Foreign Policy Free Fall
by G. Murphy Donovan (April 2024)
Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us. –JFK
Fiasco as policy
Most Americans don’t give a damn about foreign policy, especially in an election year. Foreign policy ennui became an institution in America with the end of the military draft. The burdens of national security, and foreign wars, are now carried by the new and the few, a novel demographic of “professional,” minority mercenaries. Albeit, the Pentagon brass constantly assures us that “pay to play” and patriotism are actually diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
As a consequence, minorities are now over represented in the US Armed Forces, a dubious achievement if and when the next body bag count ensues. Then, the Armed forces will be seen as racist again. Racial ghettos in any institution are mixed blessings. No matter how well intentioned, the mix of melanin and sex identity politics in today’s Armed Forces now has all the earmarks of future fail.
Indeed, with the draft vacuum, the Pentagon is free to become just another woke federal social experiment. Few voters care about foreign policy follies as long their sons and daughters are not obligated or coerced to participate.
Voters worry most about issues that touch their immediate interests; their kids, their family, and their communities. PBS and the usual network suspects may bleat and whine nightly about international strum und drang, but for most folks, it’s just the background noise that precedes “Wheel of Fortune” or Stephan Colbert partisan kibble.
Not to abuse a cliché, but all politics, including foreign policy, are local. Ironically, you could also argue that most American voters are personal, if not, political nationalists. We care most about things in our orbit; not Russian antics in Ukraine, not Chinese designs on Taiwan, not street mayhem in Haiti, not Islamic rot in Gaza, nor terrorism at large, and surely not child abuse or female rights in the Muslim World.
People vote for bread and butter at home, not virtue semaphores abroad. Voter oblivion is backstopped by powerful memes in Washington and Brussels; tenure, inertia, and apathy. Alas, our brief attention spans are expensive. When voter interest strays, globalist (nee Utopian) nitwits come out to play.
American indifference to global pathology is the very reason that foreign policy boondoggles like Vietnam, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan are possible. So let’s review the foreign policy landscape after four years to see what the J. R. Biden stewardship has wrought so far.
We should first say that the knee jerk response to any Biden fails is sure to be laid at Donald Trump’s feet. But for the sake of argument here, let’s leave D.J. Trump to the wisdom of crowds.
The Biden/Blinken foreign policy record can be assessed on three fronts; Europe, the Mid-East, and Asia. Not that these are the only significant venues, but you can’t say much about anything if you try to assess all things.
Ukraine and Europe
The proxy war in Ukraine is just another extension of a cold, now hot, war that has characterized American and West European foreign policy since the Germans were defeated in 1945. Chechnya, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and most recently, Afghanistan were all proxy fights to destabilize the Soviet Union, now the Russian Federation.
The Bolsheviks pretty much gave up the ghost just before the turn of the 21st Century by dismantling the Warsaw Pact and dissolving the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, Brussels and Washington couldn’t take yes for an answer. All the overtures of the new Russian Federation, under Vladimir Putin, now a Christian and capitalist, were rebuffed. Russia could not be allowed to join the EU or NATO. Brussels and Washington underlined their hostility by expanding the now superfluous NATO military alliance right up to the Russian frontier.
Russia drew a line in the European sand when US State Department’s Victoria Nuland, backed by CIA, sponsored the Maidan coup in Kiev in 2014. Moscow has demographic, cultural, economic, and emotional ties to Ukraine that go back centuries. At a time when wise allied counsel could have mattered Nuland said: “Fuck the EU.”
Understandably, many Russians see Ukraine as a civil war sponsored by the EU and NATO. Depredations against Russian and Christian minorities by neo-Nazi Azov thugs and an absolutist regime in Kiev do nothing to dispel the belief that Zelensky is just another of history’s useful American proxy idiots.
Kiev is fighting a war it can’t win and Russian can’t afford to lose.
Nevertheless, NATO has declared it will fight the Russian menace right down to the last Ukrainian. “As long as it takes” says team Blinkin/Biden.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the reckless expansion of NATO is a historic fail, an opportunity missed. Instead of welcoming a former ally into the European Christian democratic fold, Moscow has been driven to a marriage of convenience with totalitarian Communist China. Call it political recidivism. Of course, the Ukraine dumpster fire unfolded over several administrations now, but Biden has doubled down.
Ironically, Biden enabled a catastrophic fail in Afghanistan, by a premature withdrawl from one “forever war” only to endorse another forever war on Russia’s western front. In short, team Biden gave Islamism, religious fascism really, a big win in Asia only to replace it with an alliance with neo-Nazis in Kiev.
Ukraine is still election-free under Zelensky.
War in the Levant, Again
It’s probably safe to assume that Islamists of all stripes were emboldened by the Taliban victory in Afghanistan. Indeed most prominent international terror franchises are represented in South Asia. Clearly, both Persian and Arab Islamists saw the American defeat in Kabul as an opportunity to press the test with a bold attack on 7 October, 2023 against Israel. If “big Satan” could be beaten, why not take another shot at little Satan—and the Jews?
Indeed, as we now see the Gaza war playing out, the calculus in the Shite/Sunni worlds seems to have been correct. Whilst team Biden/Blinkin initially feigned outrage at the Hamas 7 October barbarity, the worm of indignation has now turned. The Hamas pigsty is now portrayed as a humanitarian crisis, a wasteland of Palestinian victims.
Israel, a democratic nation of less than 10 million, is surrounded by 50 million hostile Arab autocrats and two billion hostile Muslims, mostly religious fascists. These totalitarian Islamic regimes have, collectively, through proxies like Palestine and global terrorists, tried to wipe Israel off the map since 1948.
Who is a strategic threat to whom? Mecca can afford to lose a hundred small wars, Israel can only lose one.
All the while, Israel and the West have been playing “whack-a-mole” with various Islamic terror proxies around the world. Are we now to believe that Mecca’s useful idiots in Palestine are victims of Israeli aggression?
You can’t make this stuff up.
Alas, the Gaza war is just a symptom of a more toxic global conundrum, the larger problem of Islamic terror, imperialism, and colonization. Call it a “Clash of Civilizations,” to borrow a metaphor. Terrorist depredations like the 7 October massacre in Israel and the most recent Islamist atrocity in Russia will continue until America and its allies confront the real problem of Arab, Persian and Ummah sponsorship.
Islam is not a religion by any conventional measure. Global Islamism is just totalitarian political fascism wearing the hijab of religion.
The East is Still Red
So now we turn to China where the Biden era foreign policy is characterized by the same appeasement and flaccid strategy that fails on the Muslim front.
Picture this if you will.
An administration that took a humiliating loss in Afghanistan and was indifferent to the loss of Hong Kong, now claims it will defend Taiwan in the midst of feckless campaigns in Ukraine – and continuing fails with global Islamic terror factions. Indeed, team Biden, claims the now woke, multi-pronoun, all-volunteer Pentagon is able to fight on, not two, but three fronts globally? Indeed, recall that this is the same arrogant brass that hasn’t had a big win since Zhukov and Ike were allies.
The truth about American China policy is the same as it is about Israel and Ukraine, we posture against fake enemies and cower when faced by real threats. Beijing and Mecca are clear and present dangers whilst a capitalist Russia, as a European power, would make a better ally than enemy. NATO would do well to remember also that the margin of victory in the last great battle with fascism was Russia, not America.
Culturally, socially, and economically, America has more in common with Russia than it will ever have in common with religious or Communist totalitarians.
Any change in American foreign policy might require a common sense renaissance—or maybe just an honest democratic election.
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G. Murphy Donovan writes about the politics of national security and Intelligence.
Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast