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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20769/adopt-deterrence

The US neglect of vital security issues, from waning support for Ukraine and Israel, to its refusal to acknowledge the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear programme, is inflicting serious damage to America’s status as a global superpower.

America’s alarming non-confrontational policy towards the mullahs — even asking Europe not to censure Iran for its growing nuclear weapons program — has been a mainstay of both the Biden and Obama administrations. Their encouragement of Iran to acquire nuclear bombs has led the mullahs and their proxies to expand their malign activities throughout the region. Biden’s impotence has effectively invited Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia that controls most of Lebanon, to escalate its attacks against Israel with the aim of opening a new front on Israel’s northern border…

Another area where Washington’s incompetent handling of key security issues is the Pacific, where apparent US aversion to upsetting the Communist dictatorship headed by Chinese President Xi Jinping has recently led to an increase in aggressive Chinese military conduct towards the Philippines as part of Beijing’s efforts to expand its control over the South China Sea.

Washington’s persistent dithering on China, as well as other vital issues of global security such as Ukraine, Iran, and failing wholly to back Israel fighting not only for its own existence but protecting freedom in the West from aggressive autocracies, will certainly lend encouragement to Putin and other dictatorial regimes in Beijing and Tehran that the US will not present a serious challenge to their efforts to expand their global influence.

If the current administration allows terrorists and aggressors to win, what message does that send to all terrorists and aggressors?

The only way for the US to reclaim its global stature as the leader of the free world, after having tried everything else, is finally to adopt deterrence: warn every US adversary that if it provokes Washington, the response to each of them and their regimes will be a cost they do not wish to contemplate.

Whether US President Joe Biden remains in office or not, his recent debate with former President Donald J. Trump and has exposed the global catastrophe that US policies under the current administration have wrought.

The US neglect of vital security issues, from waning support for Ukraine and Israel, to its refusal to acknowledge the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear programme, is inflicting serious damage to America’s status as a global superpower.

Arguably the most damning examples of America’s increasingly faltering grip on key foreign policy issues were Biden’s recent decisions to slow-walk arms deliveries to Israel and failing to show sufficient solidarity for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20735/obama-biden-nuclear-armed-iran

America’s “diplomatic efforts,” instead of putting a stop to Iran’s nuclear program, have only resulted in a series of concessions that have empowered the Iranian regime. The lack of stringent enforcement and verification measures, and especially lifting secondary sanctions — by which any country that does business with Iran is prohibited from doing business with America — have allowed Iran to accelerate its nuclear activities “under the radar.”

Iran’s continued development of ballistic missile technology and its persistent test firings of missiles, both in clear violation of UN resolutions, were largely overlooked. In addition, the growing bellicosity of Iran’s huge militia, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as well as the nuclear program itself, were apparently never addressed with the seriousness they warranted — thereby allowing Iran to expand its military capabilities and regional aggression unchecked.

The Iranian regime strategically allocated these funds to support and expand its own proxy presence throughout the region, including, among other spots, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Mali, Burkina Faso and the Gaza Strip.

The Trump administration implemented a “maximum pressure” policy aimed at curtailing Iran’s economic capabilities by particularly focusing on reducing the country’s oil exports, and, most importantly, establishing “secondary sanctions” that banned any country doing business with Iran from doing business with the US.

The Biden administration’s passive approach of trying to use what might look like “protection money” to try to bribe Iran into compliance has simply backfired. Iran took the billions and, unsurprisingly, appears to have fungibly used them to finance several wars in the region — Hamas and Hezbollah’s war against Israel, the Houthis’ war against Israel and the US, and Iran’s own April 13 missile- and drone-attack against Israel — as well as Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

The Biden administration, sadly, seems to have been the enabling factor in Iran’s continued regional assertiveness and nuclear advancement. The administration’s series of policies favorable to Iran significantly strengthened the regime to the point where Iran and its proxies are now actively engaged in a comprehensive war against Israel, the Sunni Arab Gulf States and, since October, more than 150 attacks on US troops in the region.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20733/china-dangerous-delusion

Americans may think they are at peace with China, but China’s ruling organization has already announced otherwise.

[I]n May 2019, People’s Daily… carried a landmark editorial declaring a “people’s war” on America.

This phrase sounds like meaningless propaganda to American ears, but it has special significance to the Party. “A people’s war is a total war, and its strategy and tactics require the overall mobilization of political, economic, cultural, diplomatic, military, and other power resources, the integrated use of multiple forms of struggle and combat methods,” declared a column carried in April 2023 by PLA Daily, the official newspaper of the People’s Liberation Army.

China has in fact weaponized just about everything. In 1999, two Chinese air force colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, in Unrestricted Warfare, listed 24 methods of warfare and advocated the use of all of them against the United States.

[U]nrestricted warfare contemplates the turning of everything into a weapon, from business interactions to tourism to terrorism to illegal drugs to disease.

All of these incidents are in defiance of about a dozen written and oral warnings, from the Biden State Department and President Biden himself, that the U.S. was prepared to use force against China to discharge America’s obligations to Manila pursuant to the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty

The American political class—both Democrats and Republicans—refuse to see Chinese hostility and act appropriately against it. The Communist Party, therefore, did not have to deceive Americans because Americans were determined to deceive themselves.

Xi Jinping has made it clear that his goal is to bring down the international system, to “crack skulls and spill blood” as he announced in a landmark speech on July 1, 2021.

“It’s very hard for China to take certain steps without harming its own economy,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said on June 12. “And I think we now understand that economic performance is central right now to what is important to President Xi.”