Biden is a master of confronting no-win scenarios

Of all the cultural artifacts that the Star Trek franchise has provided us, the Kobayashi Maru scenario may loom largest.

First described in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” the Kobayashi Maru wargame put aspiring Starfleet officers into a situation where every decision makes things worse, and they cannot accomplish their mission or escape with their crew. The scenario is designed to teach officers that there are options even when there are no options left; impossible situations do not mean abandoning grace, courage and dignity. Accepting defeat is not defeatist, because even in defeat there is good that can be done.

Over the course of his 50-year political career, Joe Biden has confronted the Kobayashi Maru simulation a great number of times.

He faced it in 1972 when his wife and daughter were killed in an automobile accident several weeks after his first election as senator. He faced it in 1987 when his plagiarism of a British politician ended his first campaign for president. He faced it when he chaired Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings in 1991. He faced it in 2002 when, as the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he voted to approve President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. He faced it in 2008 when his second presidential campaign collapsed with a fifth place finish in Iowa. He faced it when his son died of brain cancer in 2015, and again when his president and friend Barack Obama told him that he could not win the 2016 presidential election. 

Joe Biden did not, indeed could not, win any of those scenarios. But he survived them, learned from them, and grew in their wake.

It seemed unlikely that Biden could win the presidency in 2020, but not impossible, and he managed to first capture the Democratic nomination and then defeat President Donald Trump. Could anyone else with less experience of defeat have won in the same circumstances? 

The Kobayashi Maru scenario did not end when Biden assumed the presidency. The problem of Trump, who had incited an insurrection and put his vice president’s life in danger in order to stay in office, loomed over Biden’s administration. Moving too aggressively against Trump risked breaking the American political system in one way, moving too passively risked breaking it in another way. The resulting Department of Justice decisions left few happy, but have not yet broken American democracy.

Six months into his term, Biden faced perhaps his most classic Kobayashi Maru scenario. Even as vice president, he had pushed to reduce and end the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. President Trump made that end possible, while at the same time setting the Kabul government on a disastrous path from which there was no real escape. Kabul would fall; the American military would flee; the consequences would be disastrous both domestically and abroad.

Thirteen Americans and countless Afghans died during the evacuation, and Biden’s popularity took an enduring hit. Yet no one can explain cogently what Biden could have done to “win” the Kabul evacuation.

A year into his presidency, Biden faced the inevitability of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a shattering of the norms against territorial conquest that have existed since World War II. Ukraine could not win. Two years later, the war goes on; Ukraine hasn’t won, and Ukraine probably won’t win. But Ukraine has a chance to be Ukraine because Joe Biden decided to commit American military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic and financial tools to its survival.

Twenty months later, Hamas conducted a massive attack in southern Israel, killing over 1,000 Israelis and taking over 100 hostage. Few would argue that Biden handled the wake of Oct. 7 in an ideal manner. But an American president who counted both Jews and Muslims in his electoral coalition faced a no-win scenario both internationally and domestically. That coalition seems mostly to have held, pending results in November.

On June 27, Joe Biden met his final Kobayashi Maru. His campaign had seen the presidential debate as an opportunity to put concerns about age, his greatest campaign liability, to rest. It did not do so. Biden was almost immediately beset by an array of calls from his own party to abandon his pursuit for a second term and step into the background.

Two weeks ago, Biden finally accepted that he could not win, giving up in preference for Kamala Harris, his vice president. 

“A no-win situation is a possibility every commander may face,” in the words of Captain James T. Kirk. The same can be said for every president, and indeed for anyone who enters political life. Over the years, Joe Biden learned how to handle defeat with dignity, grace and an eye to the future.

It remains to be seen how this final wargame will play out. Joe Biden won’t win, but his actions may have made it possible for his party to hold onto the presidency.

Robert Farley is a senior lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky.