Ignoring the Long Game

The United States has entered a period of extreme danger without any reliable friends. The disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan without consultation with our NATO allies and the stranding of Americans, Afghanis, and representatives for those NATO countries, we have reached a new low in relationships with some of our foremost allies, including Great Britain, France and Germany. The cancellation of the French/Australian contract to construct a number of nuclear submarines for Australia, emphasized that this nation under President Joe Biden cannot be trusted. The follow on to those incidents were almost as bad as the original snubs. Sending Vice President Kalamata Harris to France after her stumbles in Central America and Mexico was not only a poor choice but signaled that Mr. Biden doesn’t really care about the diplomatic kerfuffle he created.

More than any other time, short of a world war, we need our allies. At this moment we are facing the likelihood that Russia will invade the Ukraine within the next ninety days. (Not that you would know that if you relied on the mainstream media to keep you informed.) Likewise, we are facing the likelihood that China will capture Taiwan in what is a likely to be a bloodless seizure accomplished by blocking Taiwan’s harbors with superior naval forces and flooding Taiwan’s air space with superior air power. And add to that, Iran appears to be weeks away from completing its first nuclear weapon and thus threatening the entirety of the Middle East. (You may want to include the continuing influx of illegal aliens on our southern border. I use the term illegal aliens advisedly because we are no longer talking about people from Mexico or even people from Central American – we have Cubans, Haitians, Iranians, Syrians, Palestinians, and people from a host of nations spread across the northern borders of the Middle East, including the terrorists in their midst.)

And standing between these calamities and their would-be perpetrators is Mr. Biden. You may think that it is the whole array of the federal government but it is not. The entire authority for dealing with foreign countries short of a declaration of war is, under our Constitution, vested in one person – the President of the United States (POTUS). The Congress is limited to approving treaties and declaring war and that is it. (We have also seen that Mr. Biden’s predecessor President Barack Obama simply did away with treaties and utilized “personal” agreements (the Paris Climate Accords – dealing with climate change, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)– dealing with Iran’s nuclear weapons program, etc.) As private agreements they were not subject to ratification by the Senate and thus do not have the binding effect as do treaties although Mr. Obama treated them as if they did. The problem with such diplomatic sideshows is that they are subject to cancellation by subsequent presidents which is exactly what President Donald Trump did.

Be that as it may, it is Mr. Biden who stands alone to confront these imminent threats to America. And he is totally unprepared. Yes, Mr. Biden is a self-declared “foreign policy expert” based solely on his tenure and chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Mr. Biden did not become “chairman” based on his knowledge, his mental acuity, his demonstrable abilities or even his predictions of the outcome of international conflicts. No, he became chairman solely and only because of tenure – he simply outlived all the other Democrats on the committee – an extraordinarily poor rationale for elevation to a leadership role. A CBS 19 NEWS report dated August 16 of this year stated the following:

“(YAHOO) – Barack Obama reportedly spoke with a Democrat, expressing his private doubts about Joe Biden becoming the Democrat presidential nominee in 2020.

According to Politico, the former president said: ‘Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f… things up.’

Mr. Obama was also said to have spoken about his own understanding of the 2020 Democrat electorate in Iowa.

‘And you know who really doesn’t have it? Joe Biden,’ he reportedly said.”

That mirrors the comments of former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates who served in that position under both Mr. Obama and President George W. Bush. He wrote in his memoirs Duty about Mr. Biden:

“He’s a man of integrity, incapable of hiding what he really thinks, and one of those rare people you know you could turn to for help in a personal crisis. Still, I think he’s been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

Mr. Gates has reiterated those comments on several occasions after publication of his memoirs. (Of course we now know that Mr. Biden is NOT a person of integrity and as a practice liar he is certainly capable of “hiding what he really thinks.)

Add to that that Mr. Biden is a dedicated member of the liberal/progressive wing of the Democrat Party, He like, Mr. Obama, views America as an irritant in the quest for a global hegemony of developed nations. He believes that our military presence it too large, our diplomacy too self-serving, and our economic might too stifling. He too is comfortable apologizing for our success. When you hear him speak it is as if John Lennon is directing another verse of “All we are saying is give peace a chance.”

Meanwhile, the world’s belligerents – Russia, China, and Iran – joined by the growing number of tinpot despots in Syria, Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Venezuela, Haiti, and much of Africa are free to act with impunity knowing that Mr. Biden has neither the resources nor the stomach for confrontation. He is encouraged to yield by the six dumbest members of Congress – Reps. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (Socialist-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), and Cori Bush (D-MO) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (Socialist-VT) – all of whom prefer almost anyone over the United States but who would never live anywhere else. Mr. Sanders is among the progressives who have yet to find fault with the socialist dictatorships in Cuba and Venezuela.

What Mr. Biden, Mr. Obama and the rest of the left fail to understand is that all three of the world’s belligerents practice the “long game” for international dominance. There is a peculiar impatience in the American psyche that demands instant gratification. I don’t pretend to understand its origins but it is easily observable – it may be due to the relatively brief period of our existence and the startling successes we have had during that short period of time. Regardless of its origins it serves as a barrier to practicing the long game ourselves or, worse yet, understanding when others are playing it*. So the Russians are content to seize the Crimea while Mr. Obama was president with no resistance from him, wait while Mr. Trump confounds them with his unpredictability, and return to the march to re-acquire the vestiges of the old Soviet Union now that Mr. Biden is President knowing that there will be no resistance from him.

The Chinese are even more interesting than the Russians because they have learned from the failures of central planning that mired China as a third-world afterthought during the decades of Mao Zedong. A form of government controlled capitalism fueled by a demand from the West for cheap labor allowed China to grow from a third world dictatorship mired in poverty to an economic power that rivals the United States. China has learned the advantages of both military and economic might and are not hesitant to use either or both.

And finally Iran is content to practice the art of deceit while being the primary sponsor of terrorism in the world – funded in large part by the willingness of the West – and Mr. Obama – to look the other way. It has marched steadily and surreptitiously towards construction of nuclear weapons undetoured by the JCPOA.

The point here is that nobody should be surprised that we find ourselves in the current global conflicts. If you did, then you haven’t been paying attention for the last two decades. And nobody should be surprised by the probable outcome of these conflicts.

Following then are the likely outcomes. Russia will seize either all or a large segment of the Ukraine and Mr. Biden will huff and puff and then take a nap. China will begin to turn the screws on Taiwan and Mr. Biden will huff and puff and go on vacation in Delaware. And Iran will complete is acquisition of a nuclear weapon by April 1, 2022 (the anniversary of the ascendance of the Islamic fundamentalist) and Mr. Biden will send them whatever sums of money promised by John Kerry – just like his predecessor (Mr. Obama) did.

There is no good outcome here. The world will destabilize further while Russia and China ascend to be the dominant players in the international arena. Because, you see, it is not the occupation of America they seek – it is simply the decline of America’s influence that they pursue (the long game). And Mr. Biden will accommodate their long game by stupidity and ineptness.

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*Peculiarly, the liberal/progressive wing of the Democrat Party is quite adept at the “long game” for purposes of domestic politics. They are more than willing to sacrifice re-election of their members in order to accomplish a short term goal as they are doing with the massive spending and structural transformation contained in Mr. Biden’s so-called Build Back Better Plan. They know that the Republicans are so inept and frightened by social change that they will never repeal the Democrats newest programs on the march to socialism. And the Democrats understand that when they retake power they need not recover lost ground but rather can start building on what they sacrificed for previously. Why the Democrats cannot see that on the international stage is beyond me.