To summarize my feelings regarding Joe Biden’s ability to handle foreign policy affairs can be reduced to former Obama SecDef Robert Gates estimation of his former peer. “[Joe Biden has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
After seeing the Trump administration provide the US with a great number of successes and agreements in the world, along with some huge peace deals in the Middle East, it seems that a President Biden can do more damage than help in that arena.
China
China has been using its strong-arm tactics of forcing our companies that do business in China to have Chinese board members that belong to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to gain proprietary intellectual property (IP) from our biggest companies doing business in that country. This allows the Chinese to gain valuable information and access our some of our most important technological secrets and it lets them create alternate versions of our goods costing us a collective $200-600Billion annually.
President Trump stood up to the CCP and Chinese President Xi Jinping by hitting them with a high number of tariffs and other trade barriers costing China $100’s of billions in trade and a huge hit their their economy. Once China agreed to reducing tariffs to coincide with a stopping of IP theft and other damaging practices to our companies, the relationship between China and the US has improved, but is still in a controlled manner preventing China from taking advantage of the US and its companies with offices in China.
Biden’s constant speeches regarding China as not being an adversary, not being a competitor, and not even a strategic threat to the US. China is also showing up as a military threat as they start showing their new navy, they start stretching their borders with India, Japan, and continue to threaten Taiwan. Will Biden ever see them as the growing threat that our intel agencies are noticing?
It seems Joe Biden will allow China to continue its human rights violations with the Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities as well as turn a blind eye to all the threats to surrounding countries they are eyeing today.
Israel
Israel has been one of our closest allies since the middle of the 20th century. During the the last several Presidential administrations have made promises to Israel, but have fallen short when it comes to implement them. As we send them quite a hefty sum annually for their security, but the money is well worth it as it provides us a strong democracy in the Middle East.
Donald Trump came through on the ages-old promise to recognize the capital of Israel as Jerusalem along with moving our embassy into the holy city. This caused a huge uproar, but ended up strengthening our bond with the Jewish state. Jarrod Kirshner also brokered a huge series of peace treaties between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, and confirmed the recognition and opening relations with Sudan. This also lines up other countries to join including possibly Saudi Arabia which would be unprecedented
What will Biden do? He agreed he would not move the embassy back to Tel Aviv, but he did not agree with moving it in the first place. But, under the Obama years, our relationship was strained at best. Will he continue Kirshner’s work? Will he try to side with Israel in regards to Palestine? There are many questions that need to be asked.
Iran
President Obama had a very skewed look at Iran when it comes to how they are viewed by the world and the US. He believes the Iranian leadership is more moderate than it seems based on their acts. They are still funding terrorism around the world, they are still threatening shipping in the gulf, they are still voicing a direct threat to the US and Israel. This is not to ignore the efforts to build a nuclear bomb and the missile systems to deliver it.
Obama thought he could get them to stop by agreeing to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) by telling them they are limited in the production of enriched uranium and to stop building other components of a missile delivery system. The plan sounded great on paper if the Mullahs were as moderate as perceived. But, in reality, Iran violated most aspects of the deal and inspectors were barred from seeing if they were in compliance with the agreed upon terms.
President Trump ended the agreement and forced other nations to stop dealing with Iran. This slowed their development of a nuclear program, but Iran is still violating the terms, and the intent of the agreement to limit the country’s threat to the world around them.
A President Biden can reverse the efforts of the Trump administration, by re-imposing the JCPOA, turn a blind eye to the actions of the Iranian military, and not stop the flow of money from Tehran to all the various terror groups in the Middle East and the surrounding area. I wish I am very wrong here.
Europe
Trump has improved the options for the EU, by getting them to take their security seriously. As Russia and Iran build up their militaries, Germany had been holding back on military spending and the other EU countries had also not held up their end of the NATO funding agreement. This put all the weight of providing military protection of our allies squarely on our own shoulders. Trump called them out on it and forced them to increases their defense spending to the levels specified in the NATO treaty.
Working with Azerbaijan, and other central Asian countries, a very prosperous pipeline will open to the southern European countries and allow them to have an alternate flows of energy that doesn’t depend solely on Russia. This will also lower the price of oil and gas as there is another cheaper supplier. Not sure how Biden will affect this plan, but after a bunch of his historic blunders, I’m hoping he doesn’t negatively affect this pipeline.
Another issue that Trump had to handle Europe was the renegade state of Turkey. Turkey has been siding with our enemies lately and as an ally in the NATO treaty, they are still working to harm our allies in the region. Not only are they attacking our Iraqi allies of the north the Kurds, but they are trying to set up shop in Syria to make that region even more volatile. Then there’s the act of wanting to buy our best 5th generation fighter, the F-35, inline with buying the Russian S-400 missile defense system. Trump ended the purchase of the F-35. Hopefully Biden will support that decision.
Conclusion
President Joe Biden can do some real good for the world. Sadly, nobody has seen him do it, yet. He has seen first-hand how it works when a businessman does it. When a person who has done international deals and has been successful at it. Biden has a 47-year track record and as shown before, he has done very little to help our allies, those who are neutral, or even help keep our enemies from growing.
I can hope he does well. If he does well, America does well and the world becomes a better place. I know nobody can do it all, but if Biden listens to real experts and not just those who want to control him, he will have a better shot than ever before in his long history in government.
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