Biden Foreign Policy Defaults Back to Bush-Obama, with Dangerous Commitment to Geopolitics!

February 16, 2021 in Columnists, News by RBN Staff

 

By Harley Schlanger for The LaRouche Organization

 

Say what you will about Donald Trump’s foreign and military policy, that it was unpredictable, full of contradictions, and relied on the liberal use of sanctions, when threats and bluster against purported adversaries did not get the desired results — but he did not begin new wars, nor did he expand those bequeathed to him by his immediate predecessors, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. And despite bellicose rhetoric from neocons and War Hawks in his administration, such as John Bolton, Defense Secretary Esper and Secretary of State Pompeo, the reaction by Trump was generally restrained, even when presented with false flag operations, such as claims of the use of chemical weapons by Syria against opponents of the Assad government, pushed by British-based White Helmets terrorist supporters, or false reports from “anonymous sources” of “Russian bounties” being paid to Taliban militants for each American soldier they killed. (1.)

Until the end of his presidency, he insisted that he wished for a relationship of peaceful cooperation with Russian President Putin; and until he was panicked by the spread of the COVID pandemic in the U.S. to blame China for the disease in March 2020, he still referred to President Xi of China as his “friend”, and was pursuing a second phase to the trade deal he had brokered with Xi, which was completed in December 2019.

It was through collaboration with Putin and the Russian military in Syria that the “Islamic Caliphate” was toppled, and work with both Putin and Xi led to dramatic progress with North Korea — until it was sabotaged by Bolton’s threats to Kim Jong-un, which derailed the Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi on February 27-8, 2019. His efforts to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria repeatedly were opposed by Congress, in league with military leaders committed to continuing the phony “war on terror” of previous administrations.

While the results of his presidency thus fell far short of the full break with the imperial geopolitical approach of Bush and Obama which he promised during his campaign in 2016, the failure to strengthen the relations with Russia and China, and to fully end the “endless wars”, could reasonably be attributed to the damage done by the incessant lies of Russiagate and the Ukraine impeachment.  These fabricated narratives undermined his ability to engage in serious diplomacy, and forced him to rely on the legions of the permanent bureaucracy burrowed inside the intelligence community and the Departments of State, Defense and Justice, whose loyalty was not to him, but to the “Military Industrial Complex.”  This dependence on the bad actors who served in previous administrations was reinforced by War Hawks in both parties in Congress, who opposed his efforts to withdraw from the wars, and by a corrupt, lying media, which attributed his willingness to work with Putin to paying off a debt to the Russian President for orchestrating his election.
As we reported from the beginning of his administration, the purpose of Russiagate was precisely to sabotage agreements with Russia and China, and to keep Trump, and the U.S., trapped in a paradigm defined by British geopolitical strategy, with the U.S. providing the military and economic muscle to sustain the Empire centered in the City of London and Wall Street.  Unfortunately, neither he nor his closest allies ever fully exposed the British role in collaboration with Bush and Obama intelligence and security operatives in running Russiagate and the ongoing “Color Revolution” against him, a failure which ultimately assured that a decisive break with British geopolitics and neoliberal economic/financial policy would not occur.

ENTER JOE BIDEN

The line from the anti-Trump networks among political leaders, the diplomatic corps and media, is that the Biden presidency represents a return of “adults to the room”, after the disruption done by Trump to the strategic alliances forged by Bush and Obama.  Left unsaid is that these alliances led to costly and destructive wars continuously, beginning with an invasion by U.S. and allied troops under “Operation Enduring Freedom” on October 7, 2001.  While “freedom” has been elusive for the people of Afghanistan, the war there remains “enduring.”

On February 4, Biden delivered a much-anticipated address to State Department diplomats, in which he promised a return to the provocative policies toward Russia and China of the Obama administration.  He expressed his intent that, in contrast to Trump, his administration will “begin re-forming the habits of cooperation and rebuilding the muscles of democratic alliances that have atrophied from four years of neglect.”  He continued in this vein: “American leadership must meet this new moment of advancing authoritarianism, including the growing determination of China to rival the United States, and the determination of Russia to damage our democracy.”  He added that under his direction, the U.S. will “reclaim the mantel” of global leadership.

This conforms with the pronouncement of his newly-installed Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, that America faces an “existential…challenge from the rising autocrats,” accusing Russia and China of “acting to deepen their hooks not only into our alliance system but into changing the global rules of the world.”  In assuming the number three position at State, Nuland will build on the anti-Russian provocations she ran during the Obama-Biden years, when she oversaw the regime change coup in Ukraine, that toppled the Yanukovych government, spearheaded by a combination of Soros’ funded “human rights” groups, and anti-Russian Nazi militia units of the Azov Battalion.  Future Russiagate figure and former MI6 operative Christopher Steele aided their efforts, filing a series of situation reports from Ukraine delivered to Secretary of State John Kerry.  Biden served as Obama’s “point-man” on Ukraine.  Nuland is a long-time adherent of the neocon doctrine of American unilateralism, from the time she served as Deputy National Security Adviser to the war criminal Dick Cheney, when he was Bush’s Vice-President.

Ironically, the reassertion of muscular unilateralism is being portrayed by Biden allies as a return to “multilateralism.”  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has called for a “Council of Democracies” to “Save Multilateralism.”  Johnson proposed a “D-10”, i.e., a “Democratic 10”, which would add British Commonwealth members Australia and India, along with South Korea, to the G-7.  Biden likewise said he would convene a “global democracy summit” to “counter the rise of authoritarian states,” which he claims were encouraged by Trump’s “authoritarian populism,” according to the {New York Times}.  A leading advocate of the D-10 is former Obama-Biden State Department official Ash Jain, who was a leader of the “43 Alumni for Joe Biden”, a PAC of former Obama officials backing Biden’s presidential campaign.  Jain now directs the Atlantic Council’s “D-10 Strategy Group”, which released a paper on Dec. 23, 2020, “Countering China’s Challenge to the free world”.  He and his collaborators write that the “CCP’s (Chinese Communist Party’s) repressive model and reliance on nationalism diminish opportunities for cooperation in a rules-based system.”  Jain described the D-10 in an interview with London’s {Economist} magazine as a “small number of strategically like-minded and highly capable states,” working together “to advance the liberal world order.”

For these War Hawks, a “rules-based system” of the “liberal world order” allows for propagating lies to invade and destroy sovereign states, as was done by the Obama-Biden administration to Libya, and arm and train the Islamic Jihadists of ISIS and Al Qaeda to carry out regime change in Syria.

The Atlantic Council, which was notorious for its promotion of the Russiagate narrative against Trump, released a new report in January, which spells out the intent to contain China in a replay of the launching of the Cold War against the Soviet Union, directed by the British in 1946-7.  The 85-page report, titled “The Longer Telegram: Toward a New American China Policy,” provides marching orders for the military encirclement of China. (2.)

This report, attributed to “anonymous”, insists on a pre-war deployment against China in greater depth than Jain’s earlier report, and was released with much fanfare by the Atlantic Council’s chairman, Frederick Kempe.

The dangerous implications of this strategy were laid out in an op-ed by Admiral Charles Richard, the head of the U.S. Strategic Command.  Richard argues that the U.S. must engage in a crash modernization program of its nuclear forces, lest it fall behind China and Russia.  He described the current trajectory as one headed toward a “likely thermonuclear war.”

BIDEN’S WAR HAWKS

The team assembled to serve the Biden administration is made up of a number of officials who worked previously in the Obama-Biden administration, and demonstrated their commitment to geopolitical confrontation with Russia and China.  Biden himself has a long history as a unilateralist War Hawk, defending the Bush-Cheney wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Obama’s provocative approach to Russia over Ukraine and Syria.  In his first discussion with Putin, while reaching a final agreement on the extension of the START nuclear arms agreement — which is good, but was largely prepared under Trump — he lectured the Russian President on the treatment of the U.S.-British backed “dissident” Navalny, and blamed Russia for hacking in the Solar Winds case, which is yet another example of unproven allegations.  His spokesman Jen Psaki bragged to the press that Biden showed Putin that the days of pandering by Trump to authoritarian governments are over, and Biden himself boasted in his State Department address that his foreign policy actions thus far show that “America is back”!

Prominent members of his team include:

  • Antony Blinken, former Deputy Secretary of State under Obama, who is notorious for his call for bombing Syria in defense of “moderate rebels”.  In his Senate confirmation hearing, he described the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 pipeline as “a bad idea,” promising that he would “determine what we can do to prevent” its completion.  He said he is “deeply disturbed by the violent crackdown against supporters of Navalny” and favors imposing new sanctions as punishment.  He also called for a “tough stance” against alleged Russian military actions in Ukraine.
  • Jake Sullivan, the National Security Adviser, served in the same position under then-Vice President Biden.  He has also demanded a strong response to alleged Russian and Chinese “aggression”.
  • Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence, drafted documents to provide “legal justification” for the Obama-John Brennan launching of drone strikes in the middle eastern wars.  Defense Department documents show that a disproportionate number of those killed in these strikes were civilians, including women and children.
  • General (retired) Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense, went from active duty into a position on the Board of leading military contractor Raytheon.  In his confirmation hearing, he emphasized that he will “focus” on the threat posed by China, articulating classic British geopolitical reasoning to defend this: “China presents the most significant threat because China is ascending.  Russia is also a threat, but it is in decline.  It can still do a lot of damage….”
  • Susan Rice — though she has been appointed the head of the Domestic Policy Council, Rice is a dedicated War Hawk whose lineage goes back to those who promoted British geopolitics, as implemented by Zbigniew Brzezinski.   Rice’s mentor, Madeleine Albright, was a product of Brzezinski’s school of geopolitics.  In addition to her advocacy for continuing the “endless wars”, she played a leading role in coordinating the emerging Russiagate strategy against the Trump administration, through her participation in the January 5, 2017 meeting at the White House, which reaffirmed the administration’s policy to prosecute Trump’s designated National Security Adviser, General Michael Flynn.
  • Samantha Power — Obama’s U.N. Secretary, who has been a leading promoter of the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine, which has been used repeatedly to justify regime change operations, will head the Agency for International Development (AID), giving her the ability to use funds directly to conduct future Color Revolution operations.

It should be noted that the policies endorsed by Biden’s team are virtually identical to those pursued by Trump’s Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo!

FOOTNOTES:

1.) The most notable exception to a policy of restraint was the lamentable strike which killed Iran’s Revolutionary Guard leader Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi militia Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. This was an act carried out based on still-classified intelligence that they were preparing an imminent strike on American soldiers in Iraq.  Trump “took credit” for the decision to carry out the assassination, though it is clear that the initiative to do it came from Pompeo and his team, cheered on by their former colleague Bolton.
2.) The title refers to the “Long Telegram”, a memo written in February 1946 by George Kennan to the State Department. Kennan, who was working in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, proposed a policy of “containment” against the USSR, which was coherent with that pushed by Britain’s Winston Churchill. This application of anti-Russian British geopolitics resulted in the prolonged Cold War between the U.S. and Russia, in direct opposition to Franklin Roosevelt’s post-war intentions, and defined strategic policy as a battle between the two blocs, which lasted until the fall of the USSR in December 1991.