Gates claimed in his memoirs that Biden was deliberately stoking ‘distrust’ between the White House and senior military officers over the way forward in Afghanistan. Biden and Gates clashed repeatedly over Afghanistan, especially over the need to inject a ‘surge’ of troops into the country. In these meetings Biden received the active encouragement of Obama to argue the case for an overt counter-terrorism approach to Afghanistan (which emphasised the targeted killing of key Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders) in contrast to the counter-insurgency option preferred by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (which emphasised nation-building as a prelude to a reduction in violence). Biden exploited his participation in these meetings as a way of demonstrating his influence in the foreign policy domain, even if it meant creating friction with other cabinet members. Stanley McChrystal’s request for additional troops in Afghanistan in August 2009, President Obama spent the next two months chairing ten formal meetings in which key members of the administration, including Biden, discussed a review of the Afghan war strategy. Biden immediately became the ‘in-house pessimist’ on Afghanistan and sought ways to minimise American involvement. Six months into his presidency, Obama gave Biden the responsibility for overseeing the American military withdrawal from Iraq – a war that Biden described as ‘the most frustrating issue of my forty year career in foreign relations.’ However, it was the war in Afghanistan – the original theatre of battle in the War on Terror – that came to dominate Obama’s foreign policy horizon. This utilisation of Biden as a foreign policy point-man would be a trend that would continue for much of their term of office. When asked in 2014 where he felt his Vice President’s greatest impact had been, Obama replied: ‘On the foreign policy front, I think Joe’s biggest influence was in the Afghanistan debate.’ Just a week before their inauguration in January 2008, President-elect Obama sent Biden on a fact-finding mission to both Iraq and Afghanistan to assess the state of the two wars the new administration was going to inherit. With a staff that included five foreign policy assistants Biden clearly staked a claim to be Obama’s most vocal foreign policy advocate – something the President himself acknowledged. This foreign policy experience was important for Obama to harness as a way of countering criticism at his inexperience on the international stage. Biden had been in the Senate for 36 years by that point, including four years as Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. It soon became clear, however, that out of the three shortlisted vice presidential candidates (Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, and Biden) that it was the Delaware senator that had the most foreign policy experience. Yet before being selected as Obama’s running mate, Biden was perceived as ‘a victim of terminal logorrhoea’, creating a reputation as an affable but serial gaffe-maker. During his eight year stint as Vice President, Joe Biden travelled to over two dozen countries as America’s envoy to help solve diplomatic crises. Biden also later revealed that when discussing the running mate offer with his family it was his sons who argued that his foreign policy experience would help the ticket – and arguably it did. Joe Biden initially rebuffed Obama’s request that he be vetted as a potential running mate, believing he could be more influential as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee than as Vice President. As pundits and world leaders start to interpret what kind of foreign policy platform President-elect Joe Biden will enact, there is good reason to look back on his eight years as Vice President under Barack Obama to see just how his extensive foreign policy experience is and why it led one media profile to ask if he was the most influential Vice President in history.
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