President Joe Biden meeting the cold reality of a changed world

[hualushui]

 

[OIO]

Updated 0401 GMT (1201 HKT) April 18, 2021
Political scientist: US-Russia relations are in the toilet

Political scientist: US-Russia relations are in the toilet 02:17

(CNN) After weeks of working out what he'd been left by his predecessor, US President Joe Biden has finally put his foreign policy into overdrive. Simultaneously striking in several capitals, his plans are in play and can't be taken back.

Early results are mixed -- predictable perhaps -- but nevertheless a reality check on Biden's diplomacy now it is out on the open road.

Since getting into office, Biden has been shifting up the foreign policy gears, pausing, analyzing before implementing campaign promises.

This week there was a troop pullout in Afghanistan, sanctions on Russians, and a major engagement with China on climate control.

Allies in Kabul, adversaries in Moscow, and putative climate partners in Beijing all got to kick the tires on Biden's plans. Saudi Arabia and Iran have already road tested his policies and the results are rocky.

Bold campaign rhetoric in the past few months, like Saudi Arabia to be treated like a "pariah," and Putin to "pay a price" for election interference, have been given teeth.

Putin took barely 24 hours this week to repay Biden's expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats from Washington DC with 10 of America's from Moscow. Tit for tat, and more may come. Biden's built-in plan -- an off ramp -- is an offer to Putin of a face-to-face summit this summer. It's too soon to know though if that's going to put a brake on this week's deterioration

Biden's problem was that, while he was deciding how Putin should "pay" for interfering in the US 2020 presidential elections, the Russian President was already plotting and implementing his own counter moves, a headline-grabbing military build-up on the border with Ukraine.

Undoubtedly Biden knew tangling with Putin would be tough; the two have history. In 2011 Biden said he looked into Putin's eyes and saw he had no "soul." Last month he called him a killer. Putin wished Biden good health, which in Russian media-speak translates roughly as "doddering old fool."

So it's little surprise that the Russia policy is facing immediate unequivocal push back from the Kremlin already.

But even where Biden chased seemingly low-hanging diplomatic fruit -- making one of his first major foreign policy moves resetting America's relationship with Saudi Arabia mid-February -- it's already getting some blowback.

As former US President Donald Trump's leadership wound down, leaving reams of uncoiled foreign policy in its wake, everyone knew Biden was bringing change -- he had said so. But it's only now as his policies have broken free of Washington DC's beltway that they are getting their first real-world reality check.

From the chill corridors of the Kremlin to the scorching desert battle fields of Yemen, Biden has made himself topic number one.

The desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman was Biden's first foreign policy target.

In early February Biden said the US would end all support for Saudi Arabia's offensive operations in Yemen. Within days, the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who seized power from the Yemeni government in 2014 upped attacks on the government and Saudi Arabia, according to the Yemeni and Saudi governments.

Sheltering in the shade of a thorn tree a few miles from the fragile front line separating his forces from the Houthis, Yemen's army Chief of Staff General Sagheer bin Aziz told CNN last week he was "saddened" by Biden's decision. "We all thought [Biden] supported security and peace and stability," he said.

In Riyadh and in Yemeni government strongholds, officials think Biden has got his policy wrong -- far from helping an ally, he is enabling America's enemy, Iran.

By revoking the Houthi designation as a foreign terrorist organization in his first raft of foreign policy reforms, Biden has left his actual allies wondering about his real intent -- to help Yemenis or make his talks with Tehran easier.

In Yemen the real-world effect of dialing back pressure on the Houthis that Biden hoped would ease humanitarian suffering and speed up an end to the war is, according to Yemen's information and culture minister Moammar al-Eryani, doing the opposite and helping Iran. "This was a gift for the Iranian Houthi militia, and a wrong message," he told CNN last week.

It's unlikely Biden was trying to leverage favor in Tehran, and if he was, it doesn't seem to have done him any good.

Biden wants back into the Joint

Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, that Trump walked away from in 2018 and for Iran to come back into compliance with its terms. Tehran wants US sanctions lifted first.

Biden initially seemed hopeful. He offered Iran a tried and tested diplomatic olive branch, modest concessions, lifting travel restrictions placed on Iranian diplomats to the United Nations that limited them to their missions and the grounds of the UN in New York. Iran stonewalled -- another reality check.

Eventually Biden was forced to accept an EU offer of mediation leading to proximity talks in Vienna earlier this month, but even that momentum may be stalling following a suspected covert Israeli attack on one of Iran's uranium enrichment sites, the Natanz nuclear facility.

Iran reacted by upping uranium enrichment to 60%, almost 20 times purer than permitted -- its highest level since the 2015 deal was signed, leaving Biden's team stressing. His spokeswoman Jen Psaki questioned Tehran's "seriousness" in regards to the nuclear talks.

In Tehran Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei redrew Iran's line in the sand, demanding the US lift sanctions first, then Iran will come into compliance, warning protracted negotiations "would be detrimental" to Iran.

Where Biden's foreign policy sounded consistently in sync with his allies is on Afghanistan, but even that hasn't been without its blips.

Late March, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stood shoulder-to-shoulder with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, declaring: "We went in together, we have adjusted together, and we will leave together when the time is right."

When Biden announced the time was right this week, not all allies were happy. The UK's Chief of Defence Staff, General Nick Carter hinted at British reservations, telling the BBC on Friday the withdrawal of forces by September 11 this year was "not a decision that we'd hoped for."
The Afghan government fears the implications.

One senior official told CNN this week he regretted his countrymen had not used the 20 years of international help more wisely -- with Afghan rival groups working together rather than for individual gain or ethnic advantage. The result could have led to potentially less corruption, less division and less factionalism, he said.

Infighting is a real prospect, and the Taliban is threatening to attack US forces in Afghanistan for not getting out fast enough.

China -- Biden's biggest foreign policy challenge -- is the one major piece of his international politics yet to get a full road test. The groundwork is shaping up as planned. Allies, including the European Union, United Kingdom and Canada, are following the US position sanctioning Chinese officials for human rights abuses of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

China's groundwork is also shaping up as they planned, with increased military exercises around Taiwan and in the South China Sea, strengthening control in Hong Kong.

None of this will be shocking for Biden. Foreign policy has been his forte for decades. His challenge will be the erosion of American power in that time, managing adversaries who think a multipolar world order has already arrived.

From here on, his foreign policy journey will be less about following his own plan and increasingly about reacting to the response it gets.

Joe Biden is meeting the cold reality of office | CNN

After weeks of working out what he'd been left by his predecessor, US President Joe Biden has finally put his foreign policy into overdrive. Simultaneously striking in several capitals, his plans are in play and can't be taken back.

edition.cnn.com

Boy oh boy. Minefields for sleepy Joe.

The United States is doing an impossible task, so there are many contradictions in diplomacy.

 

[Globenim]

Invading Afghanistan good! Why wont you help them!?
Saudia Arabia good! Why wont you help them!?
Invading Yemen good! Why wont you help them!?
Iran bad! Why dont they like us!? Why dont you contain them!?
Russia bad! Why dont they like us!? Why dont you contain them!?
China bad but economically the strongest therfore China the baddest!? Why dont you contain them!?

So what is this about. Just blunt public opinion making? Distorting perceptions? Flattering their farcial democracy?

Of course US Russia relations are rock bottom and nobody is treating America as some savior sans a few puppet states or regimes used to destabilize other foreign regions. That puppet Biden had absolutely no relevance to that and he will not ever have.

We know their invasions are never meant to benefit the local population or some global peace, but actually neutralize independent countries, destablize and fracture the region or create power vaccuums or artificially shift power balance to unpopular factions hostile to more powerfull nations in the regions or flat out train and arm terrorists from the ground up like in Syria and Afghanistan. None of those "decission" to move out of Afghanistan will ever be taken at face value to be in mind about either the American or occupied population but either part of a nerfarious strategy to hurt someone else or just budgetary reasons while leaving everything in shambles and not even pretending to give one iota of a shit about the original justification for pubic consumption to "liberate" and bring "peace" to some local population like its always been

Of course US Russia relations are rock bottom and nobody is treating America as some savior sans a few puppet states or regimes used to destabilize other foreign regions. That puppet Biden had absolutely no relevance to that and he will not ever have.

Of course China doesnt give one **** about a regime with full intent to destroy China, preaching to China about climate change or made up human rights crisis, while Americns are one of the top polluters in the developed world and in general and has the most genocidal history in the world and is not just directly responsible but actively engaged in the biggest human attrocities in recent history. Of course the US regime wont change their condecending attitude of projecting all their faults on the rest of the world. They'd instantly collapse as a nation if they'd give up on their foundations of exploitation and abuse that keeps their disfunct economy and society rolling.

 

[Dalit]

Tbh when it comes to foreign policy Trump was probably the best president in decades. His America first policy was much more honest, transparent and predictable for everyone else.

This meant he was actually resolving several decades old problems. His relative non intervention in Yemen, push for peace between KSA and Israel, would have actually led to some outcomes at least. Under Bidens regime these conflicts will go on a lot longer.

Trump will win the next elections. Marks my words. The Demoncrats are going to create a terrible mess.

 

[VCheng]

Trump will win the next elections. Marks my words. The Demoncrats are going to create a terrible mess.

I thought you were sure Trump would win his second term.

 

[PeaceGen]

the man is at the start of his career as President.
let's see where his leadership lands us, before we judge him.

 

[waz]

Trump will win the next elections. Marks my words. The Demoncrats are going to create a terrible mess.

Yep. The US people are not idly going to sit by and let things go to pot.

 

[VCheng]

Yep. The US people are not idly going to sit by and let things go to pot.

Well, pot is being legalized in many states already.

 

[Al-zakir]

The oldie is overwhelmed by insane challanges. I feel sorry for the old man.

I fear he may collapse all sudden. He already screwed up the stock market.