biden had multiple aims to show American support for Israel. Ease the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza, win the freedom of hostages held by Hamas, especially those with American citizenship.

The stakes were extremely high, you could argue, the most critical foreign trip that Biden has made in his presidency.

Julian Borger is the Guardian's World Affairs editor, currently in Jerusalem.

In terms of flying into a war zone, at the brink of a conflict, that has the risk of escalating into something far bigger.

So, Julian, the very first time an American president has flown into Israel at a time of war that made a lot of impact in Israel. But what was his own agenda? What did the president want to get from this trip, and did he get it?

I think it was a partial success. He wanted, first of all, to show that the U.S was a staunch ally of Israel, and that helped in his second goal. Which is to prevent this conflict escalating into a regional war, to show deterrence, to show that the U.S would stand by Israel.

And I noticed in the press gaggle and we might explain to our audience what that is. But the sort of huddle of reporters on the president's plane on Air Force One on his way back to Washington. He said there that he put great emphasis on one part of what you were saying, which was the business of getting humanitarian aid through that. The Israelis had previously said they didn't want to allow that through this crossing, where Gaza meets Egypt. And he had succeeded in first, in quite small quantities, that getting through. And he made it seem as if, well, that's the number one thing he wanted, and he'd got it. You know, you've in a way said that there were bigger aims, which perhaps, you know, where the success was more limited. He did, though, get really positive notices.

Yes, I think that came across really clearly in Israel, and, as you say, the response has been really positive in Israel. Just the way that he interacted with the survivors, with the first responders, and a number of the columnists have said. This is a president who truly loves Israel, who supports Israel, and so that is a success in terms of Israel. And the Israeli government is readier because of that. To listen to him when he came with this message of take a breath before you respond.

But I caution this while you feel that rage, don't be consumed by it. After 9-11, we were enraged in the United States. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.

Telling Israel to learn from that, and that is a message I think that he feels he was able to get across. So there hasn't been a ground invasion so far, and now you have the IDF talking as if they might not be this huge ground invasion that was initially expected. So the fact that that hasn't happened yet, that the Israeli military and the Israeli political leadership are thinking about that and thinking about the day after and the consequences.

And some of the notices did, I think, praise a kind of emotional intelligence in what you've just described, which is, if you want to make progress with Israel and with Israelis, it really works to first absolutely show great affection and warmth and support in public and even in private, but do that first, and then you can offer the message of restraint. He sort of understood that that was the way you have to do it. And I know, just before you and I started this conversation, you mentioned to me that. This notion that Joe Biden was in a way simultaneously hugging Israel and at the same time tying their hands.

That's right. There was this moment when he got off the Air Force one on arrival in Tel Aviv. And he reached out his hand to shake Benjamin Netanyahu's hand, and instead, Netanyahu enfolded him in this embrace. And it was a really interesting moment, because first, it has implications for Joe Biden and how he's seen the rest of the region. Will the U.S?

You mentioned about the Bear hug and the kind of optics of that. And how that might have been received in the Arab capitals in the region, or other capitals in the region that had been part of the plan. I mean. Joe Biden had hoped to have face-to-face meetings with the King of Jordan, the President of Egypt, with the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas. None of those happened. They were cancelled at the last minute because of the blast at the major hospital in Gaza, which has been the subject of contested accounts.

I think it's a serious problem. I mean, he has been unlucky in those terms because of this particular set of events. The terrible, devastating bombing of this hospital, and then the initial belief that it was an Israeli airstrike, which was then contradicted. And so you had Biden coming in, taking sides immediately on this very emotive issue.

Based on what I've seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you.

Siding with Israel and that coloured the whole mission. It made it look lopsided. The absence of the personal meeting with Sisi King Abdullah and Makhloub Abbas. He sets great store by personal contact, by personal interaction, he has all through his career. And so that took away a very important part of what he was trying to do, which was to hold America's Arab allies together with Israel. And not let it lead to a huge schism and perhaps even the collapse of the Abraham Accords.

Yeah, so that was a blow for him and everything had been meticulously planned. Obviously, you can't plan for events like the one at the Al-Akhli hospital, but meticulously planned. In the role of Sherpa, his secretary of state, Tony Blinken, who had been travelling in the Middle East for days and days and days. This sort of five-day diplomatic marathon, prompting comparisons with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who did something very similar. Went on for much longer during the Yom Kippur war in 1973. But he was blinken back and forth. Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Saudi Arabia. a couple of those places. He was there twice.

I think, first of all, Blinken's shuttle diplomacy bought time, it bought time. Before the Israelis moved in into Gaza with the ground invasion, they built up this huge force along Gaza's borders, and they seemed to be ready to move. But Biden, Blinken's arrival, his participation in the war cabinet and his shuttling around the region helped buy a few days. And achieved the primary objective, which was not to start the dominoes falling of the Israelis moving into Gaza, Hezbollah having made the threat to intervene, stepping in. And then it would only be a relatively short hop, potentially, for Iran to get involved. If Israel struck back at Iran for its backing of Hezbollah, and you would very quickly have a regional war. The fact that that didn't happen could be attributed in some part, to Blinken's diplomacy.

Yeah, and this very which we've touched on, this striking image of Blinken sitting there in that in the deliberations of Israel's war Cabinet on one level, solidarity on another. But it's been perceived as him exercising a sort of restraining hand on the steering wheel and saying, you know, no rush to an escalating war. We know a lot about Joe Biden, he's been around a very, very long time. We know much less about his secretary of State, Tony Blinken. Antony Blinken was not a figure who was in elected politics before. Unlike, for example, Barack Obama's secretaries of state, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, both of them, you know, huge political figures. Both former presidential nominees, Tony Blinken has, no, has never run for office. As far as I know, and we know much less about him.

Yeah, he's very much a creature of the Washington foreign policy establishment. He's been very much been at Biden's side from the time of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, when Blinken was his chief of staff. He's very much the sort of alter ego of Biden, but whereas Biden is sort of loquacious and extravagant and make lots of gaffes. Blinken is very controlled, very measured and very efficient at getting things done within the State Department. So he is very much part of the Biden operation. And unlike the other, you know, predecessors of the secretary of state that you've mentioned, he is not a sort of political threat.

Right, because often they are rival centres of power. What can you tell us about Tony Blinken's sort of worldview? I mean, you've said how similar he is to Joe Biden, but just some of how, his own background. Because he has talked a bit about his own personal upbringings and members of his own family, and how they've shaped the way he sees the world.

Yes, his grandfather comes from a Jewish family, His grandfather survived pogroms in Russia, his stepfather was a survivor of the camps and the Holocaust. And he repeatedly says this where he comes from, in terms of it, shaped him in his outlook on life, on foreign policy. And he raised it when he was in Israel and at the Ministry of Defence.

Not only as the United States Secretary of State, but also as a Jew.

And this was, you know, very much welcomed in Israel, but caused him problems elsewhere. He was criticised by Turkey's president. Erdogan said Well, what if a Muslim came to you? would you have the same empathy? He was lectured by the Egyptian President, Sisi.

Well, let's talk about that exact point, about the wider region and how they see this. The big move militarily that the United States has made is bringing in those two aircraft carriers into the Mediterranean. Both named after former Republican presidents, there's a Gerald Ford and a Dwight Eisenhower aircraft carriers. This is big equipment, this is a big stick.

It's mainly a deterrent, obviously, the overriding aim is to deter or to stop a regional war. And this is a show of force, a show of resolve, that the U.S. is not uninterested in what happens there. There was an Israeli reporter after Biden's visit that suggested that he had offered that U.S. would fight side by side with the IDF in the event of a Hezbollah attack. He was asked that on the plane, going home, and he said, No, not at all.

Yeah, I thought the choice of words there was significant because you said, we're not going to do boots on the ground. Well, nobody was talking about boots on the ground, they were talking about air support from those aircraft carriers. And therefore, that seemed to me to fall into that category of the non-denial denial.

Yeah, absolutely. And beyond the region, if the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza, you know, continue at this current rate. And they are facing dying of thirst, hunger, lack of medical supplies, and they are on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe. Then we'll have an impact around the world, and you could see attacks on not only Israel, Israelis, Israeli embassies, but also on the U.S. and Israel's other Western backers. You could see a return to the age of, you know, widespread terrorism around the world. I think the impact of such a catastrophe would be felt worldwide and it could reverberate for many years.

So that is obviously what was front and centre in Joe Biden's mind and in the mind of the administration. Nevertheless, we do talk about politics here, and politics is never completely far away. What will this mean for Joe Biden politically? Do you think Americans back home will care? Will it move the needle at all?

Yes, I think it is, as every foreign crisis, is a test of his leadership, a test of his standing in the world and on the whole. Because Israel has given him good reviews on how he's carried himself. That will have a knock-on effect in U.S. politics and in U.S. public opinion when it comes to his approval ratings. As always, foreign policy doesn't always, and very rarely plays an important part in American politics, but it helps the overall perceptions of Biden as a leader.

As you know, Julian, we do always like to ask a what else? question, something completely different. Back in Washington, the search continues. As you and I speak for a House speaker to replace Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan has tried and failed, as you and I talk. Just in terms of how it affects the way America is perceived in the region where you are right now, and in the wider world. The political dysfunction back home. Do you think that, in any way, saps or drains America's perceived authority in the world?

Yes, absolutely. It doesn't help to have a dysfunctional political system back home. It does raise questions over whether an American leader can deliver on what he promises. Because spending has to go through Congress. And so when it comes, for example, to promising aid to Ukraine, promising military aid to Israel, that ultimately has to go through Congress. And the fact that the House is in turmoil means that all these things, all this processing of U.S. foreign policy, gets held up.

Julian Borgia, World Affairs correspondent for The Guardian Thanks so much for talking to us for Politics Weekly America.

A pleasure, thanks.

And that is all from me. For this week. The producer was Jolene Goffin. the executive producers this week were Maz Ebtehaj and Nicole Jackson. Now a word about the Guardian. We are open to anyone who wants to read us, but closed to billionaires who might want to tell us what to do.

This is The Guardian.