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September 2, 2021 - 5:00pm
America’s national security and foreign policy establishment — what you might call ‘the deep state’ — has never warmed to Joe Biden.
“I think he [Joe Biden] has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” wrote George W. Bush and Barack Obama’s defence secretary, Robert Gates, in his 2014 memoir, ‘Duty’. At the time, Gates’ remarks were interpreted in some quarters as intentionally cutting Biden down in favour of Hillary Clinton, who he boosted in the same book.
“We disagreed, significantly, on Afghanistan,” Gates clarified to Face the Nation in 2019, when the presidential campaign was kicking off. Perhaps most interestingly, Gates, also a former CIA director, remarked: “I think the vice president has some issues with the military.”
As the brass turned against Donald Trump in 2020, Gates clarified in the Wall Street Journal that he long believed Biden “was a man of genuine integrity and character,” while spelling out that he did not feel the same about the 45th President. But the wholesale dumping of the occupant of the Oval Office by almost every major institution in America belied Biden’s longtime, below-the-radar feud with a militarist mind-meld in Washington.
Now President, Biden overruled his generals and his Cabinet to get out of Afghanistan, or as the uber-hawkish senator Lindsey Graham, an ex-Biden friend, put it: the president “ignored sound advice” from the national security establishment and most importantly, “he’s been this way for forty years.”
And on Tuesday, President Biden delivered a speech his predecessor never did: an emboldened “America First” defence of why the United States left Afghanistan. “The decision about Afghanistan isn’t just about Afghanistan,” the president declared. “It’s about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries.”
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Subscribe“great umbrage has been taken by a cast of former officers, national security officials and war on terror intellectuals that the U.S. would change a thing after twenty years.”
Trump had high level talks with the Taliban, almost had them to Camp David, met them face to face, had a departure from Afghanistan, May 2021, mapped out…..
But you are right, as far as I can tell the Security Apparatus were full of TDS. The Military Industrial Complex does not take well to Isolationists.
I wonder whose side the security Officials are actually on – which is weird as they are totally built and funded to be on the side of America, and it would appear they are kind of vague about this, with all the Party Political agendas, and Lobbyists, and how once retired from National Security they end up in the private industries they worked with. The word ‘Rogue’ comes to mind. Their history has been remarkable for how wrong they seem to always be, and how expensive, and what a conduit for $ they are to their supporters. And one wonders what kind of dossiers they have built on everyone, how much Billions of $ are devoted to monitoring the citizens, suspicious or not.
The big question is What is the US and where is it headed?
The American empire of the last 120 or so years is coming to an end. America First heralded by Trump was just the death knell. The US’s prosperity has been built on global trade shored up by the US military and diplomatic endeavour in protecting America’s interests and broadening their markets. Continuously fighting wars in selected locations was less important in the bigger picture but it kept the military machine in working order and defence contractors in an expanding market. What will now happen to these sectors with no wars to test and use up technological advances and hardware/software? The international defence market and all other trade markets will similarly suffer when America’s international interests are weakened by America First. Is it only the defence industry where anyone is realising the consequences of the last 20 years’ policies?
After the empires of Rome, islam, Great Britain, the US, we are now seeing the creation and expansion of the Chinese empire, in Africa, Europe and indeed in the US. Having the two by far worst American presidents in my lifetime dabbling in this just makes me want to bury my head in the sand! Where are the visionary and strong future leaders in the Republican party? They are desperately needed now. I respect and agree with a lot of your comments and viewpoints but what’s your take on this?
As a Scot and European, I fear for Europe and its generally incompetent politicians with a few exceptions, I fear for NATO and the reality of domination by the Chinese empire and the evil doings of Putin. The American empire has not always been trustworthy towards its allies. I remember a seminar in Chicago 1997 at an infosecurity conference where a former member of the US govt, now a freelance consultant (does that ring a bell?), discussed espionage and listed the top 4 threats: Russia, China, Iran and France(!). He didn’t mention the elephant in the room, the US itsself!
Stephen, re’ your comment “The US’s prosperity has been built on global trade shored up by the US military and diplomatic endeavour in protecting America’s interests and broadening their markets. Continuously fighting wars in selected locations was less important in the bigger picture but it kept the military machine in working order and defence contractors in an expanding market.” I believe the other elephant in the room here is debt. Without Nixon taking the $ reserve currency off the gold standard the USA would not have been able to issue more $$ continously and they would not have been able to afford these wars. From Vietnam to Afghanistan it goes the same way. Arms makers/insiders lobby for war, politician/insiders create a war, buy $billions in arms with new debt/treasurys, arms makers send cut to politicians, everyone is happy. Print some more money for the social programmes for the dissafected population. Print some more to prop up the Saudis in exchange for maintaining the Petrodollar status/$ demand. The coming collapse all winds back to global debt in a network of ways you cannot even begin to imagine until you make a study of it.
“defence contractors in an expanding market” – nice, if true, but it isn’t. The contractor base has been steadily shrinking over the last 30 years to the point of near non-competition. That’s in tune with a declining share of GDP.
As far as I am aware Biden voted for every one of those “remaking other countries” wars – am I wrong? Sounds like he is picking up the zeitgeist of the 50% of the country that voted for Trump who want to stop wasting American lives, for his own ends not because he believes it.
I would be curious to know which war?
Do you mean which war he voted for or which war he is now against Lesley?
As much a political chameleon as Joe Biden is, Su Mac, I’m not sure he believes in much of anything apart from Joe Biden’s prosperity and well-being. And that goes double for his giggling Vice President.
Agree. The idea of him taking a stand somehow against the Deep State as per the authors assertion is laughable. How long has he been feeding from the trough? 40 years is it? Anyways – he has probably forgotten what his opinions were, if any, some years ago…
A lot of the talk has been about a withdrawal from a “forever war” vs the military industrial complex.
Only it’s not that simple – foreign policy, including warfighting is on a big sliding scale. For Afghanistan there were countless options between forcing a democracy at the end of a barrel and leaving the country to its fate.
Biden chose the latter. It’s not that this was intrinsically the wrong choice, it’s that he didn’t adjust when reality changed, and obstinately stuck to the original plan.
A very different scenario from a very different era, but it is only now that NATO has fully withdrawn significant forces from Germany. Few questioned their placement, even after their original purpose and job had changed dramatically over the course of nearly 80 years. Point being any solution will likely have to combine the political with economic and military support.
In Afghanistan, they chose complete capitulation instead of trying to protect some of what had been gained over 20 years of turbulence. We would be deluded to think that sitting back and ignoring crises would be the best option.
I think it’s a phony war. Biden and Trump both saw the futility of the interminable middle east war. Trump explicitly wanted to pivot toward China and Biden has signaled he wants to do the same. It has been reported that the US lifted its long standing objection to the NordStream 2 pipeline in exchange for Germany’s support in the US’s future efforts against China.
The military and its defense contractors will doubtless reap billions making high tech weapons, improved warships, improved satellite-based monitoring equipment for possible conflict in the South China Sea and whatever proxy conflicts appear around the world.
I don’t buy this interpretation of Biden as principled an statesmanlike. Its a dodge to get him off the hook of incompetence.