After more than a year of negotiation and brinkmanship, President Joe Biden believed he found the magic formula to compel his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan to lift his hold on Sweden’s NATO accession. The same day Turkey’s rubber stamp parliament ratified Erdogan’s approval of Sweden, the White House called members of Congress to urge them to lift their hold on a multibillion-dollar sale of F-16s and jet fighter upgrade packages. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan may call it a sophisticated diplomacy, but a more honest assessment is that it was humiliating acquiescence to Turkey’s extortion.

Two weeks later, on Feb. 9, 2024, Biden signed a presidential memorandum to authorize a swift cutoff of military assistance to countries that violate international protections of civilians. Motivating Biden was a desire to virtue signal. Politically, he hoped to assuage an important Arab and Muslim constituency in Michigan upset at his administration’s support for Israel in its fight against U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas. Diplomatically, Biden hopes to blunt criticism of European and Arab partners who criticize the United States in order to project self-righteousness, never mind the irony that Israel allowed Hamas more freedom in Gaza than Jordan’s King Abdullah II or Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would ever grant it in their own kingdoms.