Joe Biden’s foreign policy is an unmitigated disaster in every respect. The one bright spot was his decision to finally withdraw all American combat troops from Afghanistan, but that was quickly eclipsed by his seizure of Afghan government assets, which has contributed to a famine in that country.
He ran on restoring Obama’s multinational agreement with Iran for that country to stop any development of nuclear weapons, but refused to lift sanctions on Iran as a gesture of good faith. The Iranians quite reasonably demanded the US make the first conciliatory move, since it was the US, under President Trump, that unilaterally withdrew from the deal in the first place.
These two events alone convinced most of the rest of the world that the American government simply cannot be trusted to keep its word. That will have long term consequences which I cannot predict, except to say it’s probably going to hurt working class Americans. Everything else Biden does certainly does that.
Biden’s policy towards Russia in particular is a total failure for the United States, even when measured by Biden’s own stated goals. The US and its allies were to provide Ukraine with the means to repulse the Russian invasion, while at the same time crippling Russia’s economy and ability to wage war by imposing massive economic sanctions on it. So what happened?
After an initial strategic blunder, the Russians did what they have done throughout their history—they changed their strategy into one of simply grinding down Ukrainian resistance by massive artillery bombardments and slow, cautious, encirclements of Ukrainian units which hold their ground.
Using no more than a third of their military, according to the Pentagon, Russia is slowly accomplishing its stated objective of driving Ukrainian government forces out of the two breakaway republics in the Donbass. However you look at it, Ukraine is not repulsing the invasion and driving the Russians out, nor does it show any indication of ever being able to do so.
Biden’s economic war against Russia has also failed. Miserably. The Russian ruble, after an initial nose-dive, has fully recovered to prewar levels. Russia has made trade deals with China, India, Iran, and other countries, trading its vast oil, gas, and other resources in exchange for much of what it, and its people, need. As for its ability to wage war, it was known way ahead of time that Russia is self-sufficient in that regard, and has been since Stalin was around.
The US attempted to use the entire Western banking system against Russia, and that strategy has only started to spectacularly backfire. Other countries, most notably China, India, and Saudi Arabia, are now trading with each other in currencies other than the dollar for the first time in many decades. This means that the petrodollar is doomed, and the dollar has already started losing its value in relation to other currencies.
That means the US, which manufactures almost nothing except weapons and petroleum products anymore, will have to pay more for imports, which will drive up inflation even more than it is now.
The consequences at home of the sanctions against Russia were not thought out at all by Biden and his pack of wealthy Ivy League-educated advisers. Some huge percentage of fertilizer used by American farmers used to come from Russia. Now that price is skyrocketing, which will drive up food prices in grocery stores even more. The natural gas market is in chaos, and eventually the American working class will be hit hard by rapidly rising utility rates.
In short, Biden’s foreign policy, by any reasonable standard, is an ongoing disaster for the American economy in general and the vast majority of the American people in particular. Oh, the MIC and Big Oil and a few other hyperwealthy outfits and individuals are rolling in the dough, but most Americans? Most American businesses and corporations, for that matter?
For them, for me, for my family and community, and for most of you reading this, shit’s fucked up bad, and getting worse.
Meanwhile, the US government and its compliant corporate media behave as if any criticism of Biden’s obviously disastrous foreign policy is somehow treasonous. Well, if George Washington came back he would be labeled as a Putin puppet, for he was the one who warned us against foreign entanglements back in the day.
Not that old George would care what Biden had to say about him. He’d say Biden is a damned fool and should resign immediately. And he would be correct. I’ll stand with George Washington over Joe Biden when it comes to foreign policy any day.
Excellent points! Thank you! They dovetail with Gary Gerstle's theory of the end of the neoliberal order. Blinken has been a catastrophic choice. But it's not surprising considering Biden's long history with the liberal-internationalist-warhawk wing of the national security establishment. Blinken and Biden know that if they can keep wrecking the domestic economy, the electorate will have little or no bandwidth for foreign policy, which allows them to sow mayhem and madness around the world. As long as they keep the American body bag count down to a minimum, the 9/11 warrior culture will proudly allow veterans to be disposable. Corporate democrats have always preferred to share power with their Republican counterparts than to yield to progressive, let alone left, policy agendas.