This text comes from Federico Rampini’s Global newsletter, reserved for Corriere subscribers: you can receive it free for 30 days by clicking here
America never loses its wars. He often lets her down. It is a story that has been repeating itself since the country became the largest world power.
In Korea, it ended in a “draw” between the United States and the North Korean-Chinese forces in 1953 because American public opinion was exhausted by the sacrifices of World War II. In Vietnam, it was defeated not on military soil but on its own streets, where protests raged against a conflict that half of Americans viewed as unjust and immoral. Also in Iraq and Afghanistan: There were no military defeats, but rather domestic political discontent and attrition that left Baghdad under the influence of Tehran and subjected Kabul back to the influence of the Taliban.
Is there a risk that we will witness the same spectacle in the current wars?
Certainly the greatest weakness for Biden’s America is still the same: the domestic front.
In Ukraine, defectors are most clearly visible on the right. Donald Trump has long claimed that this was an avoidable war and that he would have solved it face to face with Putin. Other Republicans may be hesitant to act like Putin out of loyalty to their own history, but they are resorting to tried-and-true forms of isolationism: “We have so many problems to solve at home that we can’t even protect our southern border “Migrant invasion, let’s deal with it and forget about other people’s wars.” All of this is made worse by the chaos in the House of Representatives, where the Republican Party has lost its third candidate for Speaker of the House , the very powerful president of that branch of Congress. Meanwhile, there is a risk that paralysis in the House of Representatives will delay the approval of new aid for Ukraine and Israel. Furthermore, it does not bode well for 2024, the year of the election campaign.
However, there is no shortage of radical leftists on the American pro-Putin front: Robert Kennedy Jr., who has decided to leave the Democratic Party and will run for the White House as an independent in November 2024, agrees with the Russian leader Ukraine. Since the last US elections were decided by very narrow margins, all it takes is for an ultra-environmentalist to take a percentage point or two away from Kennedy Biden (or whoever) to change the fate of America… and the world.
On the internal front, there is something else: it is Israel that is dividing the Democratic Party. Even in America the radical left is pro-Palestinian; She is also often pro-Hamas: apparently without understanding the incompatibility of the two positions. This pro-Palestinian radical left in the US is much more powerful than is usually realized abroad. That it is well entrenched in the establishment is demonstrated by the fact that one of its members, Josh Paul, resigned from the State Department in protest over Biden’s aid to Israel. These resignations caused a stir, but are only the tip of the iceberg: Protest from the pro-Palestinian lobby, which is represented at many levels, is brewing in the Foreign Ministry. Even in Congress, there is a group of lawmakers who challenge Biden’s trip to Tel Aviv and his embrace of Benjamin Netanyahu.
The pro-Hamas positions I have already discussed regarding elite universities are even more widespread and rooted in the African American community, particularly among anti-racism extremists like Black Lives Matter and the entire associated galaxy. One of the most respected intellectuals in these circles, the African-American professor Cornel West, has also decided to run as an independent in next year’s presidential election. Cornel West is an extremist, which is why he is popular with young people, black and otherwise. In addition, his pro-Palestinian position can win him votes in the Arab immigrant community. The same argument applies that was already made for Robert Kennedy Jr.: These are “troubling” candidacies aimed at collecting small percentages. But both have profiles that appeal to the world of youth and the far left, so they are likely to be mostly damaging to Biden (or an alternative Democratic candidate if Biden suddenly decides to withdraw).
This age-worn president is a “man of history.” In the sense that he worked through the entire history of the Cold War, he absorbed its lessons. He is the last US president born during World War II. He is the only sitting political leader who can boast of meeting Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir during the Yom Kippur War 50 years ago. He is therefore convinced that he understands like no other the challenges in the two “twin conflicts” in Ukraine and Israel. Despite his experience, he may be doomed to go in the same direction as many of his predecessors: forced to lose conflicts not by external enemies but by internal divisions.