In my estimation, the mainstream American consensus on foreign policy is profoundly misguided. We have been too weak on Putin and too aggressive against China.
Putin’s Russia poses a clear and present danger to world peace and therefore must be stopped flat in its tracks. That is the hard lesson of World War II: when a megalomaniacal despot begins a sociopathic rampage, he must be stopped cold, not appeased.
The Biden Administration, rather than handling the matter masterfully, has been far too diffident and has failed to rally NATO to defend Ukraine from Putin’s unprovoked, senseless invasion and ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity. Despite the Administration’s grand talk, it has offered only halting, insufficient support at every stage.
By so acting, the US and NATO have signaled to the world that we will stand down whenever a ruthless dictator with nukes threatens to use one. That is contrary to MAD principles and an open inducement to sanguinary dictators everywhere to do their worst.
In the bargain, the US and the UK have openly breached the security guarantees that they formally gave to Ukraine in 1994 in exchange for its relinquishment of its nuclear arsenal. Who will accept our “security guarantee” the next time?
It all leads me to ask, what is the point of having an immensely powerful military alliance such as NATO at such great expense, if it is paralyzed by its timidity and therefore cannot keep the peace or stop ongoing genocide even in Europe?
Also, where has Biden’s leadership been in ensuring that Sweden will be admitted despite Turkey’s unacceptable stalling?
In contrast, before Trump’s tenure China did not pose a clear and present danger to world peace, whatever objections we might have had to its policies and practices, especially its authoritarian repression of the essential civil liberties within China itself and its various forms of intellectual piracy and mercantilist commerce.
But those objections seem not to have been the animating concerns behind the trade war/cold war unleashed by Trump and perfected by Biden. Rather, the real American objection appears to be a fear that China’s economy might overtake our own. That fear has proven greatly exaggerated and likely mistaken. Regardless, it is not grounds to try throttle China’s economic progress, but rather should prod us to improve ourselves in a host of ways. Instead, China has become our scapegoat, which we too often blame for our own homegrown failings.
Our scapegoating of China has led to dangerous policy mistakes. First came Trump’s erratic trade war against China and others. It has been followed by the Biden Administration’s professional trade war against China, which seems to have convinced that country’s authoritarian leaders that we seek to destroy its economy.
By so acting, we have surely strengthened the hand of hard-liners within the Chinese government and likely goaded them to adopt or double down on all kinds of harmful policies that China likely would not have pursued, or at least not reinforced, had we continued our longstanding, successful policy of measured containment and engagement, which worked reasonably well from Nixon to Obama. The policy wasn’t broke and didn’t require fixing.
The Trump-Biden approach in contrast has precipitated an avoidable Cold War and practically pushed China into embracing an alliance with Russia, even though its own long-term interest lies in continued robust trade with North America and the EU.
I have no illusions about Xi or what kind of regime his government operates; but the former policy was much better than the current one in every way.
Indeed, the Trump-Biden approach is nothing short of statecraft malpractice at the worst possible time: if you have a mortal enemy such as a Putin or a Hitler, you do not needlessly pick fights with other adversaries who do not pose a mortal threat. When Hitler overran most of Europe and terror-bombed London, we even made common cause with Stalin, and we didn’t make opposition to the Soviet Union the cornerstone of our foreign policy or mistake Stalin as our primary foe while Hitler’s armies burned Europe.
Of nearly equal importance, the unprovoked Trump-Biden trade war against China has been inflationary, introduced ongoing uncertainty in global trade, and threatens to lessen fundamental worldwide prosperity, including US prosperity.
Yes, we have sorely wanted improved terms of trade with China and other trading partners located elsewhere, and we have badly neglected our own industrial base, which requires industrial re-shoring and a renewed emphasis on training skilled tradespeople and engineers. But we have had no need for a new Cold War with China, least of all now.
I suspect that President Biden has adopted his anti-China policies because he or his handlers think that it will play well in the US. I cannot be sure, however, since Mr. Biden never appears in public to defend or explain the policy or any other. The most that we ever hear from him are unedifying, carefully pre-packaged soundbites. That is unacceptable conduct for a President, whose job entails constant, unscripted give-and-take exchanges and bracing scrutiny from a free press.
Mr. Biden’s near-total absence from the national conversation and demagogic soundbites are signal failings that bother independents nearly as much as the woke worldview that flourishes in the blue states. By itself, it is a disqualifying circumstance for the next election.