US President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday night was an interesting one. It was long on domestic issues and short on foreign policy. It also looked at the challenges faced by Russia and China and bypassed the rest of the world.
It is the first time for a US president to reduce the international role of the United States to a serious thinker, not a president who considers himself to be politically responsible, or a general, who has spent a lot of time, effort. It is a political center that faces Russia in Ukraine and has China in Asia. This, therefore, begs the question: Why has Biden chosen to ignore all the continents and hot spots where America is directly involved?
According to another theory, Americans have little interest in the rest of the world and foreign policy is a priceless commodity in times of economic crisis and culture wars. Even elites with extensive overseas interests realize that spending on foreign policy is becoming difficult to sell to the public without direct threats to national security.
Biden understands this, which is why when he took office, he vowed to end “endless wars” and promised a “middle-class foreign policy” – one that serves all Americans.
But that has proven easier said than done, as Washington has sent billions of dollars to Ukraine to fight what could be years of war amid warnings from Republicans about rising inflation, rising costs of living, and a huge national debt.
So the president, who seems eager to pursue a second term, dropped the international bravado in his speech and instead focused on “made in America” growth and development. His call to Congress to tax billionaires and big corporations and reduce the cost of medicine – aligning him with the “left” led by Senator Bernie Sanders – may be more popular among working and middle-class families than, say, restoring the integrity of Ukraine. .
According to another theory, however, there is not much to be happy about in the foreign policy of the US, which is why the president decided to skip the issue. The two theories are not mutually exclusive.
Biden may agree with what Senator Sanders wrote on the economy, but don’t expect him to take his approach on foreign affairs, even in the Middle East, where the US has failed miserably. And shame.
The president has rejected Sanders’ views on Israel’s occupation and the racism of his Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Worse, he embraces the right-wing leader as his best friend, and continues to support his government of integrationists and bigots.
But Israel is one of several failures.
There hasn’t been a single foreign policy that has been achieved anywhere in the greater Middle East, unless one considers the humiliating and dangerous withdrawal from Afghanistan for supporting the Taliban to victory, after 20 years of brutal war.
In fact, the Biden administration has helped to end or maintain conflicts from Sudan to Syria, through Iraq, Libya, Palestine and Yemen. But that is not a good thing; in fact, it is a terrible normalization of terrible things.
Biden, who has promised to put human rights at the center of his political agenda, has not ignored the violation of the rights of US consumers and has been supporting strongmen who rule with an iron fist, while the region is shaken by brutal and authoritarian governments.
Washington cannot in good conscience meet with Russia and China in the name of democracy, human rights and maintaining sovereignty, while appeasing colonialism and oppression in the Middle East or elsewhere.
It is fraudulent and useless.
100 years after a young Senator Biden visited the Middle East in 1973, former President Biden seems to see the region through the lens of his past: Israel, oil, and the Cold War with Moscow. But as a tired 19th century proverb says: history repeats itself, the first time as a tragedy, the second time as a legend.
It is ironic that despite 50 years of costly intervention, diplomatic and military, the US has returned to danger, appeasing poor clients in the name of global democracy war and being rejected and humiliated.
Biden began and ended his State of the Union address with the lofty idea that America is the land of the possible. It’s a good and catchy word, one that allowed the country to dream big and reach for the moon, literally.
America is a powerful country, but it is not omnipotent. It must leave its evangelistic approach to the affairs of the world as it is appointed to think, police, and guide it. It is not.
