DOMINIC LAWSON: Why Biden's policies on Gaza and Ukraine are driven more by America's Muslim voters, and the price of oil, than what's happening on the ground

When President Biden is trying to decide how to deal with the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, what do you think is the factor weighing most on his mind? Answer: Tuesday, November 5.

That's the day the United States holds its presidential election, to determine whether Biden — or his Republican opponent, Donald Trump — holds the White House. And it's looking extremely close, which means, under the U.S. electoral college system, that everything could rest on mere thousands of votes in a handful of swing states.

Two of those nail-biters are Michigan and Pennsylvania, which contain relatively large numbers of Muslim voters — electors normally expected to turn out for the Democrat candidate.

But if, enraged by the situation in Gaza, thousands of these voters stay at home, that might, in the closest of races, cost Biden the White House.

Risk 

So it would be naive to think this has nothing to do with Biden's decision last week to cancel the promised delivery of Boeing's Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) to Israel.

This was ostensibly on the grounds that President Netanyahu's extension of his campaign to bombing Rafah would put the lives of an unconscionable number of Palestinians at risk.

It grabbed the headlines in the way Biden would have wanted. Yet it might cause the deaths of more innocents in Gaza. JDAMs are guidance kits that convert 'dumb bombs' into precision-guided 'smart bombs', enabling the user to avoid what is euphemistically termed collateral damage.

US President Joe Biden responds to reporters' questions as he leaves St. Edmond's Roman Catholic Church in Rehoboth Beach after attending Mass on Sunday

However, in respect of the electoral effect in Michigan and Pennsylvania, President Biden sees, as some have remarked, a 'two-state solution' which has nothing to do with the future of the Middle East.

However bitter and all-consuming this issue is for a section of the American public (especially younger voters), in the end, as the former U.S. speaker Tip O'Neill said: All politics is local. And few of those purely domestic considerations count for more, in America, than the cost of filling up your car. The price of gasoline, in other words.

This explains the otherwise inexplicable, in terms of the pressure the Biden administration has been putting on Ukraine to stop its highly successful drone attacks on oil refineries and storage facilities in Russia.

Strategy 

Last month the U.S. Secretary of Defence, Lloyd Austin, warned Ukraine that 'those attacks could have a knock-on effect in terms of the global energy situation'. This so delighted the Putin regime, it promoted Austin's remarks via its Tass news agency.

As the American military historian Phillips O'Brien observed: 'It is hard to think of a weirder thing for a U.S. Defence Secretary to say. [But] in one way it was honest, in that Austin was admitting that the policy of the U.S. government, in an election year, was being determined by the price of oil.'

As he also observed, whenever the U.S. itself has prosecuted military campaigns, not least during World War II, the targeting of the enemies' oil facilities was a vital component of its strategy. It is certainly true of the conduct of Russia's campaign against Ukraine, which has consistently targeted energy infrastructure.

Smoke billows after an explosion in northern Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, pictured May 12 2024

The Financial Times, which in March revealed the pressure Washington was bringing on Ukraine to stop its attacks on Russian refineries, commented then that 'oil prices have risen by about 15 per cent this year, pushing up fuel costs just as U.S. President Joe Biden begins his campaign for re-election'.

Bob McNally, a former White House energy adviser, told the paper: 'Nothing terrifies a sitting American president more than a surge in pump prices during an election year.'

Yes, but there is something especially absurd in complaining about Ukraine's targeting of Russia's oil industry, when Kyiv is doing precisely the sort of thing the West's sanctions policy was meant to achieve, but failed to do.

Increase 

And just as the blocking of a supply of JDAMs to the Israel Defence Forces might only achieve the opposite of its alleged justification, so the Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries are not, actually, the reason for a global increase in oil prices.

As the U.S. magazine Foreign Affairs pointed out: 'Washington's criticism is misplaced: attacks on oil refineries will not have the effect U.S. officials fear.

'These strikes reduce Russia's ability to turn its oil into usable products; they do not affect the volume of oil it can extract or export. In fact, with less domestic refining capacity, Russia will be forced to export more of its crude oil, not less, pushing global prices down rather than up.'

So, not only do Biden's electioneering-based decisions in Gaza and Ukraine run counter to the interests of nations the U.S. designates as allies in war, they don't make sense in their own terms.

They certainly don't impress America's allies, while pleasing only their enemies.

AFTER PRICEY TOAST, BEWARE OF RIP-OFF TEA... 

A scandal! That's what the locals in Port Talbot are saying about the prices charged at Remo's cafe, with its fine views of Aberavon beach. As the Mail reported on Saturday, the charge which most outraged visitors was the £4 for 'two slices of toast'.

My view is that the manager, Mr Difrancesco, should be able to charge whatever he wants, since no one is obliged to eat breakfast at Remo's.

I did find his justification odd, though: 'We serve only hand-cut doorstep slices of fresh bread from a local bakery that have been toasted and buttered only with real salted butter.'

What, as opposed to unreal salted butter? And as any cook will tell you, the freshest butter is generally unsalted, as the salt is used as a preservative. This is one reason salted butter tends to be cheaper (easier for supermarkets to store for long periods). Also, the salt can mask the taste of lower-quality butter.

The Mail also reported that a cup of tea at the South Wales cafe costs £3.10. I wonder if this would include Earl Grey, because, as a so-called premium product, that's a time-honoured rip-off.

I learned this from my grandfather, a tea merchant, who told me the best tea was from the tips of the leaves. The lower down the plant, the lower the quality.

In order to disguise the tastelessness of the lowest quality tea, one trick was to add bergamot flavouring. Which is your Earl Grey, the posh name designed to delude consumers into thinking it's a superior brew.

And my grandfather regarded tea bags (as opposed to leaves) as an abomination: not real tea at all. I bet you don't get real tea at Remo's alongside 'toast buttered only with real salted butter'.