The Middle East is on fire. Eastern Europe is gridlocked in war. America’s southern border looks like a scene out of “Mad Max.” And Southeast Asia is a tinderbox that could ignite with one wrong move. After four years of expanding peace under President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden is presiding over a world careening toward mayhem. “Mean tweets and world peace” has a nice ring to it. But it’s also worth exploring why Trump’s unorthodox approach to foreign affairs produced such markedly better results than Biden’s heralded return to normalcy.
The current state of the Middle East — where most recently on Biden’s watch, Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists attacked Israel, slaughtered civilians, and even took American citizens hostage — is a case study in the contrast between the two presidents.
Israel
In 2017, President Trump announced he was moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He made this decision against the advice of the professional diplomatic service at the State Department and in spite of opposition from his own secretaries of state and defense.
The day after the announcement was made, I was walking with him between meetings when a television hanging on the wall outside the Oval Office caught his attention. Images of Palestinians protesting his embassy decision were flashing across the screen, and members of the foreign policy establishment took turns decrying his decision as reckless and ill-advised. Biden, for his part, derisively called it “short-sighted and frivolous.”
Trump watched the segment casually but intently. When it concluded, he
