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FOREIGN POLICY

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Xi Running Circles around Biden Welcome to the steep decline of U.S. power and prestige. by Joseph Klein

By on April 11th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/xi-running-circles-around-biden/

“China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man!” Joe Biden said at a rally during his presidential campaign in 2019 as he downplayed China’s threat to the United States.

Since he became president, Mr. Biden himself has been out to lunch when it comes to confronting the multipronged military, economic, and diplomatic challenges that China poses to the vital national security interests of the United States.

President Biden, for example, turned the other cheek for several days in February while China’s spy balloon was maneuvering over sensitive military installations across the continental United States before the balloon was finally shot down. The president claimed at the time that the spy balloon was “not a major breach.” He recklessly signaled to America’s number one adversary that invading sovereign U.S. airspace for days to conduct an intelligence operation over several U.S. military installations is no big deal to America’s commander-in-chief.

Contrary to the Biden administration’s assurances that it successfully blocked China from gathering any valuable intelligence, NBC has reported that China’s spy balloon “was able to gather intelligence from several sensitive American military sites,” according to NBC’s sources.

The spy balloon is just one part of the Chinese regime’s increasingly aggressive strategy to test the Biden administration’s resolve, which has proven to be seriously wanting.

Last month, the Chinese regime announced a 7.2 percent increase in its military budget, more than double the rate of increase that President Biden has proposed for his fiscal 2024 defense budget. In particular, President Biden’s defense budget is woefully inadequate in addressing China’s expansion of the size of its naval ship fleet to the point that it already surpasses the size of the U.S. naval ship fleet.

Moreover, as U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, R-Miss., ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, noted last February during remarks he delivered on the Senate floor:

“The Chinese Air Force now flies fifth-generation aircraft armed with air-to-air missiles that outrange our own. The entire People’s Liberation Army conducts advanced and realistic training. And our own top cyber officer, General Paul Nakasone, says the improvement in Chinese cyber capabilities is ‘unlike anything [he has] ever seen.’”

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“Does This Compromise President Biden?” by Peter Schweizer

By on April 9th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19539/does-this-compromise-biden

The notion that a declining power like Russia, which has domestic problems, a shrinking economy, a shrinking demographic base, is somehow a bigger threat than China is laughable. It is indicative of a larger issue, which is that Biden essentially has a soft spot for Beijing. The question, of course, is why?

This is a commercial relationship that not only has made the Bidens money. It has advanced the strategic and military interests of the Chinese government itself.

The first one is a private equity arrangement or deal that Hunter Biden has with the Chinese government itself. This is a deal that began and was finalized in December of 2013. It led to the creation of something called Bohai Harvest RST or BHR Partners…. the Chinese government poured in a billion dollars. They later expanded that to a-billion-and-a-half dollars…. One of the partnering firms that created BHR was Hunter Biden’s firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners.

Hunter Biden was put on the board of directors of BHR Partners…. What is astonishing about this is, first of all, that the Chinese government funded this venture. Again, these are not individual Chinese companies. This is Chinese government money.

In 2017, his lawyers admitted that he [Hunter Biden] also took a personal stake. In addition to the firm that he owned part of, he took a personal stake in these deals. That is deal number one. Then there is deal number two with the Chinese government. This involves a real estate firm called Rosemont Real Estate, of which Hunter Biden was a co‑founder.

Rosemont then becomes Gemini Rosemont Realty. The Chinese government is later to put in more than $100 million in cash. They publicly say that they are going to put billions of dollars of equity into this entity to make it even more successful. Here you have two large deals.

When you look at what that private equity firm does, the first thing they do is they become an anchor investor in a Chinese firm called China General Nuclear (CGN). Why is this interesting? This is a nuclear energy firm that about eight months after Hunter Biden’s BHR becomes an anchor investor, they are charged by the FBI in the United States. That firm was stealing nuclear secrets in the United States.

In particular, CGN is trying to gain technologies related to the small nuclear reactors that are put on submarines, which provide a huge military advantage to the United States.

Another acquisition they make is that Hunter Biden’s BHR firm buys half of a company called Henniges in Michigan — and another Chinese entity buys the other half. That other half is bought by AVIC, which is the Chinese state‑owned aviation military contractor. AVIC builds all the military aircraft for the Chinese military.

What I think is important about the Biden story is not simply the fact that the Biden family made money because of the Chinese military and that Joe Biden speaks very kindly about the Chinese since those deals have gone down, but also that the Biden family involving the son of the vice president directly benefit the Chinese military.

China is a power that has demonstrated over the last decade that they want, by 2025, to supplant the United States as the major economic power in the world. Then by 2030, they want to match the United States militarily.

The Chinese government has also spoken openly about their desire to upturn and change the global order for their benefit. What we have in the Biden family is a family that has become wealthy by enabling, helping, aiding and abetting the Chinese in doing exactly that.

In terms of Hunter Biden doing nothing wrong, it does not seem that there has been anything illegal. I have always contended that the problem in Washington DC is that some of the worst crimes or worst acts of corruption are done by people who engage in legal behavior. In Washington DC, the political class gets to make their own rules. They get to rig the game, as it were, to ensure that the real lucrative stuff that is corrupt — and should be illegal — is the very stuff that they engage in.

Hunter Biden has stepped off the board of directors of BHR. Here is the problem: he still retains his equity stake with this Chinese firm. He still has other deals that he conducted with the Chinese from which he benefited.

The Biden team has lied repeatedly. I can go into greater detail…. It has been subterfuge from the beginning. They need to be called out on it….. The American people understand if somebody’s giving you a sweetheart deal, particularly an actor like China… without getting something in return. They are not that stupid.

The problem is the way that rules are written in Washington DC, they are written by the political class themselves. They carve out certain things…. If [Biden] gets a $250 campaign contribution from a GE executive, it is disclosed by the FEC…. If his adult son flying on Air Force Two, clearly close with the vice president, strikes a series of deals with a foreign government that are lucrative and beneficial to him, there is no requirement for disclosure — which, to me, is shocking. One of the things that has to change is that we need greater transparency.

The great gold mine that they have discovered are these foreign entities. With Hunter Biden, you have these deals in China. You also have the deal in Ukraine that everybody’s familiar with…. [Hunter Biden] is given a million dollars a year by a company even though he has no background in Ukraine and no background in energy. Everybody knows what is going on. Unfortunately, it is legal.

There ought to at minimum be a requirement that you disclose any foreign dealings involving the family members of politicians, Republican, Democrat, executive branch, legislative branch. That would be very, very helpful. The way you discuss this and you explain this to people is: It is not a question about what is legal. There are lots of things that are legal in Washington that are highly corrupt. The key thing is, does this compromise Joe Biden?… Has he done favors for that foreign power?

One of the things that the great Roger Robinson has been working on…. He is looking into the fact that in 2013, the Obama administration signed a letter which said that the Chinese companies listed in the New York Stock Exchange did not have to conform to Sarbanes‑Oxley auditing and some of the other requirements that US and other foreign firms do. It is quite a cutout for the Chinese.

The question about blackmail, to be blunt about it, is, are they going to need to blackmail Joe Biden? Joe Biden’s posture towards China is incredibly soft.

[T]here has been a complete lack of curiosity by the media, and even, as we have seen, suppression.

Something may emerge but I am not sure there is something that they want that he is not already prepared to give them.

China is a rival power. They are supplanting the United States on the global stage, both in terms of their economic capability and in terms of their military capability.

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John Kirby’s Clean-Up on Aisle Kabul The Biden administration has been lying about the evacuation from Afghanistan from the day that it began Roger Kimball

By on April 9th, 2023

https://thespectator.com/topic/john-kirby-clean-up-aisle-kabul-afghanistan/?utm_source=

I almost feel sorry for John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman tasked with tidying up after the icky messes deposited about the landscape by Joe Biden. 

Let me emphasize the adverb “almost.” Kirby’s job is unenviable. Basically he has to lie and pretend that his boss and that excruciating, illiterate muppet of a press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, make sense. It’s always a horrible goulash that Kirby has to contend with. He has my sympathy for that. 

But yesterday, when Kirby stood before the press to answer questions about the administration’s report on Ameirca’s humiliating flight from Afghanistan in August 2021, his performance was not just cringe-making. It was infuriating.  

There was, said this wretched tool, “a lot to be proud of” in the way the administration handled the withdrawa- no, it wasn’t a “withdrawal.” It was a panicked flight from Bagram Air Base and Kabul. Why? Because our laughably named “intelligence services” once again bungled the job. The Taliban, they said, were making advances, but not to worry, it will take weeks if not months for them to take control of the capital. 

Wrong. America’s flight from Afghanistan, after twenty years, trillions of your dollars, Dear Reader, and countless classes in “transgressive” modernist art for the natives, was the most spectacular military and public relations failure for the United States since our choppers took flight from our embassy in Saigon in 1975. 

Where does the buck stop, Mr. Kirby? With Donald Trump, bien sûr. Kirby repeatedly echoed the party line: “President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor.” But does anybody, anybody believe that if Donald Trump were still president in 2021 that Afghanistan would have been consumed in the humiliating maelstrom that John Kirby now wants us all to forget?

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‘A New World Order’? The Iran-Russia-China Axis During the Biden Administration by Majid Rafizadeh

By on April 9th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19562/new-world-order-iran-russia-china

The Biden Administration has created a vacuum of leadership on the global stage.

If the US further pulls out of Asia, the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, Ukraine, Latin America — anywhere — the vacuum created will surely be filled by the new axis of China-Russia-Iran. A US pull-out is, most probably, just what they are hoping and waiting for.

If Putin sees any gains in Ukraine, China will try to seize Taiwan.

“We’re sitting still, and the Chinese, the Russians, Iran, North Korea, and several others, are moving to shore up their relations and threaten us in a lot of different places… It’s an indication that the Saudis and others are [also] trying to hedge their bets with China and Russia, because they don’t think the United States has the resolve and the fortitude necessary to do what they need to do to protect the world against Iran and its intentions.” — Former US National Security Advisor John R. Bolton, yahoo.com, March 12, 2023.

“The Chinese have a strategy they’ve been following… We kind of wander around from day to day.” — John R. Bolton, yahoo.com, March 12, 2023.

Thanks to the lack of leadership and the vacuum that the Biden administration has created — and appears continuing to create — on the global stage, the new axis of Iran-China-Russia has been shaped with Beijing, Moscow and the ruling mullahs — rather than the brutalized people of Iran. The Axis is seizing leadership of the new world order, or — if the world’s communists manage to defeat the world’s democrats, as they seem tenaciously determined to do — it will be, more accurately, the new world disorder.

As Winston Churchill famously pointed out, “I never worry about action, but only about inaction”. The Biden administration’s inaction has led to the creation of a new axis of tyrannies: Russia, China and Iran, with North Korea not far behind. As the Tehran Times, which has close ties to Iran’s foreign ministry, wrote: “[T]oday we are witnessing the formation of a new world order….”

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Biden’s Anti-Israel Policy Empowers Iran, Palestinian Terrorists by Bassam Tawil

By on April 4th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19564/biden-anti-israel-policy-iran

US President Joe Biden appears more worried about the Israeli government’s plan for judicial reform than the growing support among Palestinians for terrorism against Israel.

He seems more concerned about a plan to fix the deeply broken judicial system in Israel than about Palestinian threats to destroy Israel and kill as many Jews as possible.

We did not see Biden raise any objection over the Palestinians’ “Pay for Slay” policy, which rewards terrorists and their families for the murder of Jews. We did not see Biden raise any objection over the Palestinian leaders’ glorification of terrorists, who are being celebrated as “martyrs” by a majority of Palestinians. We did not see Biden raise any objection over the thousands of Palestinians who regularly take to the streets to celebrate the murder of Jews in terror attacks perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists.

As Biden was criticizing the democratically elected prime minister of Israel, senior (unelected) Palestinian officials were continuing to use every available podium to spread more libels against Israel.

Has Biden ever shown any concern that the Palestinians are living under highly undemocratic regimes, with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip? Has Biden or anyone from his administration ever asked the Palestinians why they do not have a functioning parliament?

The crisis Biden has triggered with Israel because of his recurring criticism of a badly-needed judicial reform plan is great news for Iran and its Palestinian proxies, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), two of the many Islamist terror groups that openly call for the elimination of Israel.

By sparking a crisis with Netanyahu and the Israeli government, Biden has succeeded in bringing happiness to the enemies of both Israel and the US, perhaps in an effort that will be fruitless, to appease them. The message the Biden Administration is sending is that you are rewarded if you are an enemy of the US but punished if you are a friend.

Biden has placed himself alongside the mullahs of Iran who are expressing hope that the protests against the Netanyahu government will lead to the “collapse of the Zionist regime.”

The mullahs are clearly happy to see Biden’s attacks on the Israeli prime minister, who has been spearheading efforts to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

The mullahs are also undoubtedly delighted to see the Biden administration turn its back on its major ally and the only democracy in the Middle East: Israel. In the view of the mullahs and most of Israel’s enemies, the US has always been the “Great Satan” that stands in the way of achieving their goal of destroying the “Little Satan” Israel.

Basically, Iran does not want any democratic presence in the Middle East and has presumably been attacking US interests in the area to force the US to pull out.

In reality, it looks to many in the Middle East as if the Biden Administration’s objection to long-overdue judicial reforms is really just a pretext for trying to bring down the democratically-elected Israeli government and replace it with a new government that will allow the US to accept that Iran may have all the nuclear weapons it wants, perhaps with some feckless “compromise,” such as “so long as it does not field them.” This would be a deeply terrible plan that the Biden Administration might, alarmingly, decide to accept.

The current US anti-Netanyahu approach will do nothing except empower Iran and its proxies, Hamas, PIJ and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and incentivize them to carry out more terror attacks – not only against Israelis, but against Americans as well.

The Israeli government’s judicial plan is probably not perfect, but it could not be more dangerous than Iran’s continued effort to produce nuclear weapons or the Palestinians’ rising support for terrorism.

The Biden administration would do well to understand that those who want to kill the Jews also want to see dead the friends and allies of the Jews. That is why it would be most helpful for America’s national security if Biden and his officials immediately defused the tensions and ceased their rhetorical attacks against a small country that is in reality America’s only true friend and most trusted ally in the Middle East.

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Thanks to Biden Administration, Iran’s Mullahs Winners of Russia Invasion of Ukraine by Majid Rafizadeh

By on April 1st, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19536/iran-winner-russia-invasion-ukraine

Russia also reportedly wants to buy ballistic missiles from Iran, which has the largest and most diverse ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East. The Iranian regime therefore should officially be considered an accomplice to Russia’s war crimes.

The Iranian regime, probably because it knows that the Biden administration will not take any action, is ratcheting up its engagement and weapons exports to Russia.

“President Biden’s leadership is non-existent…. Look at what’s happening right now with unemployment — eight million jobs are unfilled right now, and President Biden just ushered through a partisan bill to pay people billions of dollars not to work when eight million jobs are unfilled right now. We’re paying people not to work, and they’re borrowing money from our kids and our grandkids to do it…. We’re seeing inflation starting to go through the roof. Our country is less secure. Look at what’s happening around the world — the Middle East, Iran — who the President wants to let back into an agreement to get a nuclear weapon. [The Iranians are] helping funnel these bombs that are being shot into Israel. I mean where is the President’s leadership on any of these crises?” – US Rep. Steve Scalise, Fox News, May 2021.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the Biden administration has been running out the clock, allowing the ruling Islamist mullahs of Iran to prosper from the war and emerge as the winners. According to a January 2022 report:

“[T]he United Nations has reported at least 6,919 civilian deaths and more than 11,000 wounded as a result of the war in Ukraine and estimates the actual figures to be much higher. Approximately 6.5 million Ukrainians are internally displaced, and about 5 million have fled as refugees to European countries. About 2.8 million Ukrainians are in Russia and Belarus, in some cases against their will.”

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Biden Meddles in Israeli Politics He lectures Prime Minister Netanyahu on judicial reform while staying silent on Iran’s nuclear program.

By on March 30th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/president-biden-benjamin-netanyahu-judicial-reform-israel-3654f50?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

President Biden likes to say he’s rebuilding American alliances, but he sure is selective about it. Woe betide the ally who runs afoul of American progressive opinion. Then Mr. Biden gives you the frenemy treatment.

That’s certainly how he’s treating the Israeli government as that country debates judicial reform, especially with his disdainful criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

On Monday the Israeli leader announced a pause in pushing the controversial reform, saying he’d seek a national “consensus” on the subject. But Mr. Biden still chose to lecture the foreign leader about the matter.

“Like many strong supporters of Israel, I’m very concerned. And I’m concerned that they get this straight. They cannot continue down this road. And I’ve sort of made that clear,” Mr. Biden told reporters. “Hopefully the Prime Minister will act in a way that he is going to try to work out some genuine compromise. But that remains to be seen.”

So much for giving Mr. Netanyahu credit for reaching out to the opposition to seek a compromise. Mr. Biden also took a gratuitous shot at the Prime Minister by saying the Israeli leader wouldn’t be invited to the White House—“not in the near term.”

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Why Did the Biden Administration Oppose Israeli Judicial Reform? Jonathan Tobin

By on March 29th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19537/israel-judicial-reform

Ignore Washington’s hypocritical talk about protecting democracy. They want a weak government that won’t make trouble when it comes to Iran, and they won’t stop until they get one.

Washington made no secret of its efforts to directly intervene in a domestic Israeli dispute….

The people who jammed the streets… see the maintenance of an unaccountable court with virtually unlimited power as the only way to maintain the Israeli left’s political power even when they lose elections….

Washington is… determined… to oust a democratically elected government by any means possible.

What the White House and State Department want is more pliable Israeli Prime Minister, who will keep quiet about the nuclear threat from Iran, and who can be intimidated into not acting too forestall that deadly threat to Israel’s existence.

As for behaving like a dictator, Biden’s predilection for governing by executive order… even when his diktats are obviously contrary to the constitution or existing laws makes anything Netanyahu might attempt look like child’s play.

[Biden’s] administration apparently thinks that when Israel’s Supreme Court strikes down Netanyahu’s efforts to govern – on the basis of no law, and only on the judges, subjective ideas about what is “reasonable” – it’s a great idea.

[E]stablishment Jewish groups… joined the liberal groups in praising Netanyahu’s surrender to the mob and then had the chutzpah to laud the protesters, who sought to sabotage the country to get their way without even any attempt at balance by treating supporters of the government and reform, who clearly outnumbered the critics at the ballot box last November, as equally praiseworthy.

[T]hey also understand that the hyperbolic claims that Netanyahu and advocates of judicial reform seek to impose a dictatorship or a Torah state is pure fiction.

What Biden and his supporters want in Jerusalem isn’t so much an all-powerful Supreme Court… but anything that can help oust the prime minister.

The [Biden] administration is now willing to tolerate Iran having nuclear weapons as long as they are not going to publicly flaunt them.

This attitude isn’t just unacceptable to all of Israel’s major political parties. It constitutes a grave threat to the security of the Jewish state that no Israeli prime minister could reasonably be expected to tolerate.

The brazen nature of Biden’s attack on Netanyahu… speaks volumes about how much the administration wants an Israeli government that won’t cause trouble over Iran.

It didn’t play a decisive role in the drama that unfolded in Israel as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to call a halt to his efforts to enact judicial reform. But the Biden administration’s willingness to involve itself in the push to oppose the measure was remarkable for two reasons.

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Biden to Israel: “They Cannot Continue Down this Road” “Biden said Netanyahu won’t be invited to visit the White House” by Daniel Greenfield

By on March 29th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-to-israel-they-cannot-continue-down-this-road/

The leftist mobs shrieking hate and blocking ambulances claimed that they were fighting for “democracy” in Israel by demanding unlimited power for an unelected leftist judiciary that picks its own members.

This is what “democracy” looks like.

President Biden on Tuesday said he hopes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “walks away from” plans to pursue reforms to the country’s judiciary…

“Like many strong supporters of Israel, I’m very concerned, and I’m concerned that they get this straight. They cannot continue down this road,” Biden told reporters after a speech in North Carolina on the economy.

“Hopefully the prime minister will act in a way that he can try to work out some genuine compromise. But that remains to be seen,” Biden added.

Biden said Netanyahu won’t be invited to visit the White House “in the near term.”

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North Korea Unveils New Nukes as U.S. Argues about ‘Misgendering’ By Catherine Salgado

By on March 29th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/catherinesalgado/2023/03/28/north-korea-unveils-new-nukes-as-us-argues-about-misgendering-n1682402

As a U.S. aircraft carrier arrived in South Korea for military drills, North Korea responded by unveiling new nuclear warheads. I guess that’s what you call an explosive statement.

Photos of the  smaller nuclear warheads, called Hwasan-31s, were released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Reuters reported.

Nuclear experts reportedly said that, based on the photos, North Korea has made progress “in miniaturising warheads that are powerful yet small enough to mount on intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking the United States.” 

Meanwhile, back in America, mainstream media outlets, including New York Times, USA Today, and CNN, are apologizing for referring to a female murderer as a woman because she called herself “he/him,” and President Joe Biden cracks jokes about ice cream before discussing the shooting of six people, including three young children. Somehow, that’s not encouraging.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un visited the Nuclear Weapons Institute to inspect the nukes, nuclear counterattack operation plans, and ballistic missile warhead mounting tech. Kim was further reportedly briefed on an “IT-based integrated nuclear weapon management system called Haekbangashoe,” which Reuters reported means “nuclear trigger.”

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