The Biden administration is getting a tough lesson in reality. However much it may wish to leave behind the Palestinian issue, the security of countries like Iraq and peace-keeping and stabilisation in Afghanistan, they won’t leave him.
There is an uneasy ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, but things can’t be put back to where they were. There is no sense of a “new normal” to be recovered and nurtured. New elements of anger and instability are well within the horizon now in Iraq and Afghanistan – two countries from which America and its allies cannot cut and run with impunity. Shiite militias are currently swarming the regime in Baghdad. Even before the last Nato troops and agents quit Afghanistan, a fresh phase of civil war is on the way, which even the Pashtun Taliban cohorts won’t be able to control.
