President Biden’s foreign policy has shown some encouraging early signs for those who have invested in breaking with America’s disastrous geopolitical trajectory of decades. As the Daily Beast first reported, Biden is freeing the United States from the Saudi-led war in Yemen and has put counterterrorism attacks under review. America is back to the Paris climate agreement and the United Nations Human Rights Council. Biden extended the nuclear weapons control structure with Russia. And on Friday, the White House said Political which is embracing pressure from Congress to revoke certain post-9/11 war powers.
But interviews with half a dozen progressive and socialist activists, Hill officials, foreign policy experts and former Obama administration officials in contact with Bidenworld point to deep dissatisfaction with what they see as an alarming trend toward the traditional and bellicose consensus of Washington’s foreign policy – what Barack Obama’s former aide, Ben Rhodes, became known as “the Blob”.
“This has been a terrible week for Biden’s foreign policy,” said historian Stephen Wertheim of the anti-war left / right Quincy Institute, author of Tomorrow, the world: the birth of US global supremacy. “I credit the Biden government for reaping some fruits that are easier to achieve earlier. But I refuse to accept a situation where the US can do incredibly destructive and stupid things like helping the war in Yemen and then everyone will have to applaud when a government stops doing these things, despite continuing the quest to extend the armed domain across the globe. And as we still don’t know exactly what the government’s policy is for Yemen, we must remain cautious even on that front. “
Last Thursday, the US military bombed an Iran-backed militia position in Syria in continuous retaliation for attacks on American bases in Iraq, a presence that progressives want to see closed. The Biden government portrayed these strikes as limited, proportionate and an indicator of Biden’s containment. But Alex McCoy, a former Marine and political director for the anti-war veteran group Common Defense, said the attacks “represent a return to failure, strategyless and immaturely belligerent Forever War business-as-usual from the corrupt political elite. external. “
Then, the next day, Biden demoralized many on the left by sanctioning the gunmen of Mohammed bin Salman for the terrible murder of Jamal Khashoggi, instead of the Saudi Crown Prince himself, even after publicizing the US intelligence assessment by blaming Bin Salman .
“The US government has said that subordinates should take care, but leaders can escape murder with impunity, and I think this is a major blow to the Biden government’s attempt to prioritize human rights in its engagement with the rest of the world,” said Andrea Prasow, from the Human Rights organization. Watch. “Why would any other abusive leader feel that he has to fear the wrath of the United States if he also believes that he has something of strategic interest to the United States, like oil or counterterrorism cooperation?”
More followed last week. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, something that raised the prospect of a new US intervention to overthrow strongman Nicolas Maduro. The next day, Wendy Sherman, nominated by the government as undersecretary of state, testified that she wants a “stronger and longer” nuclear deal with Iran, something that supporters of the deal fear will make it harder for the U.S. to re-enter, given that it was the USA that first violated the agreement. “I worry that we may be preparing for failure,” said progressive senator Chris Murphy (D-CT).
The government then opposed, for jurisdictional reasons, an investigation by the International Criminal Court into alleged war crimes committed by Israel and Palestinian militants. Prasow said he was not surprised by the government’s criticisms of the ICC, but noted that a government that loudly declares itself representing the return of U.S. diplomacy has not yet lifted Trump-era sanctions on the ICC itself, including its chief prosecutor.
Add to that the uncertainty surrounding the main foreign policy decisions still in progress – especially about the future of the 20-year War on Terror.
The government’s review of the Afghanistan war revealed a vocal contingent in favor of a greater US presence, something that may herald “a more intense war in Afghanistan that Joe Biden now has,” said Wertheim. In addition to Afghanistan, spokesman Jen Psaki expressed on Friday Biden’s willingness to remove certain post-9/11 war powers – but not entirely.
Biden wants them to be “replaced by a narrow, specific structure” for counterterrorism. How narrow it will reveal itself is yet to be seen. In a “provisional national security guideline” released last week, Biden pledged to “maintain” the proficiency of US special operations forces in missions, including “priority counterterrorism”. And a recent New York Times The report suggested that Biden’s review of counterterrorism is considering restrictions on lethal attacks that fall within the structures established by the Trump and Obama governments, something far more permissive than what antiwar activists want. All of this questions the robustness with which the government defines the Forever Wars that it says it wants to end.
Few consider themselves surprised by Biden’s actions. Several find last week’s decision-making consistent with Biden’s five-decade experience in foreign policy. Biden’s team, aware of the president’s track record, has long said that it does not seek to restore American power to the status quo before the Obama era. But “they really are, and that was apparent in the campaign,” said a former Obama administration official who asked not to be named. “It was a restorationist approach: we had the right policies as a Democratic government for four years. I think this is lazy and it is not true. There was much more that could and should have been done. “
A different aspect of the restoration worried this employee. After four years of Trump’s attempts to bribe the Department of Justice, the FBI and intelligence agencies, “the government’s reaction will be not to rely on them. They will then assume more authority and more power. This caution comes at a time when senior FBI and Justice Department officials express their openness to new powers of domestic terrorism that alarm civil libertarians.
The White House declined to comment on this story in addition to Psaki’s statement. But David Rothkopf, a foreign policy expert and author of Managing the world, a book acclaimed by the National Security Council, defended the government as doing – and signaling directionally – much in its early days.
For Rothkopf, Biden’s emphasis on green energy does the job of structurally readjusting the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia, reinforced in the meantime by Biden’s decision to route the relationship through King Salman instead of the Crown Prince. He was also struck by a speech Blinken gave on Wednesday that promised to build “a more stable and inclusive global economy” and to deal with internal democratic fragility in order to restore faith abroad in the democratic order. Perhaps most notable is the fact that Blinken rejects “the attempt to overthrow authoritarian regimes by force”.
“They have been methodical, coherent, consistent and moving in a direction that is not only an improvement on what Trump has done, but also on what Obama, Bush and Clinton have done,” said Rothkopf, a columnist for the Daily Beast. “This is the first real foreign policy of the 21st century that reflects the reality of America’s changing leadership role.”
Even those who disagree with Rothkopf in the government’s early history have hopes. Several seemed prepared for an impulse to move the government to the left. An initial test may take shape next week. Activists are pressing Biden to tighten an executive order, expected in January and not yet released, that tightens the rules of the Pentagon’s 1033 program that provides police with military-grade hardware. Congressman Hank Johnson (D-GA) plans to ban the practice in future legislation.
“Although the progressive community has called for the abolition of this program, a letter from the House that will be sent to President Biden will begin circulating next week urging him to issue a much stronger EO on this program than Obama and to incorporate the legislative language. Johnson, ”said Yasmine Taeb, a human rights lawyer and progressive strategist.
McCoy, of the Common Defense, also expressed optimism about the White House’s willingness to publicly support the repeal of at least some of the war powers of the 9/11 era.
“The president’s support for revoking the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs announced [Friday] it is a very positive step towards the end of the Eternal War. And while the window is closing, there is still time for Joe Biden to do the right thing and withdraw from Afghanistan by the May 1 deadline to give diplomacy a chance, ”he said. “It is clear that the White House recognizes the growing power of the progressive foreign policy movement and the role we play in helping it win the White House, and it remains to be seen whether this will result in significant change.”
Biden’s team is “feeling a little bit of heat, and that’s a good thing. We need to continue like this ”, evaluated a senior congressman who asked for anonymity. “They need to understand: End of the honeymoon.”