Joe Biden’s foreign policy has been consistently and impressively bellicose, aggressively supporting wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and amping up tensions with China. And his anointed successor, who has something like a 50-50 chance of succeeding him, looks to be following suit. Many people have read Kamala Harris’s courting of endorsements from the Cheneys—the Liz and Dick of our times—as mere pragmatic electioneering, but they’re far from the only neocons to endorse her. Over a hundred former Republican foreign policy officials, including the odious John Negroponte, who had a hand in running Reagan’s wars in Central America in the 1980s, and George W’s CIA director Michael Hayden, who did a lot of warrantless wiretapping while he ran the National Security Agency, signed a letter endorsing her last month, out of concern that Trump would be a poor empire manager. So too has Bush’s Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who provided legal opinions that justified torture. As Aida Chavez noted in The Intercept, “A section from the 2020 [Democratic] platform on ending forever wars and opposing regime change was completely removed in 2024.” The people who brought you the Iraq war are back.

These endorsements have been applauded by lots of liberals as a political victory for Harris, but the policy implications are alarming. But it is a return home for the neocons, many of whom were Democrats, a party that gave us the CIA, NATO, and the Vietnam War.

Here’s Behind the News regular Anatol Lieven to make sense of it all. Anatol is the director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. In the 1980s and 1990s, Anatol covered the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the wars in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and the southern Caucasus, for the Financial Times and the Times of London

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I want to talk about each of the hotspots in the world in turn, but I want to start with a general discussion. The Biden administration’s foreign policy seems extremely bellicose and sometimes surprises me how bellicose it is. Is it like a wounded animal just striking out or is there some greater logic behind this? What is the strategy that is fueling this appetite for multiple wars and confrontations?

Basically, the whole of the American foreign and security establishment and the greater part of the political establishment, not all. I mean, there are dissidents on the right and left, essentially signed up to what used to be called the Wolfowitz Doctrine from the memo of 1992, which set out that the US should pursue and enforce permanent hegemony, not just in the world as a whole, but in every region of the world. This, as wise people pointed out at the time, meant that the US would inevitably come into conflict with a range of other states around the world who were never going to be prepared to allow the United States to dominate them and their regions in this way, because the Wolfowitz doctrine also said two things. It said that no state would have any influence beyond its borders, except that which was in the interests of the United States and allowed by the United States.

And it also said that the US had the right and indeed the duty to change the internal policies and systems other states in accordance with its wishes. And as some people pointed out at the time, this was basically an attempt to extend a hard version of the Monroe Doctrine. In other words, not a defensive version, but an interventionist version to the whole planet. And yes, I mean this was bound to lead to tension and even conflict wherever major countries had interests, vital interests, differing from those of the United States. But by a strange process of intellectual and cultural transformation, but with deep roots in American history, this has effectively become the ruling doctrine of both American political parties because it’s the ruling doctrine of the foreign security elites on whom they draw for their senior officials.

Thirty-two years ago, the US had more standing in the world, more economic standing, more cultural standing, more political standing than it does now. It was impossibly insanely grandiose back then, but it seems even more so now.

Well, I think that’s right, and oddly enough, two things have come together. One is that the very, very brief in historical terms, unipolar moment from the end of the Cold War to when Iraq started going badly wrong—or the financial recession of 2008—in any case, less than 20 years, has been now taken as the norm from which everything else is an illegitimate and strange and unacceptable divergence so that the US dominating everywhere is the norm. And if Russia tries to assert that it has always had vital interests in what happens in Ukraine that is evil and illegitimate and must be resisted. But at the same time, of course, yes, I mean the American elites are aware that the United States has a much smaller share of world GDP, as does the West in general, than it did 30 years ago, that China is now a superpower in its own right, that as we saw in the rejection of sanctions against Russia, most of the world, even countries that want good relations with the US like India, will not follow American orders.

And so, to the megalomania has been added an element of hysteria, of fear, of fear that America is losing this globally dominant position. And that seems simply psychologically unacceptable to the American Establishment. The idea that America could step back, make compromises, allow, seek cooperation with other major powers, recognize elements of their vital interests, they just don’t seem able to do that. Obviously, the Trump administration couldn’t do it, but leading elements of the Obama administration—not I think Obama himself, but obviously people like Hillary Clinton and Victoria Nuland—they couldn’t do it. And Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan certainly can’t do it.

What is behind this? You said that it’s the foreign policy establishment. Is it a matter of personnel? Are there interest groups driving this? Is it too cynical to point out that arms dealers are rolling in money?

Well, it’s many elements. A very not historically unique but nonetheless unusual element is that provided by the Israel lobby because even if, well, as a previous generations of American diplomats pointed out, even if America is determined to exercise hegemony in the Middle East, blind allegiance to Israel is a crazy way of doing that. But beyond that, yes, the military industrial complex plays a role. You see Raytheon’s shares booming and Raytheon officials declaring hymns of joy over arms supplies to Ukraine and to Israel. But I think as well, every major country around the world with any kind of foreign security establishment has some form of foreign security doctrine, which everybody who wants to be part of that establishment has to sign up to. And if you dissent from it, you are kicked out. So you see that in China. The Chinese establishment believes that China has to return to its ancient role as a superpower, dominating its own region and with major influence, not exclusive influence, but major influence on world affairs as a whole.

If you don’t believe that, you’re not going to last long in the Chinese foreign security establishment. The Russian establishment believes in a multipolar world in which Moscow will be one of the poles. I mean only one. They know that America will always be a pole China will be a pole. India in future will be more and more of a pole, but Moscow must be a pole, *and Russia must be in a position to defend its vital interests on the territory of the former Soviet Union. Once again, if you dissent from that, you better start looking for another job outside the Russian establishment. And the American foreign security establishment has a doctrine. But the problem is that this doctrine is essentially a megalomaniac one. It is one greater than any country, even in a way the Roman and Chinese empires, which at least confine themselves while they had to their own regions and didn’t try to dominate the whole world. The British empire dominated large parts of the world, but from early on it knew that it couldn’t take on the United States, and it knew that it couldn’t actually unilaterally do anything on the continent of Europe.

It’s really only America that is believed that it both can and should dominate the whole of the world. But you have to believe that if you are going to get ahead, get to the top of the American system.

Okay, let’s do some detailed looks here. Ukraine first. In some circles, you can get in trouble for pointing to a US role in provoking the invasion of Ukraine, but you can’t really understand the whole crisis, much less think about solving it without conceding that. Is that possible?

I mean, it is possible because after all, you have a lot of highly intelligent American commentators and some Brits who have been saying just that Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer, very distinguished retired American diplomats, Jack Matlock, Tom Pickering, the late George Kennan. So many people have said this, but ever since the expansion of NATO became a bipartisan matter in the mid 1990s, essentially anyone with a career to make has fallen into line behind this idea that NATO, under US domination, must be the only security institution on the European continent, with the right to dictate the terms of European security to everybody else. And that Russia has no security role beyond its own borders. And that as once again, people have been warning for 30 years now was bound to lead if not to actual war with Russia. Although the CIA warned of war with Russia in Ukraine in the mid-nineties, and of course the present director of the CIA, William Burns, warned in 2008 that NATO membership for Ukraine is the reddest of all Russian red lines and that the whole of the Russian establishment is violently opposed to it.

That is not an excuse for Putin’s invasion. And indeed, in private, a lot of Russians who regard themselves as Russian patriots and are now committed to at least avoiding defeat in Ukraine, in private and sometimes in public candidly admit that the invasion was a disaster from every point of view. But it was not—unlike what you read so many people saying—it was not the act of some crazed maniac. It stemmed from a view of Russian vital interests that is shared by the whole of the Russian establishment and that we set out to violate.

What is the US goal here, withdrawal of Russian troops, total collapse of Russia? Ukraine is looking weaker and weaker in the battlefield of making it harder to extract concessions from Putin at this point. So where is this all leading?

Part of the problem is that as indeed General Milley amongst others has hinted, and I think this is quite a general view in the Pentagon and possibly even in the CIA, we blew the chance for compromise with Russia on much better terms for Ukraine twice. The first was at the very start of the war when Russia and Ukraine were negotiating a compromise piece. This has been almost totally forgotten, but in the first month of the war, Zelensky in public said the following: Before the war, I went to every major NATO capital, including Washington. And I asked, can you guarantee that when within five years, Ukraine will be admitted into NATO? And they all said no. Zelensky then said publicly to the Ukrainian people, well, at that point we might as well have a treaty of neutrality with Russia with of course, international guarantees. And the territorial issues, on much better terms for Ukraine, would be shelved until future negotiation.

But of course, for whatever set of reason, but it does look as if the west played a major part, that process was abandoned. The second chance was in the autumn of 2022 when the Russians had suffered a series of really major defeats and might have been willing to accept a compromise. A compromise. I mean one that would not have involved Russian withdrawal from Crimea and the Eastern Donbas, but could have involved Russian withdrawal from other areas and a treaty of neutrality, but with really strong guarantees for Ukraine. But we didn’t take up that possibility. And now as you say, Russia is in a much stronger position. The Russians certainly feel that time is on their side. And if you look at European election results and opinion polls, it is extremely unlikely—well, German government has said this—that European aid can remain at anything like the present level for many years to come.

And if European aid diminishes, then two things will happen. Either a US president will have to go to the US Congress and ask for much, much more money indefinitely for Ukraine, or of course Ukraine will collapse. and we will have to seek a compromise peace with Russia up to now. I mean, you have leaks, you have suggestions in public, you have hints, but no western leader and precious few Establishment commentators have had the guts to come out and say, publicly, look, our previous demand for total Russian withdrawal from Ukraine is over. That’s not going to happen. The only chance to preserve most of Ukraine is to seek a compromise.

China, which is a growing adversary—though somewhat eclipsed by all the hot wars right now—what is the goal there? Some kind of containment to reverse China’s rise as a global competitor that seems doomed, which isn’t to say they wouldn’t pursue this strategy anyway, but what are they trying to accomplish with China?

It seems that they are trying to contain China, both geopolitically and economically. I mean essentially to trap China at about its existing level of development, but without this leading to actual war and that, well, I don’t think that’s going to work because of course all development is not just absolute, it’s relative. And while China is obviously not growing nearly as fast as it did for most of the past 40 years, it’s still growing faster than the US and a lot faster than Europe, which means that the West as a whole is still relatively declining. 

So, this makes the whole relationship with China totally different from the US rivalry with the Soviet Union, which obviously was in no sense an economically dynamic power as China is. And also of course, the wider world. The US could appeal to elites all over the world who were afraid often with good reason of Soviet communism, appeal to religious elites against Soviet communist atheism. It could even appeal to social Democrats who were afraid of Stalinism. 

But of course, China doesn’t pose that threat at all. Despite all these attempts to talk about an axis of authoritarianism and China spreading its model, it isn’t. China has established a model, and people can follow it if they wish to do so, but there is no evidence of China trying through subversion or pressure to get Brazil to go back to dictatorship or Thailand to get rid of its monarchy. No, there’s none of that. And so of course most countries around the world do not want to choose between the US and China and react very badly to US attempts to force them to choose.

Well, if you’re talking about trying to contain China’s economic and political rise, if the name King Canute comes to mind.

Yeah, exactly.

Now Israel’s rampage. Mouin Rabbini said recently that people aren’t suffering from outrage fatigue over the warmongering because Israel keeps upping the ante of horrors. It does seem that way. And now at first US support seemed reflexive, almost atavistic. But as something else going on? I’ve been seeing such suggestions lately that Biden’s inner circle is actually enthusiastic about remaking the Middle East, which sounds suspiciously like what Bush and Cheney and the neocons were saying a couple of decades ago. How do you see this support? Is there just that atavism or is there some grander imperial design behind it?

In the wider US Establishment, it is a mixture of activism and let’s face it, fear, personal fear of the personal consequences. If you speak out against Israel within circles of the establishment, I mean this is open now on the part of the Neoconservatives and others, and of course the Neoconservatives have now moved back where they first came from 60 years ago into the Democratic party. You see this with Cheney supporting Biden. You see this with Kagan and Frum all the others now supporting Biden. Yes. I mean, I think that there is now a hope of, not in the same way because I don’t think anyone is talking about invading Iran, but basically doing to Iran, you know what the Bush administration did to Iraq, crippling it or even destroying it, breaking it up as a functioning state and thereby eliminating the last state in the Middle East, which is openly and determinedly hostile to both the US and Israel.

At that point, all you would have left is Syria under Russian protection, as long as the Russians hang on there. And then a collection of US client states, which will complain and make speeches in the UN like Jordan. The king of Jordan will bitterly denounce Israel in the UN while allowing US missiles to be based on his soil to shoot down missiles attacking Israel. And then from the Israeli and much of the US Establishment point of view, America and Israel would simply have won. They would then dominate the Middle East for all foreseeable time—except of course they wouldn’t, because as we found in 2011, the peoples of the Middle East also, well, they didn’t have a vote of course, but they have the ability to come out and overthrow their regimes. 

The kind of hegemony of which the neocons and parts of the US Establishment in general are dreaming is, in my view, I mean simply politically unsustainable for very long. Leaving aside, of course, the question, which frankly is becoming simply a joke in the eyes of the vast majority of the world population, that US global hegemony was supposed to have a certain moral base, liberal internationalism and all that. Well, liberal internationalism is dead in the ruins of Gaza.

There’s this ridiculous charade of drawing red lines and then shrugging when they’re crossed. Now it’s over Israel’s apparent attempt to starve people out of Northern Gaza. But given the history that looks like another game of charades. Israel is also dismembering Lebanon. There seems to be no limit to us indulgence of Israel’s. Is there one?

When it comes to Israel’s treatment of its immediate neighbors? No. Clearly there isn’t. However, two questions. The first is just how far will Israel go, and would the US allow Israel to go in attacking Iran? As I’ve said, the neocons and parts of the Establishment would like Israel to go all in an attack on Iran, but despite recent Israeli successes, it’s questionable whether Israel can do that on its own or whether the US would have to come in as well. And then obviously you are talking about a much bigger conflict with, and, depending on how the Ukraine war goes and when it comes to an end, but you are most probably talking then about Russia and China really not in war, but in funding and weapons supplies coming to Iran’s help against the US as an obvious way of pushing back against us pressure on them in their own area.

So that’s the first question. Will the Israelis be confined to a limited strike on Iran, or will they go all in to try to destroy the Iranian economy, to destroy Iranian energy exports? And of course, if they do that, they could well produce a global economic crisis. Higher energy prices would have a terrible effect on Europe, but to some extent as well on the US public, which is one reason I think why nothing is likely to happen until after the US elections because the last thing that the Biden and Harris teams want is a surge in US gasoline prices.

That’d be curtains for them.

It would indeed. But what happens after the elections? We don’t know.

The second question, and this is something that we now have to look at very seriously, if you listen to or watch, not just the more extreme elements in the Israeli cabinet are saying, but large sections of Israeli society and Israeli academia—which are not being reported, of course by far, the greater majority of the Western mainstream media—are now talking about ethnic cleansing, driving the Palestinians from large parts of Gaza and replacing them with Israeli settlers and annexing this area and restricting the Palestinians more and more in the West Bank until large numbers of them leave. Or even the idea of simply deporting them all, driving them out into Jordan. You have this language in Israel about how Jordan is the homeland of the Palestinians and everything west of the Jordan is Israeli.

Would the US go along with that? The thing about that is that if the Israelis did that, it could or even probably would bring down the existing Jordanian state and monarchy. If they drove the population of Gaza into Egypt, would the Egyptian regime survive? Well, at that point, you are talking about key US allies in the Middle East being destroyed by Israeli actions. Would the US go along with that? I would’ve thought that at that point there really would be some kind of pushback in the US Establishment and the US military, but who knows?

Now to conclude this world tour, Biden is on the way out. So let’s talk about the successors. What does Harris’s foreign policy view look like? Does she have one other than more of the same? The way she’s been recruiting neocons to her campaign, it looks like it’s not just electoral arithmetic trying to get all those Republican voters, but it does seem to reflect some of her thinking. What do you make of it?

Yes. It will be either more of the same or it will be worse. We have to see who makes up Harris’s team. We just don’t know. People talk about Phil Gordon, and he is certainly a moderate and has very close European contacts and affinities. But as with Obama, you could find a Secretary of State like Liz Cheney, God forbid, who would simply ignore the wishes of other members of the Cabinet and drive a neocon agenda. And since Harris clearly is absolutely ignorant of international affairs, hopelessly so, one can well imagine that a determined enough team of neocons could make us policy much worse. I certainly don’t think there’s any chance of it being much better.

Trump. It’s impossible to predict anything about that guy. He’s so impulsive and shallow, but there are some people who view him as a peace candidate of sorts. Is there any truth to that?

Trump does appear to have understood that the American people do not want more wars with American troops actually being involved and killed on the ground. And of course, his Vice President Vance did lead the charge in Congress against unlimited and indefinite funding for Ukraine. And on Ukraine, Trump has said that he will seek a peace settlement and given that so much of what’s happening on the ground is heading in that direction anyway, I think there is some chance of that. But in the Middle East, he is just as absolutely pro-Israel as the Biden administration and could be even more unhinged when it comes to an attack on Iran. The only hopeful thing is that in the past we’ve seen again and again, for example, with regard to North Korea, that Trump will make these ferocious trumpeting statements and then not actually do anything about it.

And then there’s China. The only thing to be said for the Biden administration is that it does seem to have been aware most of the time, not always, of the extreme delicacy of this situation. So, when Pelosi insisted on going to Taiwan, this was not something that Biden wanted. Well, delicacy and Trump are not words that go very well together, but once again, it’ll depend on who he chooses as his Secretary of State. It will depend on how much influence Vance has within the administration. It will depend on all these things that we just don’t know. 

I have to say, it’s a damned odd picture for democracy. You have a series of issues which are involving the US public in enormous costs, hugely high spending coming out ultimately of taxes. You’ve got issues which in the worst case scenario could actually lead to the nuclear annihilation of the United States or the least of crisis that would bring the entire world economy and the US economy down in ruins. And the US public have not actually been told what either of these candidates would do. This isn’t a pretty picture as far as democracy is concerned.

Is all this, not to mention the general devolution of our political class, what it’s like to live in a declining empire, one unable to face its own decline graciously. The level of chaos and violence seems like a product of decay.

When I was born, Eisenhower was still just president of the United States, and Ike, with all his faults, was a great man, very thoughtful leader. And now we have Trump and Harris. But of course, this is 64 years on. And I mean, when you think about it, 64 years is longer than the time that separated Bismarck from Hitler or Marcus Aurelius from one of the more decadent and loathsome Roman third century emperors. A lot can happen in three generations, and a lot of decadence and decline can happen during that time.