Biden's legacy: Offshore wars, interventions, and domestic turmoil

As Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the US presidential race on Sunday, putting doubts and concerns of his fellow Democrats to rest, his party faces a significant challenge ahead to rally behind his successor Kamala Harris, whom he endorsed as the next presidential nominee. Biden, a central figure in the American political establishment and a known supporter of wars and military interventions, leaves behind a troubling legacy of enabling bloodshed in various parts of the world.

A US federal court recently dismissed a case accusing President Joe Biden and senior officials of complicity in Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.

While the court emphasised the procedural limits of its jurisdiction, US District Court Judge Jeffrey White urged Biden and his colleagues to consider the human rights implications of their unwavering support for Israel, noting the International Court of Justice's suggestion that Israel’s actions could amount to genocide.

This highlights a significant part of Biden's legacy: a history marked by endorsing foreign interventions and expanding national security powers.

War hawk

Biden's career is marred by his endorsement of foreign interventions and expanding national security powers. Unlike his predecessors who occasionally took antiwar stances, Biden has consistently advocated for military interventions right from his early career.

He voted for the Iraq War and the Afghanistan conflict and later supported NATO's expansion, provoking tensions with Russia. Biden’s record on foreign policy includes supporting military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and NATO’s expansion eastward.

He also advocated for military intervention in Darfur in 2007. On some rare occasions, however, he has taken antiwar positions such as opposing the first Gulf War.

Biden’s strong ties to Israel date back decades. Known as one of Israel’s staunchest allies in Congress, he has consistently defended Israeli interests, even described himself as a Zionist.

His unflinching support to Israel has helped secure financial and military backing for Tel Aviv, even at the cost of straining US relationships in the Middle East.

Biden’s presidency reflected his entrenched pro-Israel stance, maintaining a pattern of shielding Israel from international criticism despite growing discontent among Democratic voters and progressive leaders.

Biden has been a reliable advocate for expanding the national security state. As Barack Obama’s vice president, he contributed to widening government powers in the name of national security.

Even before this, Biden's “tough on crime” stance because contentious in light of civil liberties. He is remembered for his role in endorsing a legislation that undermined core legal protections, such as the crime bill he worked on in 1993 that reduced prisoners’ rights to file habeas corpus petitions.

In 1991, Biden introduced bills allowing tech companies to give law enforcement access through “back doors”, which meant weakening encryption. Concerned programmers were quick to notice a flaw in Biden's approach, which spurred them to develop email encryption.

After the Oklahoma City bombing, Biden introduced the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act, which expanded government powers to detain suspects and conduct surveillance, measures echoed in the Patriot Act post-9/11.

Biden played a significant role in shaping the Patriot Act, which granted extensive surveillance powers to law enforcement. He lamented that the act didn’t go further, regretting the removal of provisions allowing police to conduct emergency surveillance without a court order.

Biden’s support for the militarisation of domestic law enforcement includes championing programs that armed local police forces and expanded their role in drug enforcement.

While Biden occasionally opposed expansions of surveillance, such as voting against FISA amendments in 2007 and 2008, his overall record shows him as an unreliable champion of civil liberties. His ACLU scorecards reflect this inconsistency, with high ratings during politically advantageous times and lower scores otherwise.

“Joe Biden Democrat”

Defeating Trump in 2020, his arrival as president was seen as reprieve for a nation exhausted by former administration and pandemic, Douglas Brinkley, a historian at Rice University, tells Associated Press.

“He was a perfect person for that moment,” said Brinkley, noting that Biden proved in the era of polarisation that bipartisan lawmaking was still possible.

Yet voters viewed him as a placeholder, and he could never transcend the text of his speeches to visually “embody the spirit of the nation with a sense of verve, energy, and optimism.”

As his reelection campaign entered its final days, Biden was still trying to prove himself and rally voters around fears that Trump would doom American democracy.

There was never a “Joe Biden Democrat” like there was a “Reagan Republican.” He did not have adoring, movement-style followers, as did Barack Obama or John F. Kennedy. He was not a generational candidate like Bill Clinton.

The only barrier-breaking dimension to his election was the fact that he was the oldest person ever elected president. While he contemplated being in the Oval Office repeatedly from his perch as a senator from Delaware, voters rejected him again and again.

His first run for the White House, in the 1988 cycle, ended with self-inflicted wounds stemming from plagiarism, and he didn’t make it to the first nominating contest. When he ran in 2008, he dropped out after the Iowa caucuses, where he won less than 1% of the vote.

In 2016, Obama counseled him not to run, even though he was Obama’s vice president. A Biden victory in 2020 seemed implausible when he finished fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire before a dramatic rebound in South Carolina.

He then had to withstand the January 6, 2021, the US Capitol riots by Trump supporters who claimed that the 2020 election had been stolen.

David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Obama, told Associated Press history would treat Biden kinder than voters had, not just because of his legislative achievements but because he defeated Trump.

“His legacy is significant beyond all his many accomplishments,” Axelrod said. “He will always be the man who stepped up and defeated a president who placed himself above our democracy. That, alone, is a historic accomplishment.”

But it would be hard for him to clean the stains caused by the offshore violence he has enabled throughout his political career at the behest of serving America's "national interest".

His achievements as president

Harvard University economist Jason Furman, a top aide during the Obama administration, portrayed Biden's tenure in a positive light.

He told Associated Press that Biden “came into office when the economy was in the throes of Covid and helped to oversee the transition out of it to an economy that is now growing faster than any of its peer economies, with less inflation than they have.”

Furman noted that Biden increased spending to make longer-term investments in the economy while keeping Jerome Powell as the Federal Reserve chairman, giving the Fed cover to hike rates and bring down inflation without disrupting the labor market.

In March 2021, Biden launched $1.9 trillion in pandemic aid, creating a series of new programs that temporarily halved child poverty, halted evictions, and contributed to the addition of 15.7 million jobs.

But inflation began to rise shortly thereafter. Biden’s approval rating as measured by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research fell from 61 percent to 39 percent as of June. He followed up with a series of executive actions to unsnarl global supply chains and a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package that not only replaced aging infrastructure but improved internet access and prepared communities to withstand climate change.

But the infrastructure bill also revealed the challenge Biden faced in getting the public to recognise his achievement because many of the projects will take decades to complete.

In 2022, Biden and his fellow Democrats followed up with two measures that reinvigorated the future of U.S. manufacturing. The CHIPS and Science Act provided $52 billion to build factories and create institutions to make computer chips domestically, ensuring that the US would have access to the most advanced semiconductors needed to power economic growth and maintain national security.

There was also the Inflation Reduction Act, which provided incentives to shift away from fossil fuels and enabled Medicare to negotiate drug prices. Biden also sought to compete more aggressively with China and rebuild alliances such as NATO.

He completed the US withdrawal from Afghanistan that resulted in the death of 13 US service members, an effort that was widely criticised. The president also faced criticism over his handling of the southern border with Mexico as illegal border crossings led to concerns about his handling of immigration.

As Biden shows frailty in his steps and his speech, he is heading towards a humiliating end.