RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-man-in-venezuela-nicolas-maduro-sanctions-11669674747?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

In negotiating with oil-producing dictators, the Biden Administration has a consistent strategy: Make concessions in hope the other side will return the favor. It hasn’t worked with Iran, and now the White House is trying with the thugs who run Venezuela. What could go wrong?

The U.S. lifted Trump-era sanctions on Caracas over the weekend, renewing a license for Chevron to pump oil again in its joint ventures with the state-owned oil company PdVSA. The U.S. will also unfreeze $3 billion in Venezuelan assets for what it says will be “humanitarian” needs. In exchange, dictator Nicolás Maduro is promising to negotiate free and fair elections in talks with the opposition in Mexico City.

Venezuela once produced 3.4 million barrels of oil a day and was the richest nation in Latin America. But two decades of socialism have degraded petroleum infrastructure and exiled human capital. PdVSA now pumps fewer than 700,000 barrels a day, and Mr. Maduro relies on narcotics trafficking to pay his military.

Mr. Maduro wants to produce more oil, and the Biden Administration also wants more oil to replace Russian supplies reduced by the Ukraine war. Easing permitting rules on U.S. federal land offends the Democratic Party’s climate donors. So the Administration has gone hat in hand to OPEC and the Saudis and now Venezuela. It’s mind-boggling to see the U.S. go begging to dictators when the U.S. has huge untapped reserves.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19155/biden-russia-iran-nuclear

The mullahs are freely expanding their nuclear weapons program, now enriching uranium to nearly weapons-grade level. Iran is also seeking assistance from its ally, Russia, to bolster its nuclear program, according to the US intelligence officials.

Iran has been providing attack drones to Russia that are being used in Ukraine and is preparing also to deliver ballistic missiles. As a result, it should not come as a surprise that the Islamic Republic is going to seek something in return from Russia for these weapons deliveries.

The regime continues to keep the IAEA’s cameras at Iran’s nuclear facilities turned off. By doing so, it is effectively preventing the IAEA from monitoring its nuclear activities, including uranium enrichment.

Iran’s regime also refuses to answer the IAEA’s questions about uranium particles found at three of its undeclared nuclear sites.

To what lengths will the Biden administration go to protect Iran’s mullahs, allow them to crush anti-regime protestors, and collude with Russia to help Iran acquire nuclear weapons capability?

It has been nearly a year since nuclear negotiations with Iran stalled; since then, the Biden administration appears to be sitting idly by watching the ruling mullahs advance their nuclear weapons program.

The mullahs are freely expanding it, now enriching uranium to nearly weapons-grade level. Iran is also seeking assistance from its ally, Russia, to bolster its nuclear program, according to the US intelligence officials.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/us-has-sent-a-net-309-billion-to-communist-china-this-year/

Two weeks after he was inaugurated, President Joe Biden traveled over to the State Department to deliver a speech about his foreign policy.

One point he repeatedly stressed in that speech: He was not going to let the People’s Republic of China take advantage of the United States.

“American leadership must meet this new moment of advancing authoritarianism, including the growing ambitions of China to rival the United States,” Biden said at the beginning of his speech.

“We must start with diplomacy rooted in America’s most cherished democratic values: defending freedom, championing opportunity, upholding universal rights, respecting the rule of law and treating every person with dignity,” Biden said.

“And we’ll also take on directly the challenges posed by our prosperity, security and democratic values by our most serious competitor, China,” Biden declared.

“We’ll confront China’s economic abuses; counter its aggressive, coercive action; to push back on China’s attack on human rights, intellectual property and global governance,” he said.

Then, Biden specifically focused on the well-being of the American working class — including how it related to U.S. relations with China.

“Every action we take in our conduct abroad, we must take with American working families in mind,” said Biden. “Advancing a foreign policy for the middle class demands urgent focus on our domestic … economic renewal.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-diplomacy-delusion/

President Biden recently met with China’s Xi Jinping in Indonesia. As Gordon Chang reported for the Gatestone Institute, Biden’s goals for the meeting was to “lay out” each power’s “red lines” and “critical national interests,” and determine “whether or not they conflict with one another. And if they do, how to resolve it and how to work it out.” As usual with such diplomatic theater, nothing of substance was discussed, and tired bromides about “working together” and “candid exchange of views” were exchanged.

The assumptions behind Biden’s statement of the goals themselves reveal the dangerous flaws and delusional thinking that define the fetish of “diplomatic engagement,” which for a century has been the heart of the “new world order.” Ancient common sense and the sorry record of failed diplomacy should have long ago disabused us of this feckless idealism and reliance on “parchment barriers,” negotiated written agreements that almost always lack a robust, credible threat of force to punish violators.

Many of the problems that vitiate the recent talk with China have troubled diplomatic engagement for a century. In the case of China, Chang writes, for decades “of fruitless conversations with China, American presidents regularly postpone taking needed action.” Thus, like other talks with rivals and malignant enemies like North Korea and Iran, such talks produce “horrible results,” and allow our enemies “to buy time and often run out the clock”––just as North Korea did to create nuclear weapons, and Iran is currently doing to achieve the same end.

Moreover, such talks with the world’s most consequential power inflate China’s already arrogant sense of superiority, as well as our own weakness. Such a dynamic only encourages more aggression. Finally, these agreements, which usually lack a serious enforcement mechanism for punishing violations, are what Thomas Hobbes nearly four centuries ago called a “covenant without the sword,” mere “words of no strength to secure a man at all.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-bends-over-for-xi/

On Monday November 14 in Bali, Indonesia, Joe Biden met with President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). According to the White House press release, “the two leaders spoke candidly about their respective priorities and intentions across a range of issues,” including “transnational challenges such as climate change, global macroeconomic stability including debt relief, health security, and global food security” and so forth.

As Charlie Spierling noted, in their opening remarks, Biden and Xi failed to mention “the coronavirus pandemic that came from China.” This lapse comes in the wake of mounting evidence that the pandemic originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That lab was funded by Dr. Anthony Fauci to conduct dangerous gain of function research that makes viruses more lethal and transmissible.

“Everyone had to agree to the narrative” enforced by Fauci, former CDC director Dr. Redfield recently revealed. In early 2020, CDC official Dr. Nancy Messonnier even complimented China on its handling of the pandemic. On Monday, former State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus called out Biden for failing to bring it up.

“Why are we not talking about fentanyl — the chemical precursors that go from China to Mexico — the number one killer of young people? Why aren’t we talking about the origins of COVID-19?” Ortagus asked. “Are we just going to let them get away with this?”

The White House claimed Biden “raised concerns about PRC practices in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, and human rights more broadly.” But as Andrew Thornebrooke noted at The Epoch Times, “the Chinese Communist Party’s readout of the meeting did not mention any discussion of human rights.”

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/nov/12/biden-confuses-cambodia-colombia-second-time-durin/

President Biden confused Cambodia for Colombia for the second time, while meeting with Southeast Asian leaders this weekend in Phnom Penh.

Mr. Biden thanked Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Saturday, but referred to him as the leader of South American country Colombia.

“I want to thank the prime minister for Colombia’s leadership as ASEAN chair,” Mr. Biden said.

Prior to his trip to Egypt for the COP27 climate conference, Mr. Biden referred to Cambodia as Colombia again, though he quickly corrected himself the first time.

“I’m heading down to — first of all, going to Cairo for the environmental effort, then heading over to Colombia and then — I mean Cambodia,” he told reporters before he departed.

Mr. Biden is spending the weekend meeting with Southeast Asian leaders to work on coordinating an international effort towards climate change, global inflation, the war in Ukraine and other issues.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-policy-starts-with-taiwan-biden-xi-jinping-asia-indo-pacific-tpp-ipef-ccp-taipei-strategic-decision-katherine-tai-11668362330?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

When President Biden sits down Monday with Xi Jinping ahead of the G-20 summit, he’ll face a confident and increasingly aggressive Chinese President. Who knows what Mr. Xi will conclude about the aging American president, but there’s no doubt he will probe U.S. resolve on Taiwan.

Mr. Xi comes to the meeting having been given a historic third term by the Chinese Communist Party. Meanwhile, the U.S. recently concluded what it called “productive” meetings with Taipei over trade-related issues. Mr. Xi opposes closer U.S. ties with the island democracy.

The decision to pursue these trade negotiations is welcome. But the context is that this was a sop to Taiwan for the Biden Administration’s decision to exclude it from the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework that the President announced in May. A bipartisan group of 52 senators and 200 House Members wrote separate letters urging Taiwan’s inclusion.

IPEF is a watered down version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that Barack Obama signed in 2016 but President Trump withdrew from in one of his worst strategic decisions. IPEF is intended to shore up allies in the region by creating a rules-based community based on shared objectives.

China isn’t included because it isn’t a good-faith player, and the hope is that IPEF helps shield our friends from China’s bullying. Australia suffered when China, angered by its call for an honest investigation into the origin of Covid, retaliated by restricting Australian exports such as wine, coal and lobster.