RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/biden-foreign-policy-asssessment/

The Biden administration’s foreign policy is rapidly coming into view. Despite rhetoric designed to mollify Middle Eastern allies, the trajectory of decisions clearly favors a return to the Obama policy of elevating Iran at the expense of Israel and Sunni states. More broadly, key moves weaken the US stance against China while ensuring domestic turmoil. American allies will have to adjust to a period of American weakness and possibly even betrayal.

It is customary to give new US administrations a grace period before assessing their policies, but no administration in modern history has changed so much so fast. Literally dozens of executive orders signed by President Joe Biden have dramatically reversed the course of American foreign policy in a matter of days. The implications are potentially momentous, especially in the Middle East. 

Many predicted that a Biden administration would see a revival of Obama-era policies. This was more true than anyone could have imagined. With stunning speed, Biden has set about dismantling the legacy of the Trump administration across the board, including in foreign policy.

The manner in which this is occurring is classic Obama. On the one hand, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has stated repeatedly that the US is not in a rush to rejoin the JCPOA agreement with Iran, demanding that the latter first come into “full compliance.” But Iran has demanded the US do so first and provide compensation for sanctions, setting up a game of chicken where the party who desires the deal more will yield first.

At the same time, a series of US moves has signaled American desire to restore the status quo ante. The US has “temporarily paused” the sale of F-35s to the United Arab Emirates, describing the move as a “review,” which in Washington is usually code for quietly making a policy permanent. The sale of munitions to Saudi Arabia has also been suspended and comes after months of the Biden campaign criticizing Saudi human rights abuses, especially in Yemen. The ”reexamination” of the Trump administration’s designation of the Houthi movement as a terrorist organization also signals Biden’s re-acceptance of what Obama called Iran’s “equities.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17026/chasing-the-dragon

[The Biden Executive Order] order reverses a previous directive by the Trump administration last May, which found that “foreign adversaries are increasingly creating and exploiting vulnerabilities in the United States bulk-power system, which provides the electricity that supports our national defense, vital emergency services, critical infrastructure, economy, and way of life.” [Emphasis added.]

These systems are, of course, highly computerized and the Trump administration’s goal was to prevent the Chinese, America’s greatest geo-political and economic rival, from having their hands in it. Biden’s order strips that protection with the stroke of a pen.

So, where was the constituency for allowing the Chinese access to the market for providing critical equipment to run and manage the US power grid? Who was clamoring to undo protections from cyber-warfare directed against America’s power system?

[B]y cancelling the pipeline, Biden is not preventing any energy production of fossil fuels in Canada. He is simply shifting that consumption to China.

Economically, all Biden’s order does is damage America’s energy production and give the US less control of energy markets, and give China greater leverage.

With this one order, on his first day of work, Biden has given the communist government of China… a more favorable market for buying the oil that makes it the top producer of carbon-dioxide in the world. It is difficult to see how such moves, done unilaterally and without negotiating anything at all in return, make sense to the security of the U.S.

The timing alone raises questions about exactly which supporters Joe Biden was making happy.

On his first full day in office, President Joe Biden signed a massive executive order that, among other things, killed the Keystone XL pipeline project. Buried in that same order were two short sentences that will allow the Chinese government to get into the American electrical grid.

Located at Section 7(c), the order reverses a previous directive by the Trump administration last May, which found that “foreign adversaries are increasingly creating and exploiting vulnerabilities in the United States bulk-power system, which provides the electricity that supports our national defense, vital emergency services, critical infrastructure, economy, and way of life.” [Emphasis added.]