American Foreign Policy Fails Yet Again
American foreign policy has failed again. Putin has been threatening Ukraine for months and now he’s pulled the proverbial trigger with an invasion. American foreign policy “experts” have been screwing up America’s foreign policy for most of the past 50 years.
While Biden is a Democrat, Republicans have their share of failures as well. President Richard Nixon told us that if we engaged with China, they would come our way and give up their totalitarian ways. President George H.W. Bush continued with that wrong-headed approach. So did his son, President George W. Bush. After almost 40 years of engagement, China is not one inch closer to being a western democracy than it was when Mao was killing millions of Chinese to consolidate his power. But what has happened is we helped make China an economic and manufacturing powerhouse and now they’re using that power to threaten us and the rest of the world.
Biden ran for office telling America, “Vladimir Putin doesn’t want me to be President. He doesn’t want me to be our nominee. If you’re wondering why — it’s because I’m the only person in this field who’s ever gone toe-to-toe with him.” That was laughable when said. But now, no intelligent person can possibly see it as anything but a laugh line.
The truth is Putin invaded Ukraine for one very simple reason — Biden signaled that the American response would be limited and mild. Putin is upset that Russia’s borders are the smallest they’ve been since the 1600s. While he probably doesn’t plan to enlarge Russia’s borders to match the Soviet era boundaries, he’d like to get at least part way there. He’s angry with former Russian leaders who allowed Russia to shrink in the aftermath of the fall of Soviet communism.
Biden started off his presidency sabotaging America on day one — undoing everything that had made America an energy exporter and an international energy powerhouse. This obviously has hurt Americans in that they are paying a great deal more to fill their tanks and for energy generally. But it benefited Putin greatly because Russia doesn’t have much of an economy outside of oil and gas. So as energy prices soared, Putin and his oligarch friends had a great deal of extra cash to play with. Suddenly, a certain level of Russian adventurism was financially possible.
When you add in the fact that Biden has been advertising weakness from day one, Putin has been licking his chops to get started restoring at least some of Russia’s former prestige.
Green lighting the Russian pipeline — Nord Stream 2 — while shutting down our own pipeline projects and making domestic energy production harder, sent a strong signal to Putin that Biden is weak and uncommitted to any sort of strength based foreign policy.
But it didn’t stop there. Biden signaled to Iran that he wanted to recreate the Iranian nuclear deal at almost any cost. That screamed weakness. Then there was the chaotic and poorly executed withdrawal from Afghanistan. It gave the appearance of the US being chased out of Afghanistan by the Taliban. It turned out that Biden wasn’t serious when he said he wouldn’t order withdrawal until all of the Americans were home. And while the Taliban allowed the attack on Americas despite Biden’s stated trust, Biden did nothing. As the world watched, they saw a weak, ineffectual American president.
Every time, Biden proclaimed that “America is back”, observant dictators round the glove laughed to themselves and knew what he actually meant is “America is back-peddling”.
With the evidence of weakness mounting in Afghanistan, the Chinese regime increased its threats and incursions against Taiwan. And Putin began to amass troops on the border of Ukraine and claimed that he felt threatened even though he’s had Russian troops occupying parts of Ukraine since Barack Obama was President and Job Biden was Vice President. (Remember, Obama telling then Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to please let Putin know that after his reelection if the Russians would help him by not pressing him on missile defense and other issues, Obama would “have more flexibility.”) So Obama and Biden have been signaling weakness to Putin for quite a while!
Biden’s weakness has done nothing but encourage the world’s totalitarians to actively pursue their goals. This is precisely why weakness is provocative. And it is why peace is obtained through strength.
Biden announced what he called strong sanctions — but the truth is two Russian financial institutions were sanctioned and while the Biden administration’s rhetoric has hardened considerably in the last 24 hours, it is quite simply too little, too late. You cannot spend more than a year advertising your weakness and expect that modest sanctions and a tersely worded speech will undo the harm of consistently displayed weakness. While Americans are paying a very heavy price for Biden’s failures of leadership — higher energy prices, a weak and sluggish economy, record inflation, and a never ending state of emergency — we do not have an army with high tech tanks, and other weapons systems arrayed at our boarder and now invading us. Biden’s weakness will cost thousands of lives before he is done. Americans would do well to remember that weakness is, indeed, provocative.
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