A year ago, Joe Biden went before the U.N. General Assembly and said:
“Similarly, the groundbreaking effort we announced at the G20 to connect India to Europe through the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel will spur opportunities and investment across two continents.
This is part of our effort to build a more sustainable, integrated Middle East. It demonstrates how Israel’s greater normalization and economic connection with its neighbors is delivering positive and practical impacts even as we continue to work tirelessly to support a just and lasting peace between the Israelis and Palestinians—two states for two people.”
Two weeks later, Hamas invaded Israel and started a war that is almost a year old.
As Biden was giving his speech, Foreign Affairs magazine’s new issue was being wrapped up. His national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, had written an essay stating, “The Middle East is quieter than it has been in decades,” and that “we have de-escalated crises in Gaza and restored direct diplomacy between the parties after years of its absence.” After war broke out, the magazine dishonestly edited Sullivan’s essay on its website to spare him the humiliation, but the print issues had already been mailed out, allowing people to see those lines.
Over the past year, the world has become less stable on Biden’s watch. The explanation is simple: he has de-emphasized security as a part of U.S. foreign policy and spent most of the administration’s time on other things.
His speech at the U.N. last year is a good reference. He touched on security issues like the Ukraine war, Iran’s and North Korea’s aggressions, and China, but dedicated most of his time to topics like development aid, emerging technologies—because who doesn’t want an octogenarian deciding the fate of artificial intelligence and quantum computing?—and climate change.
It is no wonder that the world is on fire when the president of the United States is distracted.
But Biden did touch on some security issues.
He vowed that Iran would never go nuclear on his watch. Yet, Iran has increased its uranium stockpile and, according to his own administration, has for the first time begun taking action to develop the technology for nuclear warheads.
He also said that he was working with U.S. partners to address Iran’s aggressions. Yet, Iran’s aggressions have only increased since last year, leading to the deaths of six U.S. military members. (Though according to Kamala Harris, the U.S. military is not in active combat anywhere.) This is in addition to the Americans killed or currently captured as a result of Hamas’s war against Israel, funded by Iran.
Iran also, for the first time, directly attacked Israel in April, and Biden did his best to prevent Israel from retaliating. So much for working with partners to address Iran’s aggressions.
He talked about the importance of Ukraine’s triumph against Russia, yet his cowardice forced the Ukrainians to fight with their hands tied behind their backs. After a year, Ukraine has made no advances in the war because Biden is too scared of Russia to provide Ukraine with better weapons or to allow them to use the ones they have to their maximum capacities.
He said that he would “push back on aggression and intimidation and defend the rules of the road.” But China has increased its aggressions against the Philippines, a treaty ally of the United States, and Biden is again too scared to do anything about it.
He also mentioned Haiti:
For example, on Haiti, the Caribbean Community is facilitating a dialogue among Haitian society.
I think President Ruto of Kenya. I thank him for his willingness to serve as the lead nation of a U.N.-backed security support mission. I call on the Security Council to authorize this mission now. The people of Haiti cannot wait much longer.
Thanks to Biden’s multilateral leadership in Haiti, the crisis there has worsened. Last year, a former Haitian senator was released from a U.S. prison after serving his sentence for drug trafficking. Instead of keeping the guy with cartel connections away from Haiti, Biden sent him back there. Immediately, he used his connections with the gangs, launched a rebellion, and ousted the sitting prime minister.
Since then, Haitians have been fleeing to the United States en masse. Violence has increased. Starvation has worsened. And there is no resolution in sight.
The problem with progressives and Democrats is that they think everything is important in foreign policy except power. Instead, because they are obsessed with money, they think that everybody’s the same. If you just throw goodies at people, including other countries, they’ll be nice.
And this explains why everything is worsening under Biden. He has spent most of his time trying to bribe the world, thinking that they’ll like us. Development aid is very important. I wrote on Tuesday, for instance, that we should have done this with Ecuador. But it is not the most important thing. The most important thing is making our enemies fear us.
But to Biden’s credit, he doesn’t try to scare anyone because nobody will ever be intimidated by a doddering buffoon.
Now he’s trying to pass the torch of failure to Kamala Harris. As Biden said yesterday, Vice President Harris handled “everything from foreign policy to domestic policy” under his administration. So there are two questions to ask.
First, will she try to scare our enemies? Second, will everybody fear her? My haunch is no to both. So we should expect things to get worse if she becomes president.
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Warren only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.
