Global Research

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

***

.

Introduction

From this retired US Army Master Sergeant’s perspective, the success or failure of Mr Biden’s foreign policy will hinge entirely upon one basic but ultimate standard that was set by his predecessor.    

Whatever Trump did or did not do, or un-did, in the realm of foreign policy and international relations, he at least did not start any New Wars, nor did he  significantly expand or escalate any already proceeding Old Wars.  

Unfortunately, there is another Trumpian standard of performance that Mr Biden is already looking forward to being able to surpass:  the size of annual federal budget Deficits that add to an ever-growing at a record pace national, sovereign debt.

And to do this, he will need and get all kinds of help from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue and the folks at the Federal Reserve; which he already has.  That is the one thing that regime change in Swampland never changes.

20+ Questions.  

President Biden’s foreign policy address at the US Department of State on February 4 presents what folks in the close artillery, tactical air, and naval gunfire support business call a “target-rich environment.”  Inspectors General often use that term, as well.

That is, there are all kinds of opportunities to challenge assertions, raise questions, and demand answers.  Among them are:

1. If “America is Back” (Biden’s foreign policy stance] is to be the replacement meme for “MAGA,” to exactly What is America back? To the way things were under Obama or Clinton?How about Bush II or I?
2. If “Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy,” when has it Ever been at the center of American foreign policy? Or does “diplomacy” include our history of regime changes, including assassinations, interfering in elections, and overthrowing democratically elected governments and replacing them with compliant, lackey dictatorships?  Does it include sanctions, embargoes, and other forms of economic and financial warfare that kill, cripple, and maim just as effectively as smart bombs and drones?
3. Is the Defense Department’s “global posture review of our military footprint” the official declaration that Cold War II is all but upon us because…. . Well, because  Russia and China seem to have had the temerity to dare to even think about challenging America’s unipolar global military, economic, financial, and political hegemony that has prevailed since the end of Cold War I in 1991?

3a.  How much must the $1++ trillion global empire, national defense, intelligence, surveillance, Fatherland security budget have to be increased in order for America to successfully defend itself against and confront, combat, and ultimately defeat this new bipolar threat to that hegemony?

4. Wasn’t bringing “democracy” and all the promised joys of a Pax Americana to the Middle East our primary motivation for invading, “liberating,” and occupying Iraq [besides, of course, preventing a mushroom cloud over Peoria from one of Saddam’s WMDs], in the first place? With the ultimate result of turning that land and nation into a true and total “shit hole”? And then turning the whole Fertile Crescent into a Killing Field as an encore, in the second?
5. How does Biden’s claim that our goals are “[d]efending freedom, championing opportunity, upholding universal rights, respecting the rule of law and treating every person with dignity,” correlate to and jibe with our history of installing, maintaining, and sustaining some of the most brutal dictatorships on the planet?
6. If Russian dissident Alexei Navalny has “been targeted for exposing corruption [and] should be released immediately and without condition,” what did Assange, Snowden, and Manning do but expose corruption and a whole lot more?And why shouldn’t they be immediately released, pardoned, compensated, and awarded Presidential Medals of Freedom?
7. When Biden, in his words, “made it clear to President Putin in a manner very different from my predecessor, that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia’s’ aggressive actions, interfering with our elections, cyber attacks, poisoning its citizens are over,” what did Putin have to say in response?One can pretty well imagine what he was probably thinking, eh?  Wouldn’t you just Love to see an SNL skit on that?
8. Why do we still have troops in Germany 75 years after defeating the Nazis in World War II and 30 years after the Soviet Union disappeared? Or in Japan after doing the same thing in the Pacific just as long ago?And in Korea 67 years after the conclusion of that first of America’s many subsequent Wars-by-Presidential Fiat, as opposed to by Congressional Declaration?  And while we’re at it, why do we have 800 military bases scattered across 80 nations and 160,000 troops on them?  Or is that part of how Swampland ~ pre- or post-Trump ~ defines “Great”?
9. If “we’re ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arm sales,” how do we plan to ensure that those weapons and technology we sell or give them ~ to “support and help Saudi Arabia defend its sovereignty, and it’s territorial integrity and its people” ~ won’t be used in Yemen?After all, that’s where the primary “threat” to its sovereignty, territory, and people is coming from, isn’t it; at least in the Saudi mind?  Or is it Iran?  Or is it Israel?

9a.  And wasn’t “defending Saudi Arabia” from a marauding Saddam what got us into this whole goat rope in the first place?  When, after “liberating” Kuwait, we stayed put and kept a full-time, combat-ready military presence in and on Islam’s holiest Land?

10. For all the talk about Myanmar and Yemen, why was there was no mention whatsoever of Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria [or Guantanamo], and our so-called “Global” so-called “War On” so-called “Terrorism”?And what are the Biden plans for those complete and total failures of American foreign policy?   Of which he was an active participant.

See Item 16 below.

11. How many of those “80 million displaced people suffering all around the world” are displaced directly ~ or indirectly but ultimately ~ because of America’s “Forever War”?  And if “the United States’ moral leadership on refugee issues was a point of bipartisan consensus for so many decades,” hasn’t there also been an even stronger  bipartisan consensus on perpetrating and then perpetuating that War, as well?  That War created and continues to create all those refugees for these past two decades?

11a.  In other words, Who and What have caused the vast majority of those refugees to flee their homelands?  In Southwest Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, is it not that Forever War, which is no closer to being over, let alone “won” [whatever that means or ever meant] than it was on 9/12?

11b.  And is not the primary reason that people are seeking to escape Central America following the chaos and collapse left over from Ollie’s (Oliver North) Crusade there in the 80s, that built on 80+ years of US military, economic, and political invasion .[See Smedley Butler’s War Is A Racket for an overview.]

11c.  Or do they seek to escape the avenues through which major portions of America’s insatiable demand for drugs must pass on their way to market?  One can only wonder how preemptively ending America’s failed War On Drugs by legalizing everything would cut down on the number of people trying to flee where the drugs come from, and through which they pass on the way up to Gringoland, eh?

11d.  Instead of “restoring our refugee admissions program” and bringing 125,000 of these folks to America, why not stop creating refugees in the first place? 

12. What business is it of the United States as to how any other sovereign, independent nation treats its LGBTQs, or anybody else?  Is it the business of any other nation to tell the US how its Cops should treat its African Americans?  They can tell us all they want but, are we going to listen to them?  Should we?  Then why should they bother to listen to us?
13. What is “a foreign policy for the middle class”?Is that different from a foreign policy for the poor?  Or one for the rich?

13a.   How much is the “American Rescue Plan” and so forth ~ all to be paid for with borrowed money ~ going to cost future taxpayers when the bills come due, and the collection agent shows up and demands payment because our credit is no longer good?

13b.  How are the “Buy American policies” ramped up last week any different from Trumpite neo-mercantilisms?   And isn’t the idea that American business can “compete and win on the global stage, if the rules of international trade aren’t stacked against us” kind of, sort of, almost exactly what Trump proclaimed on numerous occasions?

14. Can government action end the “systemic racism and the scourge of white supremacy in our own country”? Particularly when white supremacy and racism were built directly into the American system of government and governance from the very beginning with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and precidential executive and legislative actions and judicial decisions?
15. How successful have our investments in developing countries over the past 20 years been in “creat[ing] new markets for our products and reduc[ing] the likelihood of instability, violence and mass migrations”?  Has foreign aid worked?  Did “nation building” work?  And if so, where, how, and, most importantly, for whom?  And what has been America’s return on that investment?

15a.  While it may or may not be true that “when we strengthen health systems in far regions of the world, we reduce the risk of future pandemics that could threaten our people and our economy,” how about if we focus on fixing our own totally and completely broken health care system first, and thenworry about fixing everybody else’s?

16. In opening his address with lavish praise for the new Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, with whom Mr Biden has “worked together for over 20 years,” one is immediately led to ask:And what good, positive things did You two accomplish over the course of these last 20 years working together that the American people or anybody else on the planet have benefited from?  Anything?  According to Wiki, Blinken “advocated for the 2003 invasion of Iraq,” and “[d]uring his tenure in the Obama administration, he helped craft U.S. policy on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the nuclear program of Iran.”  All major, booming successes, almost everybody in Washington would agree, yes?
17. In response to Mr Biden’s declaration that “We want a rigorous debate that brings all perspectives and makes room for dissent. That’s how we’ll get the best possible policy outcomes,” one must ask: But what’s on the table? Overseas base closures and bringing the troops home?  Ending our economic warfare against Iran, Venezuela, and anybody else who crosses us?  Reducing ~ or at least not increasing ~ the nation’s $1++ trillion global empire, national defense, intelligence, surveillance, Fatherland security budget?  And like blasphemies?  How much dissent from the established, dominant paradigm perspective is actually welcome, and would be seriously considered?
18. In response to “the passions of Eleanor Roosevelt that declared the audacious idea of universal rights that belong to all,” this raises the two most important questions confronting America and the entire Planet today:

• What is the difference between Human Needs and Human Wants, on the one hand, and Human Rights and Human Responsibilities, on the other?
• What is the proper function of government as regards the meeting of those Needs and the satisfying of those Wants, on the one hand, and the protection of those Rights and the fulfillment of those Responsibilities, on the other?
• Which then leads to the following questions:  Is Health Care a Human Need and Want, or a Human Right and Responsibility?  What about Nutrition and Sanitation?  Education?  Or Housing, Employment, Physical and Financial Security, and Leisure?  Water? Truth?

19. How does Mr Biden’s vision for a new American foreign policy that takes America “Back” to the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset”?
20. According to Mr Biden, “There’s no longer a bright line between foreign and domestic policy.” Is that a reference to our failed War Against International Terrorism and its newly hatched  War Against Domestic Terrorism?   One can already imagine that a Congressional Authorization to Use Military Force Against Domestic Terrorists or AUMF-DT, and a domesticated version of the USA PATRIOT Act are already in Final Draft, waiting for the Deals to be cut, made, and done.  Mr Biden got a lot of experience with that sort of thing in a parallel situation and environment, having been in DC in 2001.

Concluding Remarks as outlined in the Introduction

From this retired US Army Master Sergeant’s perspective, the success or failure of Mr Biden’s foreign policy will hinge entirely upon one basic but ultimate standard that was set by his predecessor.

Whatever Trump did or did not do, or un-did, in the realm of foreign policy and international relations, he at least did not start any New Wars, nor did he measurably significantly expand or escalate any already proceeding Old Wars.

But the proposed, planned, and programmed “War Against Domestic Terrorism” will change Everything.

[Author’s Note:  All quotes are Biden’s and are from “Joe Biden Speech on Foreign Policy Transcript February 4: ‘America is Back’”; accessed 020421]

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Jeffrey G. Moebus is a 74-year-old retired US Army Master Sergeant who spent two years in Viet Nam in the 60s, and two years in the pre-Operation Desert Storm Middle East in the 80s.  He lives in Sitka, Alaska on the sailboat he brought up from San Francisco Bay nine years ago this summer, and is the Chronicler for Veterans Against War [Sitka Platoon].

Featured image is from OffGuardian