It is hard to admit failure — especially if you are a politician. President Joe Biden took the stage at the State Department the other day to tout his foreign policy record. He claimed America is stronger in “every dimension” (diplomatic, military, economic, technological), and our adversaries are weaker.
He took credit for deterring China and helping Ukraine stop Putin. He praised his Middle East policy. He claimed the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a success. “[M]y administration is leaving the next administration with a very strong hand to play,” he said.
And, he said, America under his leadership has led the way in “clean energy” because climate change is “the single greatest existential threat to humanity.” The speech brought to mind former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s quip in 2014 that Biden “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Make that five decades.
The Biden foreign policy has been a colossal failure. He has left his successor with a world full of crises. In relative terms — which are the only terms that matter — China, which poses the real existential threat to humanity, is stronger and more aggressive than it was four years ago. China’s military exercises around Tawain have increased in duration and intensity.
It is closing the gap with the U.S. in nuclear weapons deployed, and it continued its naval build-up even as Biden cut our Navy. China’s Belt and Road Initiative has spread to Latin America and effectively weakened our ability to enforce the Monroe Doctrine. (READ MORE: Rejuvenating the Monroe Doctrine)
On Biden’s watch, Russia invaded Ukraine, obviously undeterred by the Biden foreign policy. On Biden’s watch, Iranian-backed Hamas invaded Israel to start yet another war in the Middle East, while Houthi rebels caused havoc with shipping in and around the Red Sea. On Biden’s watch, America withdrew in disastrous fashion from Afghanistan, resulting in unnecessary American deaths, and leaving that country to the tender mercies of the Taliban. How did any of this make America safer or more secure?
Biden’s diplomacy after Russia invaded Ukraine has moved this country and Europe closer to World War III because his administration has insisted on pursuing a chimerical Ukrainian “victory” instead of negotiating a more realistic armistice that would save countless lives and end a terrible war. (READ MORE: Is Biden Trying to Start World War III Before Trump Takes Office?)
That same diplomacy has resulted in Russia growing closer to China, and Iran and North Korea growing closer to both of those powers. On Biden’s watch, the most dangerous autocratic powers have coalesced on the Eurasian landmass, posing a geopolitical threat to the United States not seen since the height of the Cold War against the Soviet Union.
Biden’s diplomacy after the outbreak of Middle East fighting has been equally bad as he and his foreign policy team worked to restrain Israel and promote Palestinian statehood (the so-called “two-state solution”) despite the incontrovertible facts of Hamas’s aggression and its commission of appalling atrocities.
Instead of strongly supporting our most important ally in the region, the Biden administration caved to international pressure and, frankly, anti-Israeli pressure, even threatening to suspend military aid to stop the IDF from defeating Hamas in Gaza.
And even if America’s mainstream media turned a blind eye and deaf ear to Biden’s cognitive decline, we can be certain that both our adversaries and our allies factored that into their decision-making during these crises. Like Woodrow Wilson during the League of Nations fight and Franklin Roosevelt during the Yalta conference, Biden’s physical and mental decline harmed U.S. interests abroad. The difference is that Biden’s cognitive decline shadowed his entire presidency. For four years, foreign leaders watched and heard an American president who was obviously not in complete control of his administration’s foreign policy.
President Biden, like all politicians, attempts to shine the best light on his four-year term. But Biden’s light is dimmed by reality. Biden’s light is dimmed by a world full of crises left in his administration’s wake. And Biden’s light is dimmed by a record, not of achievement but a record of failure — a colossal failure that has weakened our nation’s security.
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