God Save the Queen and Biden’s Foreign Policy He’s as confused about Afghanistan, Ukraine and the Middle East as about the British monarch. Gerard Baker
‘God save the queen, man!” said Joe Biden, in an unexpected windup to remarks in Connecticut about gun control last week. Like many of his utterances, the strange outburst prompted widespread confusion. What could this latest eructation from the presidential brain mean?
He knows that Elizabeth II, for 70 years the usual subject of the prayer, is already beyond the good Lord’s earthly protection, surely? He was at the funeral, and apparently awake throughout. Perhaps with all those tasteful Pride Month displays around the White House last week, his loyalty has been captured by a queen of the drag variety. Or maybe it was just an indication that he’s decided the nation needs to amp up the deference it’s been showing the first lady, and a more regal honorific than “Dr. Jill” will now be expected.
But to me the remark made a curious sort of sense, inadvertently reflecting the confused, uncertain and slightly out-of-touch approach to the rest of the world that characterizes the administration’s foreign policy.
What else could explain the news last week that the Biden team is putting together a deal that isn’t a deal with the ayatollahs in Iran?
The plan, according to multiple reports, is for Iran to agree not to enrich its uranium too close to the 90% level needed for weaponization and to release some American hostages, in exchange for sanctions relief and other assistance.
Aside from the naiveté you need to think that Tehran will abide by an agreement that doesn’t even require a signature, the tentative deal betrays trademark confusion and inconsistency in Biden administration policy. Iran is destabilizing U.S. security everywhere it can. Iran is sending drones to Russia to help it conduct its war in Ukraine. Does it make sense to augment the mullahs’ financial resources at the same time we are supplying tens of billions of dollars to help Ukraine?
Administration officials insist this money will be used only for humanitarian needs. Surely someone at Treasury could explain the fungibility of money and point out that money into one Iranian pot frees up money for another.
Then there’s the continuing confusion and hesitancy about Ukraine. The Biden team made the right decision to back Kyiv, but why do they keep doing so in ways that seem designed to provide just enough arms to help the Ukrainians avoid defeat but not enough to help them win? Over the past 15 months, the administration has initially rejected, then demurred and finally, belatedly, agreed to send, successively, missiles, tanks and jets—in every case supplying the materiel long after it might have done even greater damage to Vladimir Putin’s forces.
Middle East policy has been characterized by similar inconsistency and uncertainty. Saudi Arabia, a vital U.S. ally, was told initially it was a pariah state after the murder by its crown prince’s henchmen of Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate. Then economic reality set in and someone on the Biden team belatedly realized that Riyadh still controls a sizable portion of the world’s oil supply, so Saudi was back in the Democrats’ good books—but again too late. Its new allies Russia and China are now the recipients of favorable treatment. And the U.S. and its allies are still paying the price for the startlingly unrealistic assumptions on which the decision to withdraw all forces from Afghanistan was made and the confusion and chaos with which it was executed.
Above all, this uncertainty and ambivalence about global strategy is reflected in the president’s handling of the nation’s biggest strategic challenge: China. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Beijing over the weekend for the highest-level visit since the Chinese humiliated the U.S. with the spy-balloon caper earlier this year. It’s unlikely the trip yielded much, and it looked as if it was made in supplicatory form by the top U.S. diplomat. Desperate to restore some high-level dialogue, the administration seems ready to look past China’s proliferating abuses at home and abroad to play at a new détente.
All this against a backdrop of mixed and confusing signals about whether the administration seeks to confront or accommodate Beijing, with the president sounding bellicose about Taiwan while his underlings try to soothe tensions.
The administration’s critics at home often blame the president for projecting weakness at a time when American leadership is already much in doubt. The core problem is that Mr. Biden seems unsure and ambivalent about what exactly his strategic priorities and objectives are. Too often in the most important parts of the world the U.S. posture today recalls the stinging accusation Winston Churchill leveled against the appeasers in the 1930s: “Decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.”
Against all this a little confusion about who still reigns in Britain seems merely rather quaint. God save the queen!
Comments are closed.
