Conflict puts new pressures on US weapons transfer policies
Critics say Biden’s stance erodes need to protect civilians
waShINgtON — In February 2023, President Biden changed the uS standard for cutting off weapons deliveries to foreign militaries that harm civilians during wartime.
under the new arms transfer policy, Biden said countries that were “more likely than not” to violate international law or human rights with uS weapons should not receive them. Previously, officials were required to show “actual knowledge” of such violations, a higher bar to clear.
a few months later, in august, Secretary of State antony Blinken issued a directive instructing State Department officials overseas to investigate incidents of civilian harm by foreign militaries using uS weapons and recommend responses that could include halting arms deliveries.
hamas attacked Israel two months later, triggering the war in the gaza Strip and plunging Biden and Blinken into an intense global debate about how Israel is using uS arms. to Biden’s critics, his steadfast refusal to limit arms deliveries to Israel runs counter to those initiatives and undermines his goal of positioning the united States as a protector of civilians in wartime.
his policies face new tests this week. Israel is threatening a full invasion of Rafah, a city in southern gaza, against Biden’s firm opposition.
and the Biden administration plans to deliver a report to Congress this week assessing whether it believes Israel’s assurances that it has used uS weapons in accordance with uS and international law.
If the report finds that Israel has violated the law, Biden could restrict arms deliveries.
Eighty-eight house Democrats wrote to Biden last week questioning the credibility of Israel’s assurances and urging him “to take all conceivable steps to prevent further humanitarian catastrophe in gaza.”
when the Biden administration issued the initiatives last year — the white house’s Conventional arms transfer Policy and the State Department’s Civilian harm Incident Response guidance — officials described them as part of a new emphasis on human rights in foreign policy, an upgrade from their lower priority during the trump administration.
“Part of it was to highly differentiate america’s role in the world under Biden from trump,” said Sarah margon, director of foreign policy at the Open Society Foundations.
at the time, people familiar with the deliberations said, the Biden administration was focused on other countries, including Saudi arabia, whose uSarmed military campaign in Yemen had killed thousands of civilians and contributed to a humanitarian nightmare.
In one of his first major acts as president, in February 2021, Biden even halted the delivery of offensive arms to the Saudis, who are fighting Iran-backed houthi militants in Yemen. “this war has to end,” he said. Biden has since restored the deliveries.
the Israel-hamas war has drawn intense scrutiny to Israel’s reliance on $3.8 billion in annual uS military aid, which includes bombs and ammunition that have been used in gaza.
Critics say Biden is making a political decision to flout uS law and his own administration’s directives in the case of Israel.
“In practice, it may be a policy call from the white house — but that’s not the way it should work,” said Brian Finucane, a senior adviser at the International Crisis group who spent a decade in the State Department’s Office of the Legal adviser until 2021. “uS law should be applied.”
that law originated in the 1970s as concerns were rising about human rights abuses by some of america’s Cold war allies and as some members of Congress were angry with the Nixon and Ford administrations for giving them little notice before arming several middle Eastern countries.
International humanitarian law is generally grounded in the geneva Conventions and other international agreements that call for protecting civilians in war and that outlaw attacks on medical facilities and personnel.