President Joe Biden’s farewell speech to the United Nations General Assembly was clearly not the speech he wanted to deliver.
He had hoped to announce the beginning of a cease-fire in Gaza in return for the release of Israeli hostages. That, in turn, could have halted the tit-for-tat fighting between Israel and Iran’s Lebanese proxy militia, Hezbollah, which claims it is firing across the Lebanese-Israeli border to support Hamas.
Instead, negotiations for such a deal are deadlocked, and Israel has newly plunged into a major cyber and air attack on Hezbollah that could draw in Iran and the United States. At the same time, the other major conflict roiling global stability — Russia’s aggressive war in Ukraine — has come to a critical juncture.
Biden’s speechwriters had to shift gears, with the president stressing his trademark optimism about the potential for resolving these conflicts — along with the pressing new threats from climate and world-changing new technologies like artificial intelligence — if nations work together.
But there was no escaping the fact that a negative outcome in Gaza and Ukraine will shred what remains of the U.N.’s tattered relevance to resolving conflicts — and will undermine the security of the United States.
Let me state up front that Biden’s foreign policy flaws pale beside those of Donald Trump on both issues. Trump’s unswerving support for Israel seems less tied to its security than to the evangelical votes it brings him — as well as to the Jewish votes he grossly demands (with antisemitic language) as a matter of gratitude. And were Trump reelected, he’d quickly hand Ukraine over to Vladimir Putin.
But back to Biden at the United Nations.
There was no point in his repeating forlorn hopes for a cease-fire/hostage deal without changing the U.S. approach toward Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clearly opposes a deal, and constantly undermined the U.S., Egyptian, and Qatari negotiating teams, leaving Hamas free to reject any bargain.
Now that the Israel-Hezbollah conflict is dangerously expanding, a new approach to the Gaza war is vital but was tellingly missing from Biden’s message. A new U.N. approach is vital, as well.
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The U.N. has failed Israel badly when it comes to Lebanon. Iran has armed proxy militias in the Mideast, including the Hezbollah militia, which now possesses an estimated 150,000 missiles.
Yet, the United Nations Security Council has proven utterly unable to enforce its 2006 Resolution 1701, which demanded Hezbollah pull back from the Israeli border to the Litani River, creating an 18-mile buffer zone to keep northern Israel safe. Hezbollah has refused, and the Lebanese government and army are far too weak to challenge them. U.N. peacekeepers are at the militia’s mercy.
The result has been a disaster for northern Israel. After Hamas attacked on Oct. 7, Hezbollah joined the fight and drove tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes in northern Israeli cities and towns. Nearly 70,000 are still living in makeshift housing.
Israel’s military attack on Hezbollah may hold it temporarily at bay, but it won’t end its threat for the long term. Only a diplomatic deal — fulfilling Resolution 1701, creating a buffer zone, and backed by Arab nations and Security Council sanctions against Tehran — might force Iran to control its proxies.
However, no such progress is possible without parallel movement on Gaza. The Arab world, including states that have peace treaties with Israel, is aghast at the horrific Palestinian civilian suffering in the Gaza Strip, where most of the population is displaced and living without adequate food, sanitation, or shelter. Meantime, violent Israeli settlers are attacking West Bank villages, and far-right cabinet ministers call for Israel’s annexation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Down that road lies an endless cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians locked into one state, and the death of any prospects for the two-state solution Biden called for at the United Nations. That path also threatens Israel’s peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt.
There must be another way that combines a humane solution in Gaza with Arab support to rein in Hezbollah and Tehran. More than half the Israeli population, along with military and intelligence officials, want a cease-fire-for-hostages deal.
But that would require Biden to finally exert far more U.S. pressure on Netanyahu, including U.S. support for tough U.N. resolutions against whichever party refuses the Gaza deal — plus U.S. arms cuts for Israel if needed. It would also require strong U.N. and Western pressure on Iran.
No sign of such a policy shift was heard from Biden on Tuesday. Netanyahu is trying to outflank him and waiting for a Trump victory. But the president still has three months more in office to change course.
Similarly, a Biden shift is vital to obtaining a just peace for Ukraine. So is a significant U.N. role.
The most basic principle of the world body, enshrined in its charter, prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity or sovereignty of any state.
Russia, which sits on the Security Council, has massively defied that principle by invading a peaceful neighbor, trying to annex at least 20% of its territory, and committing heinous war crimes. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — who will meet with Biden on Thursday — rightly insists that any peace talks be based on the principles of the charter, not on Putin’s claim that Ukraine bows to his imperial right to take Ukrainian land as a basis for peace.
Here again, the relevance of the U.N. will be defined by whether it defends the principle on which it was created — the post-World War II effort to prevent dictators from expanding their territory by force. In a just world, the U.N. General Assembly would suspend Russia. And no Security Council reform, as is being discussed this week, will have meaning if Moscow retains a veto.
In his speech, Biden asked the right questions: “Will we apply and strengthen the core tenets of the international system, including the U.N. charter … as we seek to … deter new threats? Or will we allow those universal principles to be trampled?
“How we answer these questions in this moment will reverberate for generations.”
Yet, his foreign policy legacy will be defined by how he defends the principle of no gains through force. The immediate test: whether he gives Zelensky a green light to use U.S. long-range missiles to hit aerodromes and weapons depots inside Russia. This moment is critical for Ukraine.
If Biden refuses, he will have permitted a dictator to violate the basic principle required to maintain world order. And his U.N. speech will be recalled as a coda for a president who possessed all the right foreign policy instincts but failed to nail down the outcomes before he stepped down
Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for The Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101. Her email address is trubin@phillynews.com
