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.]

https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/02/arming-taiwan-against-china-is-a-smarter-strategy-than-sending-u-s-troops/

President Biden shouldn’t make empty promises. The strategy should be about bleeding China if they overstretch, rather than committing American lives to a potentially attritional war.

Largely unreported in corporate media, last week Chinese fighters apparently simulated sinking a U.S. carrier in an attack. On Jan. 23, according to intel sources, cockpit chatter highlighted a command to simulate targeting the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier group.

China has been in news over sporadic border clashes with India and a flyby of Taiwan on the day of President Biden’s inauguration. But a direct simulation of a strike on a U.S. carrier group signifies that Beijing now considers even a limited military clash with America over Taiwan within the realm of possibility.

That brings us to the biggest foreign policy question, which the Biden administration is likely not yet ready to face. What happens the day after China launches an invasion of Taiwan?

So far, the Biden administration’s reaction has signaled rhetorical continuity with the Trump era. American foreign policy wonks, despite all divisions, are bipartisan about the China threat. One might not hear it much in public, but despite being divided between realists who prefer a narrower national interest-based approach, and liberals and neoconservatives who prefer interventions and democracy promotion, foreign policy circles so far are united in their threat appraisal of the rise of China as the largest threat facing the United States.

https://bit.ly/2McRa4h

Track record

President Biden’s foreign policy and national security team reflects a resurgence of the State Department’s worldview. An examination of this worldview and its track record is required, in order to avoid past mistakes.  

This track record consists of such critical issues as:

*In 1948, the State Department led Washington’s opposition to the recognition of the newly established Jewish State, contending that the Jewish State would be helpless against the expected Arab military assault, would be pro-Soviet, would undermine US-Arab relations,  destabilize the Middle East, threaten the US supply of oil and cause severe long-term damage to US interests.  Deputy Secretary of State, Robert Lovett, claimed: “recognizing the Jewish State prematurely would be buying a pig in a poke.”

*During the 1950s, the US courted Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, considering him a potential ally and extending non-military aid, while Egypt evolved as a key ally of the USSR, supporting anti-Western elements in Africa, intensifying anti-US sentiments among Arabs, and attempting to topple every single pro-US Arab regime.

*In 1978/79, the US betrayed the pro-US Shah of Iran, while embracing Ayatollah Khomeini – including intelligence sharing during the initial months of the Khomeini regime – under the assumption that he was controllable and seeking freedom, democracy and positive ties with the US.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/01/bidens-got-a-berlin-problem-brewing/

The rise of a German politician with a record of Putin pandering is bad news for the new administration.

T hose who expect President Joe Biden to singlehandedly fix the transatlantic relationship are in for a disappointment. Although the new administration in Washington takes a far more sympathetic view of Europe than its predecessor did, it is not clear that the sentiment will be reciprocated — especially in Berlin.

Following nearly two decades of Angela Merkel’s leadership, Armin Laschet, premier of Germany’s most populous state, Nordrhein-Westfalen, was elected on January 16 as the new leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Barring large swings in polls before the parliamentary election in September, Laschet is on track to become Germany’s next chancellor.

That is bad news for efforts to repair the U.S.–EU relationship. The presence of Laschet at the helm of Europe’s largest economy would give a boost for those in Europe who are reluctant to take their obligations within NATO seriously and would risk tethering the EU closer to both China and Russia.

Much as Biden and Laschet are likely to see eye-to-eye on climate change and other “multilateral” issues, the presumptive German chancellor is a man of little patience with those who see the promotion of democratic values as integral to foreign policy. As such, he is likely to frustrate U.S.-led efforts to hold Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and other dictators accountable for their domestic and international practices.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17012/china-push-biden

“Xenophobia” has been a constant Biden theme… Within moments [of President Trump’s “travel ban” last January] … Biden went on the attack. “This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysterical xenophobia and fear mongering to lead the way instead of science,” he said. There was nothing “xenophobic” about Trump’s travel ban. It was imposed on arrivals from the country where the disease first appeared. The ban, therefore, saved lives, and it would have saved even more if it had been stricter, announced sooner, and had been more rigorously enforced…. [If Biden] had been president then, the disease would almost certainly have spread faster in America. He was, during the campaign, against all such travel prohibitions.

Now, Biden is supporting another Chinese propaganda campaign…. The Chinese regime, which to this day uses geographical names for strains of virus, has been trying to ban any identification of China with the pandemic. Biden, with his executive order [rejoining the World Health Organization (WHO)], is doing Beijing’s work as Chinese leaders try to deflect blame.

This decision was especially hideous because WHO was complicit in China’s deliberate spread of the disease. WHO disseminated Beijing’s position that the coronavirus was not readily contagious even though the organization’s senior doctors knew it was highly transmissible. Moreover, WHO championed the Chinese campaign against travel bans. Americans died because of these and other indefensible actions on the part of WHO, and now Biden will go back to legitimizing and supporting that organization.

So far, Biden has taken steps that certainly encourage Beijing. His rejoining the Paris Agreement, his cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline, and his repeal of the ban on Chinese equipment in the American electrical grid, among others, favor, directly or indirectly, Beijing. Also of great concern is the failure of Commerce Secretary nominee Gina Raimondo to confirm that Huawei Technologies will remain on the department’s Entity List.

The Biden administration has just endorsed one of China’s most vicious attack lines against the United States.

The new administration’s actions look as if they are setting a pattern for its responses to Beijing on the disease and other matters.

On January 26, Biden signed his executive order titled “Memorandum Condemning and Combating Racism, Xenophobia, and Intolerance Against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States.”

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/

The Biden administration will have to walk a fine line when it resumes U.S. aid to the Palestinians due to an American law that blocks funding until they end a policy known as “pay to slay,” in which Western aid money is used to care for imprisoned terrorists and their families.

Republican lawmakers say a resumption in U.S. aid to the Palestinians could violate the Taylor Force Act, which mandates the Palestinian government stop using Western aid dollars to pay terrorists and their families. Congressional leaders told the Washington Free Beacon they will be closely watching the administration to ensure it does not violate U.S. law. The State Department maintains any resumption in aid will be done in compliance with the law, which does include exemptions for humanitarian assistance.

The Biden administration’s decision sets up an early showdown between the State Department and Congress over the future of U.S. foreign policy regarding the Palestinians and their continued support for terrorism. The Free Beacon first reported in October that the Palestinian government has continued paying terrorists despite the passage three years ago of the Taylor Force Act, according to findings that were published in a non-public State Department report sent to Congress.

“The resumption of any U.S foreign assistance that indirectly funds the Palestinian Authority’s pay-for-slay terrorist program would violate U.S. law, betray our Israeli partners, and put Americans living in or visiting Israel in harm’s way,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) told the Free Beacon.