Joe Biden’s Deterrence Policy: Stop Trump The Democratic Party’s national security strategy is where it was in 1972, a year their candidate lost big.By Daniel Henninger
https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-deterrence-policy-stop-trump-11578528412?mod=opinion_featst_pos1
Aside from the stunning photograph of Qasem Soleimani’s mangled car outside Baghdad airport, the most astonishing sight after the attack was the universal ambivalence, at best, from Democrats.
Not long ago—before Donald Trump—any president’s use of force against an overseas enemy would get at least 24 hours of partisan restraint. No more. The Democrats’ jack-in-the-box talking point was that Mr. Trump had brought us to “the brink of war.
Startled by this reaction, former Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman wrote in these pages: “It may be that today’s Democratic Party simply doesn’t believe in the use of force against America’s enemies in the world. I don’t believe that is true, but episodes like this one may lead many Americans to wonder.”
If the party’s presidential front-runner is any barometer, the use of credible force is off the table. In a foreign-policy speech Tuesday, Joe Biden said, “The only way out of this crisis is through diplomacy—clear-eyed, hard-nosed diplomacy grounded in strategy.”
There you have it: In the mind of Joe Biden—former vice president, former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and his party’s most notable “moderate”—the only two policy paths available are “war with Iran” (his words) and diplomacy. When did national strategy get so simple, or simplistic?
A byproduct of Mr. Trump’s maddening persona is that it causes his opponents to lose their ability to think straight—about anything. Mr. Trump has been president for more than 1,000 days, but you would think from the commentary and coverage that every moment has been an exercise in moronic idiocy, without exception—including killing the head of Iran’s Quds Force.
Can the Democratic nominee realistically sustain a stance of absolutist rejection until November? If somehow Bernie Sanders ends up as the nominee—with a foreign policy of “hell no, we won’t go anywhere”—discussion of national security becomes largely irrelevant. Pete Buttigieg’s constantly shifting opportunism makes it difficult to see him securing broad party support.
But Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar or Mike Bloomberg (who distanced himself from Sen. Sanders—an “assassination”— on Soleimani) would have to confront the Trump foreign policy with reality rather than rhetoric if one of them becomes the nominee. Right now, they could use a reality check.
Two important ideas seem to have dropped out of the Democrats’ national-security lexicon: provocation and deterrence.
With the Soviet Union as adversary during the years of the Cold War (an abhorrent period for Mr. Sanders and his under-30 socialist base), there were Democrats in the Senate, such as Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Sam Nunn and Mr. Lieberman, who understood that a committed foreign opponent, such as Iran today, will probe and provoke the U.S. to the edge of armed conflict. And that adversaries won’t stop pushing unless the U.S. puts in place a credible policy of deterrence.
With Barack Obama’s presidency, a new generation of strategic thinking devalued the idea of active deterrence in favor of, as Mr. Biden said this week, “only” diplomacy. Exhibit A: Secretary of State John Kerry’s desperately agreed-to nuclear deal with Iran in 2015.
For the record, I don’t believe either of Mr. Obama’s Democratic defense secretaries, Leon Panetta or Ash Carter, wholly embraced this view. It resided in the White House and State Department with enthusiastic buy-in from Mr. Biden.
His posture this week on Iran—and there wasn’t much indication that any active Democrats dissent from it—is what came to be known during the Cold War years as a bluff—strong words recognized by an adversary as an implausible threat. In short, this is the bluff strategy of Mr. Obama’s “red line” over Syria’s chemical weapons, which will sit forever as a defining event in U.S. foreign policy. (Yes, he allowed the elimination of Osama bin Laden at his hideaway in Pakistan.)
Mr. Trump’s recital at the White House Wednesday of Iran’s provocations since the Obama-Kerry-Biden nuclear deal in 2015 was accurate: the destabilization of Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq—all led by Qasem Soleimani.
To deter Iran from doing more of this, the killing of Soleimani was proportionate and discriminate. Iran’s pro forma 15-missile response Tuesday was also discriminate. Result: The table has been reset for a “hard-nosed, clear-eyed” renegotiation of Iran’s future. If the Soviet Union, a more formidable power, could stand down, so can Iran.
The capricious Mr. Trump is no model of sustained deterrence, notably in his troop decisions in Syria. But the default position of his critics that he should present U.S. actions for preclearance by talking with allies or Congress should be seen for what it is—a policy of talking about talking, or next to nothing.
It has been a revealing week. The Democrats ended it about where they were on national security for the 1972 presidential election between George McGovern and Richard Nixon, which they lost, big.
Write henninger@wsj.com.
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