Biden Visiting Europe Finds Solidarity Amist Isolation

(Michael D. Shear and Peter Baker)

 

As President Biden visits France this week, he will be rallying European leaders to his side and showcasing the resolve he has helped to foster on behalf of Ukraine.

But he will also be defying the very same leaders and standing virtually alone among Western democracies still firmly in support of Israel as it wages war in Gaza.

Mr. Biden arrived in Paris on Wednesday morning for a trip aimed at celebrating the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. It is his first visit to Europe since the Oct. 7 terrorist attack led by Hamas, which killed 1,200 people in Israel and triggered a military retaliation that has killed about 36,000 people in Gaza. Next week he will return to Europe for a summit in Italy with the leaders of the Group of 7 nations, and three weeks after that he will host the 75th anniversary summit of NATO nations in Washington.

The series of meetings will put Mr. Biden in a position he has not experienced since becoming president: He will be embraced and isolated at the same time by the same group of allies he has courted for nearly four years. For a president who has emphasized his support for America’s traditional alliances, it represents a challenge that will test his diplomatic skills in unfamiliar ways. 

“Gaza undermines the moral clarity of the argument they want to make about Ukraine,” said Peter Beinart, a professor of journalism and politics at the City University of New York and a longtime analyst of Middle East affairs who has been critical of Israel’s government. “The Gaza war makes that story a lot less compelling to a lot of people.”

Ivo Daalder, who was an ambassador to NATO under President Barack Obama, acknowledged the tension in Mr. Biden’s approach.

“Yes, it seems to be slightly contradictory to be making one argument on Russia and another argument on Israel,” said Mr. Daalder, who now serves as president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “But the situations are different. One was attacked, and the other did the attack. It’s pretty big.”

A distant view of people walking in a tent encampment.

Tents sheltering displaced Palestinians in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Tuesday. Mr. Biden’s continued support for Israel puts him at odds with many European leaders.Credit...Eyad Baba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The European allies, with a couple of notable exceptions, have been strongly aligned with Washington for more than two years in the multinational campaign to defeat Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, broadly matching American investments in the war with their own commitments to Kyiv. But the Europeans have grown increasingly critical of how Israel is conducting its operation in Gaza over the past nine months, even as the Biden administration has rejected efforts by the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court to seek arrest warrants for Israeli leaders on war crime charges.

The disparate priorities will play out at an event on Thursday meant to showcase Western unity and resolve. The D-Day landings at Normandy on June 6, 1944, will be celebrated as a high-water mark of the alliance that defeated Nazi Germany. President Emmanuel Macron of France will host leaders of the World War II partner countries, including King Charles, Queen Camilla, Prince William and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, representing the two nations that joined the United States in staging the climactic amphibious invasion.

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Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, representing the vanquished enemy, will also attend in a show of Europe’s reconciliation. Not present, however, will be President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, despite the Soviet Union’s alliance with the West during the war. Mr. Macron’s government initially invited lower-level Russian representatives to participate but rescinded the offer after objections stemming from Moscow’s aggression in Ukraine. 

 

By contrast, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine will attend the ceremony, an opportunity for him to press Western leaders for more aid. White House officials said on Tuesday that Mr. Biden would meet with Mr. Zelensky while in France and then again during the G7 gathering in Italy.

John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, said Mr. Biden knew that not every nation agrees with his policies. “Disagreements with allies and partners is not something new to President Biden,” Mr. Kirby said, “any more than unity and cooperation and collaboration, which he also fosters across a range of issues.” 

The meetings between Mr. Biden and the allies come at a critical moment in both Europe and the Middle East. Ukraine is trying to fend off an escalating Russian offensive that threatens to break through its eastern defenses in a decisive way after two years of grinding combat. Hundreds of miles away, Israel and Hamas are both under pressure to agree to a cease-fire deal that could be the final chance for a path toward a more sustainable peace in the region.

Mr. Biden on Friday outlined such a cease-fire agreement that would eventually lead to the release of all hostages held by Hamas, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and a “permanent” end to the war. By advancing a deal that Europeans can support, the president may have found a way to minimize differences when he is in Paris.

The Group of 7 nations, including the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan, issued a statement on Monday endorsing the deal that Mr. Biden outlined and calling on Hamas to accept it. Mr. Biden characterized the deal as a proposal put forward by Israel but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not explicitly endorsed or rejected it publicly as he navigates his own domestic politics and seeks advantage in any renewed negotiations with Hamas.

At the same time, Mr. Biden addressed another difficult issue before the trip by authorizing Ukraine for the first time to use U.S.-provided weapons against targets inside Russia for self-defense in limited circumstances, something France, Britain, Germany, Poland and other allies had already embraced.n

“The only way out of such a dilemma is to push ahead on both problems — help Ukraine do better or win and get Israel on a path to peace,” said Dan Fried, a retired diplomat now at the Atlantic Council in Washington. “Hence the decision to lift some restrictions on Ukraine’s use of U.S. arms and to push a complex and ambitious peace plan” in Gaza.

Still, the differences remain real and stark. Spain, Ireland and Norway formally recognized an independent Palestinian state last week, just days after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to halt its military offensive in the city of Rafah in southern Gaza. Most European governments have endorsed the war crimes action against Israel at the International Criminal Court. “France supports the International Criminal Court, its independence and the fight against impunity in all situations,” the country’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

France has not acted to recognize a Palestinian state but did vote in the United Nations in May to support including Palestine as a full member of the organization. Britain, which is no longer a part of the European Union, abstained from that vote.

Critics of Mr. Biden said he has no one to blame for his diplomatic challenges in Europe but himself for an inconsistent approach to international crises.

“The contradiction, I think, is in American policy,” said Peter Rough, the director of the Center on Europe and Eurasia at the Hudson Institute and a former aide to President George W. Bush. “In Ukraine, he’s backing Ukraine against the Russian-Iranian alliance, while in Gaza he is managing Israel, even limiting it, as it confronts an Iranian proxy.” 

From the other side of the spectrum, some foreign policy veterans said Mr. Biden has brought troubles upon himself by being too supportive of Israel.

“I am not at all sure that Biden has made the right choices on Israel-Gaza, although I acknowledge that he’s in a tough spot, as is our country,” said Eric Rubin, a longtime U.S. diplomat and the former president of the American Foreign Service Association. “Israel has lost the sympathy of most other countries and their citizens, and we won’t see it get it back in our lifetimes, I fear.”

But at the end of the day, some diplomats said, France and the other allies ultimately defer to the United States when it comes to such issues. And even though he will find them on different pages, Mr. Biden enjoys a constructive relationship with his peers, unlike his predecessor, and possible successor, Donald J. Trump, who berated European allies over their disagreements and left them dreading his potential return to office.

“The United States still plays the indispensable role,” said Mr. Daalder. “Everybody is looking to us to figure out how do we deal with Russia, how do we deal with China, and frankly even how do we deal with Israel. We’re still looked at by our friends and by our adversaries as the ones who will determine the outcome.”

The New York Times

Michael D. Shear is a White House correspondent for The New York Times, covering President Biden and his administration. He has reported on politics for more than 30 years. More about Michael D. Shear

Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The Times. He has covered the last five presidents and sometimes writes analytical pieces that place presidents and their administrations in a larger context and historical framework. More about Peter Baker