Dave Stockton, Red Flag No 38, February, 2021<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cAmerica is Back!\u201d was the message of Joe Biden\u2019s first major speech on foreign affairs. According to Reuters, he expressed, \u201caggressive approaches to China and Russia, urged Myanmar\u2019s military leaders to halt their coup, and declared an end to US support for a Saudi Arabia-led military campaign in Yemen\u201d.<\/p>\n
Like Barack Obama and his hawkish Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, like Trump too in his erratic way, he sees the need to defend the USA\u2019s imperialist world hegemony, aware that it is now under challenge from new imperialist powers, most dangerously and dynamically China and Russia.<\/p>\n
He boasted: \u201cI made it clear to President Putin, in a manner very different from my predecessor, that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia\u2019s aggressive actions, interfering with our elections, cyber attacks, poisoning its citizens, are over.\u201d<\/p>\n
On China he threatened: \u201cWe\u2019ll confront China\u2019s economic abuses, counter its aggressive, coercive action to push back on China\u2019s attack on human rights, intellectual property and global governance.\u201d<\/p>\n
He has also condemned China\u2019s actions against democracy activists in Hong Kong and its horrific concentration camps for up to a million Uighurs in Xinjiang. Of course, China\u2019s actions are indeed those of an imperialist bully as are its declarations that Taiwan and Tibet are its \u201cinternal affairs\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, the power that invaded and occupied Iraq, which blockades Venezuela\u2019s oil exports and confiscates its foreign reserves, has no right to lecture anyone. In fact, these issues are in reality just so many weapons against a rival; genuine human rights activists in these countries will find Biden a broken reed, as did the democratic opposition in Syria. Independence of all the imperialist camps is the only effective policy, unless you wished to be used and tossed aside.<\/p>\n
Biden will wrap up the new Cold War posture in the \u201csoft power\u201d rhetoric of human rights. But, whilst emphasising alliances and multilateral agreements, when push comes to shove, he will resort to the de facto Neocon and neoliberal policies pursued by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Democratic presidents have always been no less willing than Republicans to act as global fire raisers \u2013 remember Kennedy, Johnson and Truman.<\/p>\n
Iraq<\/p>\n
Biden himself was a strong advocate of the invasion of Iraq, using the shock of 9\/11 and the menace of al-Qaeda, despite the fact that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the fall of the twin towers. He collaborated with George W Bush in getting it through the Senate. Thus, Joe\u2019s fingerprints are on the most disastrous US adventure since the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n
Under Obama, as Vice President, Biden only argued for troop rundown when the body count of US service personnel threatened to become too electorally damaging, even then only to become the main advocate of what he named \u201ccounter-terrorism plus\u201d, that is, the heavy bombing and drone strikes strategy carried out ever since in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.<\/p>\n
OK, now Biden has dumped Trump\u2019s pet project of supplying arms to the firebrand Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, but primarily because the war in Yemen has turned into another Iraq, albeit on a smaller scale. Any move away from Trump\u2019s bellicose rhetoric will be more than compensated by his drive to hem in China and Russia.<\/p>\n
As Vice President, alongside the redoubtable hawk Hillary Clinton at the State Department, he was responsible for backing the Shia regime in Iraq under Nouri al-Maliki, whose repressive communalist policies proved a Petri dish for the formation of ISIS out of al Qaeda and former Saddam-era Sunni forces. Now, a decade on, Biden inherits both Afghanistan and Iraq.<\/p>\n
In Latin America, Biden, was actively involved in pushing Bill Clinton\u2019s \u201cPlan Colombia\u201d, which sent money, weapons and advisors to the brutal military. Ostensibly, this was to step up the \u201cwar on drugs\u201d, in reality it supported the brutal war against the leftist guerrillas. Under Obama, he pioneered an \u201cAlliance for Prosperity\u201d which boosted privatisation, free trade zones, and US investment.<\/p>\n
Together, over three decades, Biden, and the presidents he served, played a major role in the human rights atrocities and economic devastation that triggered the wave of refugees. And when they reached or crossed the US border, he played a role in fortifying it, imprisoning \u201cillegals\u201d, including children, in cages.<\/p>\n
So, will Biden\u2019s second coming be any different for the world? No chance!<\/p>\n
Prospects<\/p>\n
Biden has promised \u201cto fight like hell\u201d to defend America\u2019s global standing against China\u2019s growing power. His project for a \u201csummit of democracies\u201d suggests creating an ideological basis for a New Cold War between democracy and \u201cauthoritarianism\u201d (read Putin\u2019s Russia and Xi\u2019s China).<\/p>\n
One can wonder whether the invitees will include US allies like the Egyptian dictator Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi? Will it include Benjamin Netanyahu, busy providing the proof that Israel is indeed a \u201cracist endeavour\u201d, practising Grand Apartheid against its Palestinian subjects, expanding its colonising settlements in the West Bank and vaccinating only \u201cits own\u201d population against covid-19.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu and Trump so fawned on one another and the Israeli leader was such a serial intervener in US politics, that he will hardly expect anything other than a cold shoulder. Jared Kushner\u2019s \u201cdeal of the century\u201d is as dead as the Dead Sea, but it retains its bitter fruit, for the Palestinians, US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel\u2019s \u201ceternal capital\u201d.<\/p>\n
Biden has pledged to rebuild relations with the PLO, reopening a US consulate in East Jerusalem and restoring financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority (PA). He can also easily renounce Trump\u2019s tweeted acceptance of the lawfulness of all the illegal settlements on the Palestinian: as he did at the time.<\/p>\n
Any more than that, however, is highly unlikely. In the past he has described as \u201coutrageous\u201d proposals to use US military funding to Israel ($40 billion, half of all US aid to foreign governments) as leverage for the official UN \u201ctwo state\u201d settlement.<\/p>\n
Even less will he countenance the ideas of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS). Indeed, Biden\u2019s manifesto said that he will, \u201cfirmly reject the BDS movement, which singles out Israel, home to millions of Jews, and too often veers into anti-Semitism, while letting Palestinians off the hook for their choices\u201d.<\/p>\n
Presumably he means the \u201cchoice\u201d to refuse to accept the Israeli \u201cfacts on the ground\u201d, that is, fragmented and disarmed Bantustans living on UN, US and Saudi handouts.<\/p>\n
When it comes to Latin America, too, only cosmetic changes can be expected. As with Netanyahu, the Brazilian Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, can hardly expect a warm welcome in Washington, given he several times insulted Biden and left it well over a month before recognising he had won the presidency.<\/p>\n
Not that Brazil got anything much out of Trump, in fact it got tariffs slapped on its exports. Also, Biden\u2019s declared policy on halting the devastation of the Amazon rain forest and his international Covid-19 policy will clash head on with Bolsonaro\u2019s.<\/p>\n
New Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has already signalled there will be a change from economic blockade of Venezuela to \u201ctargeted sanctions\u201d, but support for puppet presidential pretender Juan Guaid\u00f3 will stay.<\/p>\n
Interventionism<\/p>\n
Biden\u2019s choice of Blinken made clear what the new administration\u2019s policy would be. In the hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Blinken set out his interventionist intentions:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is the world simply does not organise itself. When we\u2019re not engaged, when we\u2019re not leading, then one of two things is likely to happen. Either some other country tries to take our place\u2026 or, maybe just as bad, no one does.\u201d<\/p>\n
In short, Biden and his team will, for all their greater diplomatic finesse, see their prime objective as battling China in defence of the USA’s weakening world hegemony. To this end, he will put more effort into patching up the NATO Alliance.<\/p>\n
He will also seek to repair the US partnership with the European Union, which was subject to blatant interference and disruption under Trump, a passionate supporter of Brexit. Biden strongly disliked Brexit; he has made it pretty clear that Trump\u2019s friend, Boris Johnson, will not be getting any swift \u201ctrade deal of the century\u201d.<\/p>\n
But there is no doubt that Biden\u2019s number one concern will be to stack up the \u201cwestern\u201d and far eastern alliances and check the advances made by China. He does so at a time when, under Xi Jinping, the country has cast off the caution advocated by Deng Xiaoping.<\/p>\n
This confirms that the era we are entering is one of mounting inter-imperialist rivalry which, unless the workers of the world, in China as well as the United States, wake up to it, can only have one ending: regional wars leading to world war.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dave Stockton, Red Flag No 38, February, 2021 \u201cAmerica is Back!\u201d was the message of Joe Biden\u2019s first major speech on foreign affairs. According to Reuters, he expressed, \u201caggressive approaches to China and Russia, urged Myanmar\u2019s military leaders to halt their coup, and declared an end to US support for a Saudi Arabia-led military campaign […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7724,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83,1],"tags":[104,205,204],"class_list":["post-4570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americas","category-uncategorized","tag-archive","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7724"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4570"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6830,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4570\/revisions\/6830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}