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October 4, 2024 - 1:25pm
Antony Blinken’s recent op-ed in Foreign Affairs is one of the most exceptional pieces of fiction I’ve read in a long time. Its account of the past four years is so detached from reality that it seems to be plucked straight out of a bad direct-to-video Hollywood movie. The plot goes more or less as follows: years of poor leadership have left the US weakened and divided, which emboldens the Bad Guys — Russia, China, Iran and North Korea — to team up and launch an unprecedented threat on the “free, open, secure, and prosperous world that the United States and most countries seek”, sowing chaos and violence in the hope of plunging the world into a New Dark Age.
But their evil plans are thwarted when the countries of the Free World, led by the US and its valiant newly-elected president Joe Biden, succeed in putting aside their differences to jointly fight back and re-establish peace and stability in Ukraine, the Middle East, the Asia-Pacific and elsewhere. The story ends with a bit of a cliffhanger. The US-led Free World has succeeded for now in foiling the Bad Guys’ plans for world domination — “The Biden administration’s strategy has put the United States in a much stronger geopolitical position today than it was four years ago”, our narrator tells us — but they haven’t been defeated yet…
It makes for an entertaining read. But equally, is Blinken really unaware of the fact that the Biden administration’s foreign policy stands out as the most hawkish and reckless since the George W. Bush era? The world is certainly more geopolitically volatile than it was four years ago.
On Ukraine, regardless of whether or not one thinks America made poor decisions which provoked Russia, the Biden administration arguably dashed all opportunities for a negotiated settlement to the conflict. It has instead opted to use Ukraine as a proxy to fight Russia, in what is rapidly escalating into a direct, potentially nuclear Nato-Russia war. It is also alleged to have been directly involved in, or at least allowed, the bombing of the Nord Stream pipeline, the worst act of industrial terrorism in recent European history.
In the Middle East, the White House cast away the promised renewal of the nuclear agreement with Iran by setting rigorous conditions that Washington knew Tehran could never accept. Over the past year, it has offered Israel near-unconditional political, economic and military support even in the face of the fierce assault on Gaza, thus contributing directly to the dramatic regional escalation that we are now witnessing. Meanwhile, in the Asia-Pacific, the Biden administration diluted the US’s historic commitments made in the “One China” accord with Beijing regarding Taiwan and pursued an unprecedented military build-up in the region in preparation for all-out war with China, while waging “a full-blown economic war” against the country.
The Biden administration has acted clumsily in what looks like a desperate attempt to stem the decline of US hegemony and slow down, or ideally reverse, the ongoing transition towards a multipolar system. This a rather different story from the plot of Blinken’s movie. That’s not to say that everything he writes is fictional: in some respects it is true that “the United States in a much stronger geopolitical position today than it was four years ago”.
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SubscribeHard to see how any detached observer could view the Biden presidency as anything but a catastrophe for both the US and the world.
Disasters for the US shouldn’t necessarily mean a disaster for the World, but it will because they’re going to take us all with them.
It’s a double whammy for them and the West. Simultaneously flushing any pretences of both moral and military superiority down the khazi in a single Presidency. Well done them.
Blinken does what he is told to do. He’s not a statesman; he’s a partisan.
Yikes, Mr Fazi, when Joe Biden told Israel to “take one for the team,” was that what you call “near-unconditional political, economic and military support?” Iran’s latest attack is, I think, a direct consequence of Biden and Blinken hobbling Israel, not to mention the go-slow on delivery of promised munitions. Plus the US gives more financial aid both to Jordan and Egypt than it does to Isreal. Moreover, the aid to Israel is conditioned on it being spent on US armaments. “Near unconditional supprt,” I don’t think so.
They give aid to Egypt and Jordan to prop up pro-Israeli dictatorships. Egypt helps blockade Gaza and Jordan helped shoot down Iranian missiles. So even the aid given to countries other than Israel is meant to help Israel.
Eh. They should give more to Ukraine and nothing to Israel.