Once the Bosnian War broke out, Biden
was among the first to call for the
"lift and strike" policy of lifting the
arms embargo, training Bosnian Muslims
and supporting them with NATO air
strikes, and investigating war crimes. The George H. W. Bush administration and Clinton administration were both reluctant to implement the policy, fearing Balkan entanglement. In April 1993, Biden spent a week in the Balkans and held a tense three-hour meeting with Serbian leader Slobodan
Milosevic. Biden related that he had told
Milosevic, "I think you're a damn war
criminal and you should be tried as
one." Biden wrote an amendment in 1992
to compel the Bush administration to arm
the Bosnians, but deferred in 1994 to a
somewhat softer stance the Clinton
administration preferred, before signing
on the following year to a stronger
measure sponsored by Bob Dole and Joe
Lieberman. The engagement led to a
successful NATO peacekeeping effort.
Biden has called his role in affecting
Balkans policy in the mid-1990s his
"proudest moment in public life" related
to foreign policy.
In 1998, Congressional Quarterly
named Biden one of "Twelve Who Made a
Difference" for playing a lead role in
several foreign policy matters,
including NATO enlargement and the
successful passage of bills to
streamline foreign affairs agencies and
punish religious persecution overseas.
In 1999, during the Kosovo War, Biden
supported the NATO bombing campaign
against Serbia and Montenegro, and co-sponsored with John McCain the McCain-Biden Kosovo Resolution, which called on President Clinton to use all necessary force, including ground troops, to confront
Milosevic over Serbian actions in
Kosovo. In 2016, Biden paid a state visit to Serbia where he met with Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic
and expressed his condolences for the
civilian victims of the bombing
campaign.
Biden was a strong supporter of the
2001 war in Afghanistan, saying,
"Whatever it takes, we should do it."
As head of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, Biden said in 2002
that Saddam Hussein was a threat to
national security and there was no
option but to "eliminate" that threat.
In October 2002, he voted in favor of
the Authorization for Use of Military
Force Against Iraq, approving the U.S.
invasion of Iraq. More significantly, as
chair of the committee, he assembled a
series of witnesses to testify in favor
of the authorization. They gave
testimony grossly misrepresenting the
intent, history of and status of Saddam
and his Sunni government, which was an
openly avowed enemy of al-Qaida, and
touting Iraq's fictional possession of
weapons of mass destruction.
While he eventually became a critic
of the war and viewed his vote and role
as a "mistake", he did not push for U.S.
withdrawal. He supported the
appropriations to pay for the
occupation, but argued repeatedly that
the war should be internationalized,
that more soldiers were needed, and that
the Bush administration should "level
with the American people" about the cost
and length of the conflict. By late
2006, Biden's stance had shifted
considerably, and he opposed the troop
surge of 2007, saying General David Petraeus
was "dead, flat wrong" in believing the
surge could work. Biden instead advocated dividing Iraq into a loose federation of three ethnic states.
In November 2006, Biden and Leslie H.
Gelb, President Emeritus of the Council
on Foreign Relations, released a
comprehensive strategy to end sectarian
violence in Iraq. Rather than continuing the present approach or withdrawing, the plan called for "a third way": federalizing Iraq and giving Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis "breathing room" in their own regions.:572
to 573 In September 2007, a non-binding resolution endorsing such a scheme passed the Senate,
but the idea was unfamiliar, had no
political constituency, and failed to
gain traction. Iraq's political leadership denounced the resolution as de facto partitioning of the country, and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad issued a statement distancing itself from it
In March 2004, Biden secured the brief release of Libyan democracy activist and political prisoner Fathi Eljahmi,
after meeting with leader Muammar
Gaddafi in Tripoli. In May 2008, Biden
sharply criticized President George W.
Bush for his speech to Israel's Knesset,
where he suggested some Democrats were
acting the way some Western leaders did
when they appeased Hitler in the run-up
to World War II. Biden said, "This is
bullshit. This is malarkey. This is
outrageous. Outrageous for the president
of the United States to go to a foreign
country, sit in the Knesset ... and make
this kind of ridiculous statement ...
Since when does this administration
think that if you sit down, you have to
eliminate the word 'no' from your
vocabulary?" He later apologized for
using the expletive.
