Joe Biden last night gave one of the most important speeches we’ve heard from the Oval Office in years.
It was a speech that could only have come from that office, and a message that could not have been broadcast from any capital other than Washington DC.
It was a speech in which the Commander in Chief of the United States acknowledged what I believe to be the reality: that America, for all its faults, all its tortured introspection, all its absurdities, is still the greatest power in the world and the greatest power in the world . Earth’s last, best hope.
In assuming the responsibilities that come with that role, the president channeled his heroic wartime Democratic predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt. “American leadership is what holds the world together,” he said.
He wanted to explain why American leadership matters, and why, in Roosevelt’s words, the US must once again be the arsenal of democracy.
Boris Johnson has described Joe Biden’s speech last night as ‘one of the most important speeches we have heard from the Oval Office in years’
His intended audience was not the people of the world, but the people – and especially the taxpayers – of America. It is absolutely crucial that he wins this argument.
There are now some voices in American politics – on Capitol Hill and elsewhere – saying that the price for this global leadership is now too high, and that America cannot bear the costs of supporting both Israel and Ukraine, and that in In light of the brutal attacks by Hamas, it is time to cut funding to Ukraine.
President Biden took these complaints and turned them around – rejecting the idea of choice itself. He made the essential point: that Hamas and Putin are involved in the same basic project.
Both are out to destroy the democracy next door; both use terrorist methods. The president is certainly correct in this analysis.
The Hamas killers indulged in horrific atrocities as they swept through southern Israel, of a kind I hope I will not have to describe; and so did Putin’s forces in the invasion of Ukraine. Torture, rape, child abduction – there is no moral difference between the terror techniques used by Hamas and those used by Putin’s forces.
America is still the greatest power in the world and the last, best hope on earth, Mr. Johnson writes
But the similarities go further. It is no coincidence that Putin’s Russia has still not condemned the October 7 massacres, and it is no surprise that Putin maintains a close, friendly and strategic relationship with Hamas’s main sponsors, Syria and Iran.
And whose drones are now being used to indiscriminately kill victims in Ukraine? Iran’s – and Putin is taking them as fast as Iranian factories can make them. Whose money is financing all those rockets being fired at Israel, whether by Hamas or Hezbollah? Iran.
There is a continuum of evil in which the attack on Western values and democracy is being carried out by what is effectively the same gang. Biden’s point to the American people is that we must stand up to that mob now, to spare more pain later.
If Putin wins in Ukraine, you endanger the Baltic states, Poland and the entire post-war settlement in Europe.
If Hamas succeeds in driving Israel to all-out war, you risk sending the entire Middle East into flames. Making this defense commitment now, he argued, will save money later.
You make it less likely that America will have to intervene again, at truly catastrophic costs. Stand up to Putin, stand up to Hamas, and you will deter further acts of aggression around the world – and he clearly indicated the risk that the Chinese would attack Taiwan. And when he said it was cheap, there was an additional feeling: that he was supporting Israel and Ukraine without sending a single American soldier to fight.
Besides, he said, don’t forget that the spending he is now asking Congress for, both for Ukraine and Israel, will create jobs in factories that make rockets and artillery shells across the US.
By making this speech to the American people, Biden did something fantastically important — something I had been hoping for for months: selling the American intervention back to the people who finance it.
I am proud of the role Britain has played in helping the Ukrainians. I accept that we and other European partners must show our American friends that we will do more. We will certainly have to shoulder a greater share of the burden of rebuilding Ukraine.
But the United Kingdom and the entire European effort pale in comparison to the American effort; and it is the American munitions – now that the ATACMs (Army Tactical Missile Systems) are arriving in Ukraine – that really offer the prospect of a Ukrainian victory.
Hamas and Putin are involved in the same basic project, Mr Johnson says. Both are out to destroy the democracy next door; both use terrorist methods
Everything has depended, and continues to depend, on American leadership, and so it is extremely important to explain the meaning of that leadership to the American public – and to explain the difference between the Western liberal democracies and the coalition of the evil that exists now. against us.
Perhaps the best parts of the speech were about our values, about how we must reject all forms of hatred and discrimination – whether anti-Semitism or Islamophobia, and how important it was that Israel not let anger blind itself into disastrous or opposing practices. productive act of retaliation.
These passages were important because these values – freedom, tolerance, democracy – are exactly what distinguishes Israel from Hamas. They distinguish Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukraine from Putin’s Russia.
It is frankly unbelievable and appalling that some British broadcasters seem to be comparing Hamas and Israel – treating them as two warring parties; just as, after the 2014 invasion of Crimea, some countries seemingly treated Russia and Ukraine as two equal parties in a quarrel for far too long, instead of seeing Putin’s invasion for what it was: a brutal attack by an autocracy on an emerging democracy.
I say to anyone considering participating in pro-Palestinian protests this weekend: Do you really want to imply by your actions that Israelis are the same as Hamas? Would you dream of suggesting that the Ukrainians are as guilty as Putin’s thugs?
There is no moral equality between the two sides in this conflict, and it was sickening to see how quickly some in the media – wrongly – blamed Israel for the hospital explosion.
Armed Palestinian terrorist kidnapped a man during the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Reim in the Negev Desert in southern Israel
I won’t argue that Biden’s speech was an oratorical tour de force, but he made the right moral distinctions, and his central message is sound.
I’ve been traveling a lot over the past year, and while the world is changing rapidly, it’s striking that the rising powers – China and India – are also centuries-old centers of mass population, while the US, with its much higher productivity, and GDP per capita the population is still relatively unpopulated.
The US is still in its infancy as a global power and will therefore likely remain, for our lifetimes and beyond, the global hegemon – as Biden put it, “the essential nation.” All human organizations need a leader. The global friendliness of nations is no exception; and since Britain can no longer realistically play that role, I would much rather have the US as leader than any other current candidate, and so would many others around the world.
It was good to hear an American president assert that leadership. Let’s help the right team win.