Biden must solve the Middle East crisis

Joe Biden is still in the Bomfog phase of his Presidency. Bomfog – the brotherhood of man, the fellowship  of God – refers to an American political rhetoric based on sonorous platitudes, which will please an audience that is determined to be pleased. At present, at least in the West, Biden has such hearers. They are delighted by his references to multilateralism. Above all, they are overjoyed because he is not Donald Trump. But what happens when it comes to turning aspiration into action?

We British have less to worry about than some feared, and others hoped. For decades, under every President, the State Department has been in favour of anything which promotes European unity. So there are no Brexit supporters in its Foggy Bottom headquarters. Added to the new President’s Irish ancestry and Boris Johnson’s apparent eagerness to suck up to President Trump, and the British would surely be in for a hard time. The surviving Brexit saboteurs, several of them in the House of Lords, could not wait. Then, the newly-inaugurated Mr Biden’s first European phone call was… to Boris Johnson. The wailing and gnashing of Remoaner teeth was audible from Westminster to Washington.

Much work had been put in to achieving this outcome, and the principal credit goes to Karen Pierce, our Ambassador in Washington. Pierce is extremely bright, which is usually true of those who hold that post. But she is also outgoing and glad-handing. It is easy to overestimate the extent to which Americans value cerebral understated British reserve. Those qualities are not widely shared in the Irish diplomatic service. Jeffrey Donaldson of the DUP once observed ruefully that the British Ambassador was usually the first to leave an evening reception. The Irish one was invariably the last. But Karen Pierce knows how to schmooze.

As for the Trump/Johnson relationship, there was an easy way of defusing that difficulty: explanation of the context. Since Anthony Eden, with the partial exception of Ted Heath, every British PM has made it his business to have good relations with the incumbent president. Getting on with people comes easily to Boris, when it is to his advantage, and after all, there was no guarantee that Trump would not be re-elected.  Boris is now deploying his charm on the new administration, and there is no reason to suppose that he will fail. Our PM is an intriguing character and one can imagine Americans asking themselves whether the Brits have really chosen an Old English Sheepdog to be their Prime Minister, or what else is going on behind the goofy exterior (answer: a lot, but as to exactly what, no-one knows, including Boris).

Biden is also good at getting on with people. Senior figures in the Cameron government found not a scintilla of anti-British sentiment. Admittedly, he did seem to have acquired his Irish history in the bars of Boston, where he learned that “ould Oireland” had been a land of saints and scholars, colleens and leprechauns, until the wicked Anglo-Saxons arrived. But none of this affected his day-to-day relationships with British politicians.

Moreover, he has form. During the Falklands War, there was no more pro-British member of the Senate than the young Joe Biden, even though there was no more unhelpful European government than the Irish one. Fortunately, Charlie Haughey’s malice was significantly greater than his power to implement it.

So does all this mean that it will be easy to negotiate a trade deal with the States? Absolutely not. In one respect, President Biden will be an improvement on his predecessor’s trade instincts.

Trump is a mercantilist. He believes that if a foreigner makes a buck in the US, he has done so by picking an American pocket. As in many matters, Biden is more thoughtful, but this does not mean that British trade negotiators will have an easy time. Everyone in American public life is in favour of free trade, for US exports. Imports: quite another matter. Free trade has always been the creed of a sophisticated minority in prosperous countries. There is a simple reason for this. Those who benefit from it are ungrateful. Those who lose by it proclaim their grievances. As Congressmen have to be re-elected every two years, they tend to listen to interest groups, and the procedures of the House of Representatives are ideally suited to promoting obstruction.

But Biden has more pressing tasks than the aftermath of Brexit. Yeats was not the only Irish writer to capture the woes of the 20th century in brief lines “Great hatred, little room.” “The best lack all conviction/The worst are full of passionate intensity.” Sean O’Casey may have been less plangent, but “The whole world’s in a terrible state o’ chassis” remains as relevant as one would wish it not to be.

In this disordered world, with China and Russia getting so much of the attention, the Middle East is probably the most urgent priority. For four years, Trump gave the Israelis everything they asked for, with no quid pro quo. But this is not in Israel’s best interests. It has nourished the illusion that the Palestinians have somehow slipped out of history and can be disregarded. Although It is true that no-one seems to have any time for their wearisome cause, if ever there was a case for trying to fix the roof when the sun is shining, this is surely it. The Palestinians may seem impotent and demoralised, but they are not going to disappear.

There was a recent sadness. Saed Erekat, one of the few Palestinian leaders who could command respect, died of Covid late last year: more bad luck, on top of the misfortunes which the Palestinians have created for themselves.

The new US administration is trying to bring the Yemeni War to an end and seems to be distancing itself from the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman. In some Washington circles, there are suggestions that MBS, who has failed to solve the Yemen question, is not the only plausible Prince.

To that, there are two responses. First, the Saudis can hardly be blamed for concerning themselves with Yemen. Their southern neighbour is more densely populated than Saudi, much poorer and in a chronic state of disorder. “The Yemenis ought to be left to sort their own problems,” say some Americans. It is not just religious sensitivities that inhibit the obvious response: “and pigs might fly”. As For MBS, the last time the Americans abandoned a Royal ally in the region was the Shah of Iran: not an encouraging precedent.

There is one imminent crisis which the Yemenis cannot solve. Off the country’s west, Red Sea, coast is a rusting tanker under Houthi control. It has a cargo of one and a half million tons of crude oil. If that breaks loose, a large part of the Red Sea could become the Dead Sea. Let us hope that the Americans can help. A major success there would be a good omen for the Biden administration.