Sad, but unsurprising, not to mention scary as shit: Uncle Joe is letting the military intellectual complex put both hands on the wheel when it comes to the U.S. and the outside world. Consider the following:
- In a recent meeting with Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi in Alaska, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken led off with a typically Wilsonian lecture on China’s misbehavior, and then was apparently stunned by the fact that the Chinese diplomat answered in kind. You don’t understand! We’re the good guys! Only we get to lecture other people on their bad behavior!
- Similarly, the president himself went out of his way to talk tough to Vladimir Putin, calling him a “killer” and displaying the kind of “swagger” that plays a lot better at home than abroad.
- The resumption of the nuclear weapons agreement with Iran, which Biden confidently advocated during his campaign, is running into a lot of roadblocks, among them Robert Menendez, the “senator from AIPAC”, as I call him, an unreconstructed hawk who unfortunately yet unsurprisingly heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
- The Biden administration remains committed to the denuclearization of North Korea, aka, the unilateral disarmament of North Korea. Because no one has the right to defend itself against the United States. Because we’re the good guys!
There is, fortunately, a bit of a ray of sunshine breaking through all the neocon clouds: It appears “likely” that the Trump administration’s plan for withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan will go through, much to the disappointment of the Washington Post, which continues to believe that there is simply nothing like a little bloodshed to keep a nation physically fit and morally straight, as we used to say in the Boy Scouts (sans irony, thank you very much).
Further bad news is that one of the very best critics of U.S. foreign policy follies, Daniel Larison, has been fired from his perch at the American Conservative. It tells you a lot about the state of affairs in DC that, as far as I can tell, no one in the media has remarked on this. Dan himself is now substacking it at Eunomia—“Eunomia” being the goddess of good order. TAC’s “domestic” staff is heavily Trumpian and into social conservatism. Although Dan only wrote about foreign affairs, he detested Trump, as he repeatedly made clear, and this may have ruffled some feathers. Fortunately, TAC continues to run good pieces on foreign affairs, but losing Dan was a serious mistake.
Another excellent voice, also substacking it, is Peter Beinart. Pete’s quite a bit more prominent than Dan, but there’s also no word, that I at least have heard, to explain exactly why.
