Disastrous: Assessing Joe Biden’s geostrategic legacy

FPI / September 26, 2024

Geostrategy-Direct

President Joe Biden’s weak foreign policy decisions have “encouraged the advance of U.S. adversaries across the globe,” according to a devastating assessment on Sept. 23.

“It is a far more dangerous world than Biden inherited, and far less congenial for U.S. interests, human freedom and democracy,” stated the editorial, which was published one day ahead of Biden’s address to the United Nations in what was likely the 81-year-old's final big moment on the world stage.

“The latter is tragically ironic since the President has made the global contest between democracy and authoritarians an abiding theme. Authoritarians have advanced on his watch in every part of the world — Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, Africa, and even the Americas,” the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board wrote.

The editorial highlighted several of what it said were Biden’s foreign policy disasters with a scant few accomplishments:

• Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan was his single most damaging decision, and it has led to cascading trouble. The Taliban control the country and are reimposing feudal Islamist rule. His withdrawal has done more harm to more women than anything in decades, while jihadists have revived their terror sanctuary.

• More damaging is the message his withdrawal sent to adversaries about American will and retreat. The credibility of U.S. deterrence collapsed. Biden tried to appease Vladimir Putin by blessing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and refusing to arm Ukraine. Putin concluded he could invade Ukraine at limited cost, especially after Biden blurted out that a “minor incursion” might not elicit the same Western opposition.

• Biden’s record in the Middle East is worse. Rather than build on the Abraham Accords he inherited, he tried to ostracize Saudi Arabia and he banned offensive weapons to fight the Houthis. From the start he courted the mullahs in Iran to renew the 2015 nuclear accord that had enriched Iran before Donald Trump withdrew. He refused to enforce oil sanctions, even as Iran spread mayhem through its proxy militias.

• The U.S. was caught flat-footed when Hamas, aided by Iran, invaded Israel and massacred 1,200 innocents. His national-security adviser, Jake Sullivan, had to edit an online version of a Foreign Affairs essay already published boasting that “the region is quieter than it has been for decades.”

• Here’s how quiet: Our foremost regional ally is now at war on multiple fronts. Israel’s defensive campaign in Gaza isn’t finished and a new and perhaps bloodier fight is unfolding with Hezbollah. The Houthis have all but shut down Western commercial shipping around the Red Sea, while Mr. Biden makes U.S. naval commanders play whack-a-missile.

• Meanwhile, Iran marches undeterred to becoming a nuclear power. The Biden Administration mouths pieties that this is unacceptable, but its every action suggests it believes a nuclear Iran is inevitable and trying to stop it is too risky. When Iran goes nuclear, the security calculus in the world will turn upside down.

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