The Biden administration has a longstanding habit of embarrassing itself on the subject of foreign policy — and the latest fumble by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is no different.
On Tuesday, Foreign Affairs Magazine published a lengthy piece authored by Sullivan on its website providing an overview of U.S. foreign policy under President Joe Biden. The article — which reads like a White House press release — touches on different areas of foreign affairs, such as U.S. competition with China and the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Of course, the national security adviser couldn’t resist taking shots at former President Donald Trump, whom Sullivan claims “damaged” U.S. alliances with key allies.
Most notable about Sullivan’s diatribe, however, are the significant differences between the online edition published on Tuesday and the print version published earlier this month. Included at the bottom of the online edition of Sullivan’s piece is an editor’s note revealing that the section of the article discussing Middle Eastern affairs had been “updated” from the print version “to address Hamas’s [Oct. 7] attack on Israel.” A closer look at the lines scrubbed from the original reveals what little understanding Sullivan and the Biden administration have of the geopolitical environment in the region.
1. Biden has the Israeli-Palestinian conflict under control
In his original piece, Sullivan claimed the “Israeli-Palestinian situation is tense, particularly in the West Bank, but in the face of serious frictions,” the administration has “de-escalated crises in Gaza and restored direct
