It’s Debatable: The Stimson Center’s Emma Ashford and the Atlantic Council’s Matthew Kroenig debate pressing issues for policymakers.
Emma Ashford: Hey, Matt, I’ve been thinking: I know this is meant to be a biweekly column, but we might have to shift to weekly, or perhaps daily, if the pace of the news cycle keeps going.
I’m struggling to keep track of everything that’s happened since our last column: Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, we’ve got a new presumptive Democratic presidential nominee with unclear foreign-policy views, there’s chaos on the Israel-Lebanon border, a disputed election in Venezuela, and now the Israelis have gone and (allegedly) assassinated a Hamas leader—this time in Tehran!
It’s a complete mess.
Matt Kroenig: Indeed. We have lived through a lot of history in the past month. I was among those who were convinced that Biden was determined to stay in the race. I got that one wrong. So, we should probably debate what a Harris administration’s foreign policy might look like, if we can get to that this week.
But maybe we should first discuss all of these ongoing crises in the Middle East and Latin America. I was frantically reading the newspapers this morning trying to keep up with all of the breaking news.
Should we start with the assassinations in Beirut and Tehran, and hope that there aren’t five new breaking news stories that supersede this one before we finish the column?
EA: Where did you find a “newspaper”? I haven’t seen one of those since 1992.
MK: I just picked it up on my way to return my Blockbuster video rental. Have you seen Wayne’s World yet?
EA: Now you’re showing your age! Joking aside, things are spiraling rapidly in the Middle East. It’s become fashionable to talk about how we’re perched on the edge of war in the region, but I’d argue the region is already mired in a war; it’s just a question of whether it stays asymmetrical and mostly confined to Gaza, or whether it becomes a direct war between Israel, Lebanon, Iran, and others.
Israel’s post-Oct. 7 war in Gaza is now in its ninth month, and it’s going even worse than many predictions at the start of the conflict. Israeli forces are struggling to contain Hamas militants, the civilian population of the Gaza Strip has been completely immiserated, and the violence has come home to Israeli society. Far-right protesters literally attacked an Israel Defense Forces base this week, trying to free detained reservists who were accused by the army of some pretty horrifying abuses of Palestinian prisoners.
And now the Israelis have allegedly assassinated a senior Hamas leader on Iranian soil. It’s hard to see this as anything other than an attempt to provoke a broader regional war on the part of the Netanyahu government.
MK: I agree that the region is in turmoil, but I see everything else differently. I am impressed by how Israel has shown ingenuity and grit in defending itself amid a dangerous regional security environment and enormous international pressure, including from the White House. After the horrific attacks of Oct. 7, it threatened that Hamas’s leadership was the walking dead. This week, it apparently made good on that promise, killing Hamas’s top political leader in Iran’s capital.
On July 27, Israel suffered another tragic terror attack, when Hezbollah launched missiles at a playground, killing 12 children in the Golan Heights, which the U.S. government recognized as sovereign Israeli territory in 2019. Israel hit back with a strike in Beirut that it claimed killed a top Hezbollah leader responsible for the attack, Fuad Shukr.
Of course, Iran is the head of the snake behind these terror groups. It has vowed revenge for the killing of Hamas’s leader, but it faces its typical dilemma. It needs to hit back to show that it did something, but it cannot afford a major war with Israel or the United States. It knows that it would lose such a war, and that it could cost Tehran everything, including its regime.
And then there are the ongoing Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, including a deadly attack on Tel Aviv on July 19.
Ultimately, I think the root cause of the instability is a deterrence failure on the part of Washington. The Biden administration should make it clear to Tehran that it needs to rein in all three terror groups and refrain from retaliating against Israel, or else it will suffer severe consequences. Sen. Lindsey Graham proposed this week, for example, a new resolution declaring that any attack by Hezbollah that leads to a major confrontation will be considered an Iranian attack and that Tehran will be held fully accountable. We need to end this dangerous fiction that the “axis of resistance” terror groups are somehow independent actors.
EA: I think we need to put aside the question of whether this killing was morally justified. Honestly, after Oct. 7, I wouldn’t blame the Israelis for eventually hunting down every senior Hamas leader. But the timing and the location? That’s incredibly provocative and destabilizing. They didn’t go after Ismail Haniyeh where he lives in Doha. They did it on Iranian soil, in violation of Tehran’s sovereignty? The last time Israel came close to that—violating Syria’s, and according to some, Iran’s sovereignty to kill two Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps generals in a consulate in Damascus—it prompted a major rocket attack from Iran that almost sparked a broader war. And now Israel does it in the middle of Tehran a few hours after the inauguration of a new Iranian president?
Iran is certainly not blameless in any of this, but it is the Netanyahu government that is driving us down the path to broader war here. And to be frank, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has every incentive to do so; he will probably lose power as soon as this war ends. And so he is letting his far-right coalition partners run riot inside Israeli society, keeping the war in Gaza going, and dialing up tensions with Iran.
Genuinely, if you care about Israel, it’s impossible to argue that most of what the current Israeli government has done since October last year will make the country safer and more secure in the long run.
MK: This is essentially an example of the classic IR theory debate about the spiral versus deterrence model as the cause of war. You see the cause of the conflict as brazen Israeli responses that threaten a continued cycle of escalation. I see the cause of conflict as a deterrence failure. Iran and its terror proxies have gotten away with literal murder and have not paid a heavy enough price. I think, therefore, that strong Israeli responses, including killing Hamas’s leader in the capital of its state sponsor, will ultimately help to restore deterrence.
EA: That’s what we normally disagree about, but the big-picture strategic debate just isn’t that relevant at this point. Instead, we see bad decision after bad decision emanating from Israel, none of which are good for the United States. As my friend Mark Hannah noted over on Twitter, Henry Kissinger once pointed out—astutely—that Israeli interests in creating regional discord only hurt U.S. interests. That’s even more true when the only interests being served are Netanyahu’s political fortunes.
I don’t think we’re going to find any agreement here.
MK: Well, unfortunately, I think the bad decisions hurting American interests have been emanating from Washington in recent months. The Biden administration was correct to back Israel 100 percent immediately after the Oct. 7 terror attacks, but this attempt in recent months to have it both ways, followed by the toothless pleading for all sides to stop the escalation, is only making things worse.
But let’s agree to disagree and move on.
After all, there are plenty of other items to argue about. In Venezuela, dictator Nicolás Maduro appears to have stolen a blatantly fraudulent presidential election. Evidence of a rigged election abounds. For example, the credible pre-election polls showed opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia with a 25-point lead, but Maduro claims to have won the election by a comfortable 7-point margin. Moreover, the opposition has supported its claims to victory with local-level voting tallies, whereas Maduro has only produced a single nationwide number. His stubborn refusal to allow a free vote and acknowledge the popular will has led to violent protests, on top of a mass exodus, and questions about what this instability means for global oil markets.
What is your take?
EA: Ah, Venezuela. Did I ever tell you that while writing my Ph.D. dissertation, I read thousands of pages of transcripts from Hugo Chávez’s TV show, Aló Presidente? It was certainly an education in how not to run a country. And Maduro, Chávez’s handpicked successor and a former bus driver, has taken things from bad to worse. The country has lost much of its ability to export oil and the economy is a wreck. Maduro clearly lost this week’s election but is not standing down. If there is going to be political change in Venezuela at this point, it will probably be violent.
It’s possible there will be a good outcome here, but the odds are that we’re going to see more turmoil, more migrants, and more misery for the people of Venezuela. There’s not a lot the United States can really do here: The Biden administration tried to make overtures to Maduro on sanctions relief last year, but he wouldn’t follow through on his promise to improve political rights for Venezuelans. I suppose the administration could lean on Latin American leaders—particularly in Colombia and Brazil—to encourage Maduro to go into exile. But the Biden administration seems to have mostly checked out of international affairs—or really anything—at this point.
MK: I am afraid I agree with you. There was some hope several years ago when the opposition under Juan Guaidó was organized and motivated and even won recognition as Venezuela’s legitimate government from numerous countries around the world, including the United States. This opposition has an even stronger base of popular support, but it is still being obstructed. It seems unlikely that Maduro will be stopped this time.
There are also direct security implications for the United States and its great-power competition with China and Russia, as Venezuela is an outpost for Beijing and Moscow’s influence in the Western Hemisphere, with both powers providing Caracas with arms and intelligence tools, such as Russia’s System for Operative Investigative Activities and a Chinese ground satellite station used, respectively, to repress the local population and help spy on the United States.
EA: Washington has hardly helped itself in that regard. I wouldn’t want to imply that the near-collapse of Venezuela as a functional state was due to anything other than poor management by Chávez’s and Maduro’s governments, but it’s also true that U.S. policy toward Venezuela has been inconsistent—and at times completely ridiculous. Under the Trump administration, then-National Security Advisor John Bolton and others tried to orchestrate a coup against Maduro. By comparison, it made the Bay of Pigs sound well organized and considered. U.S. sanctions have done little except tamp down oil exports, hurt the population, and drive Maduro’s government toward criminal and drug-related financing schemes. Even the Biden administration’s attempt to ease tensions was more about Ukraine policy—and easing the tight oil market created by Russia sanctions—than it was a coherent attempt to resolve the Venezuela problem.
This is a failure by at least the last four presidents to address a significant problem—and one that’s far closer to home than the Middle East or Europe.
MK: Well, it is a hard problem, and if there is a better way forward for Venezuela or in the Middle East, I would love to hear it. Which raises the question: Would a Harris administration be handling these problems any differently?
EA: Hard to say. Kamala Harris had almost no foreign-policy experience to speak of before being chosen by Biden as his running mate in 2020. Her statements during the 2020 campaign on foreign policy were more progressive than Biden’s, but her statements on other areas like regulation and fracking were also quite progressive, and she’s already walking many of them back. There’s a lot of speculation that Harris would be tougher than Biden on Israel, but I’ve seen little evidence to suggest that. She is giving more conciliatory remarks—such as calling for a cease-fire after her meeting with Netanyahu last week—but her policy position is still pretty similar to Biden’s.
It is notable, I think, that the one area of foreign policy the administration did entrust Harris with was Latin America—framed as “addressing the root causes of migration.” Venezuela would clearly fit within that remit. But Harris’s involvement with the issue was mostly a few speeches and visits to the region, and it is in any case a clear electoral problem for her that her role in the Biden administration was so clearly tied to border security.
She’d probably be more assertive than Biden, but that’s just a function of being closer to 50 years old than 100. What do you think?
MK: I agree that we don’t have a lot to go on. I suspect there will be mostly continuity with Biden’s foreign policy. And you are right that she has been more progressive than Biden and seems to be more skeptical of Israel, which I would see as a negative direction for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and beyond.
There is also the interesting question of who would staff the Harris administration. As they say in Washington, personnel is policy. On one hand, given her thin resume in foreign policy, she does not have a huge team of loyal foreign-policy experts to fill out her administration. On the other hand, people like National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are so closely tied to Biden (having served on his staff for years, going back to his days as vice president and even as senator) that it is hard to imagine she would simply keep Biden’s team in place. I suspect she would want to bring in her own people.
Ultimately, it is hard to predict because I suspect she does not yet know herself. And first things first, she has spent recent days mulling her VP pick.
EA: Yes, it’s white boy summer, as Harris decides which inoffensive white male politician will best balance her ticket.
But even there, there are foreign-policy implications: Progressives have been fired up by Harris’s candidacy and the prospect of an administration closer to their preferences than Biden. But one of the proposed veep picks is Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who’s disliked by progressives for his stance on Israel. So it’s a minefield for the Harris campaign: Does Shapiro let you win Pennsylvania but lose Michigan in the process?
Either way, the presidential race got a lot more exciting in the last few weeks. And if Netanyahu has his way, maybe we’ll have a whole new regional war in the Middle East as well.
See you in two weeks? Unless there’s breaking news this afternoon.
MK: Let’s hope we don’t need to rewrite the column tonight. And besides, you and I need to go celebrate. FP’s survey of academics, policymakers, and think tankers has named Georgetown (where you and I both teach) as the no. 1 school in the world for master’s programs in international relations. I guess all that gelato I brought back from Italy to bribe FP’s editors did the trick.
EA: There’s going to be plenty for the students to do in the world, that’s for sure.