Joe Biden’s wishy-washy foreign policy record could be a liability for him in the wake of President Trump’s ordered strike that killed Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani.
Escalating tensions with Iran are becoming a major political issue just a month before the first Democratic presidential nominating contests.
One of the major arguments from Biden, 77, is that he is the candidate best positioned to represent the United States because he has relationships with many world leaders and a long record of foreign policy experience.
But Biden has a long history of foreign policy positions that could draw renewed criticism with Middle East policy shot to the forefront of national policy, and he has contradicted or distanced himself from much of that record on the campaign trail.
“He has been on every side of every foreign policy issue — the Balkans, China post-Tiananmen, Iraq, Russia, and Afghanistan — depending on what is most convenient at any point in time,” said Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and Middle East policy expert. “Not even his supporters suggest he has intellectual consistency.”
Biden voted for the Iraq War in 2002 while he was a Delaware senator. In a July Democratic primary debate, Biden claimed that he opposed the effort “from the moment” the March 2003 invasion started. But the public record shows that Biden supported the effort much later, saying in July 2003 that he still thought the job was “doable.” On the floor of the Senate, Biden said, “I voted to go into Iraq, and I’d vote to do it again.”
Numerous high-level Obama administration officials said that Biden opposed the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011. On the campaign trail in Iowa on Friday, Biden denied that he advised President Barack Obama against the raid.
Biden oversaw the withdrawal of nearly 150,000 troops from Iraq in 2011 during Obama’s first term, a move that many argue fueled the rise of the Islamic State. During a July Democratic debate, he called delivering the troop withdrawal announcement “one of the proudest moments of my life.”
Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in September criticized Biden as “indifferent” to the consequences of withdrawal. In a debate a few weeks later, Biden said that while “we were right to get the combat troops out,” the administration made a “mistake” in not ensuring “Shia and the Kurds would work together to keep ISIS from coming.” In November, Biden responded to Mattis, saying that he “pled with the Iraqi government to allow a residual force to stay so we could stay and focus on, then, al Qaeda, before ISIS.”
Foreign policy had largely been an afterthought during the Democratic presidential cycle until Soleimani’s death, leaving Biden, who has a half-century of national political experience, as the default authority on global matters. An October CNN national poll found that 56% of likely Democratic voters said that Biden would best handle foreign policy, putting him 43 points ahead of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the second most trusted on foreign policy with 13%.
“The question is whether voters believe his cynical political perversion of national security is acceptable simply because they perceive that he behaves more presidentially than Trump,” Rubin said. “The two are really peas in a pod, though, when it comes not only to shifting with the wind but spinning like windmills.”
Biden’s primary rivals have avoided directly criticizing his foreign policy record in the wake of Soleimani’s death, but his biggest competitors have subtle distinctions between their principles and that of the former vice president.
“Every piece of this is about judgment,” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 70, said Sunday when asked about voters’ trust in Biden on foreign policy. “I understand there are people who are running for president who are willing to keep combat troops in the Middle East indefinitely, five years, 10 years,” she told CNN, adding, “We need to dial back from that.”
“I will let the VP speak to his own judgment,” former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, 37, said when asked about Biden’s Iraq War vote and opposition to the bin Laden raid during a CNN interview on Sunday. “My judgment is also informed by belonging to that generation that has lived through conflicts that we were told would be over in days or weeks and are continuing to this day.”
Sanders, 78, mentioned his initial 2002 vote against the Iraq War in his statement reacting to Soleimani’s death, a contrast from Biden. In the days before the strike that killed Soleimani, Sanders took aim at Biden’s “weak” record, saying that Biden’s vote for the Iraq War and support for the North American Free Trade Agreement make him vulnerable in a general election against Trump.
“It’s just a lot of baggage that Joe takes into a campaign, which isn’t going to create energy and excitement,” Sanders said.
