Why is Biden’s Foreign Policy So Conventional?

BY JOHN FEFFER

JULY 2, 2021

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/07/02/why-is-bidens-foreign-policy-so-conventional/

 

On the domestic front, Joe Biden is flirting with transformational policies around energy, environment, and infrastructure. It’s not a revolution, but it’s considerably less timid than what Barack Obama offered in that pre-Trump, pre-pandemic era.

When it comes to foreign policy, however, the Biden administration has been nowhere near as transformational. The phrase Joe Biden has used so often is: America is back. That sentiment certainly captures some aspects of Biden’s relationship with the international community, such as repairing relations with the World Health Organization and rejoining the Paris climate accords. In these ways, the administration has brought America back to the status quo that existed before Trump was unleashed on the world stage.

But on some very important issues—China, Iran, Cuba, North Korea—Biden hasn’t managed to restore even the previous status quo. His approach to military spending and the arms race is decidedly hawkish. His message on immigration, as expressed by Vice President Kamala Harris on a visit to Guatemala earlier this month effectively erases the inscription on the Statue of Liberty by telling potential border crossers in the region to stay home.

Okay, foreign policy is not a winning issue at the ballot box, and Biden certainly has a lot on his agenda. But even the notoriously cautious Obama took some courageous steps with Tehran and Havana.

It’s possible that Biden is focusing on America first before turning to the world as a whole. It’s also possible that he’s simply not interested in altering U.S. foreign policy in any significant way beyond removing U.S. troops from Afghanistan. True, it was exhilarating to have a conventional president again after Trump. But “conventional,” when it comes to U.S. foreign policy, is just not good enough.

Confronting China

If the Biden administration’s overriding domestic preoccupation is the sustainable economy, then its dominant foreign policy obsession in China.

Biden and Xi have spoken only once—by telephone in February. Xi participated in Biden’s virtual climate confab in April. They are likely to meet face to face sometime this year, possibly around the G20 summit in Rome in October. There’s been talk of greater cooperation on addressing the climate crisis. And there haven’t been any overt military confrontations in the South China Sea or elsewhere.

But otherwise, Biden and Xi have not really gotten off on the right foot. It was a no-brainer for the new Biden administration to lift the Trump-era tariffs on Chinese products and de-escalate the trade war that unsettled manufacturers and consumers on both sides of the Pacific. The Biden team is ostensibly doing a review of U.S.-China trade policy with a focus on whether Beijing has met its commitments under the “phase one trade deal” signed back in January 2020 (so far, it’s been a mixed record of China meeting some targets for U.S. imports and missing others).

The review is more than just bean-counting. In a marked departure from the usual neoliberal trade talk coming out of Washington, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai has said, “I want to disconnect this idea that the only way we do affirmative trade engagement, trade enhancement is through a free trade agreement.” Tai prefers to operate according to a “worker-centric trade policy” that evaluates China on issues of forced labor, workers’ rights, and the environment.

A more nuanced approach to trade is all to the good, of course, and Tai should be commended for breaking with Washington consensus.

But taken in conjunction with other Biden administration policies, the reluctance to lift tariffs on Chinese goods is part of a full-court economic press on the country. The Biden administration has effectively continued the Trump approach of not only lining up allies in the region to contain China (the Quad, the Blue Dot Network) but enlisting European countries as well to join the bandwagon. In his recent trip to Europe, Biden corralled the G7 to create the Build Back Better World (B3W) initiative, a purported alternative to China’s Belt and Road infrastructure program, and twisted some arms to get NATO to prioritize China as part of its mission.

NATO’s new emphasis on China reflects the Pentagon’s shift in focus. Trump might have loudly proclaimed his anti-China animus, but the Biden administration is determined to close what it calls the “say-do gap” by expanding capabilities beyond the Navy to challenge China in the air and above.

China’s moves in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and the South China Sea is deeply troubling. Nor is Beijing doing nearly enough to green its Belt and Road Initiative. But the Biden administration needs to think creatively about how to leverage China’s own multilateral aspirations in order to address global problems. Trade tensions and disagreements about internal policies are to be expected. Yet, the Biden administration has an urgent and historic opportunity to work with China (and everyone else) to remake the international community.

Sparring with Iran

Another no-brainer for the Biden administration was reviving the Iran nuclear agreement that Trump tried to destroy. Granted, it was tricky to unwind the sanctions against Tehran and address Iran’s demands for compensation. It wasn’t easy to reassure the Iranian leadership of the sincerity of U.S. intentions given not only Trump’s past hostility but the current animosities of congressional Republicans. And there was also Israel, which was doing everything within its power to scuttle diplomacy up to and including sabotaging Iran’s nuclear facilities and assassinating Iranian scientists.

These obstacles notwithstanding, the Biden team could have gotten the job done if it had started earlier and been more flexible. Not wanting to open itself up to criticism from hawks at home, however, the administration argued for a mutual, step-by-step return to the agreement. By contrast, Iran quite sensibly argued that the United States, since it attempted to blow up the agreement, should be the first to compromise by removing sanctions, a position that some U.S. policymakers have also supported.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is continuing a tit-for-tat confrontation with militias aligned with Iran. This week, the administration launched airstrikes against facilities on the Iraq-Syria border from which these militias have allegedly attacked U.S. bases in Iraq. U.S. forces in Syria subsequently came under rocket fire.

Why are there still U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Syria? Didn’t the Biden administration commit to ending America’s endless wars? Although U.S. forces are scheduled to depart Afghanistan in September and Washington has pledged to remove troops from Iraq as well, negotiations around the latter have yet to produce a timetable.

Removing the 2,500 U.S. soldiers from Iraq would please the government in Baghdad, remove an irritant in U.S.-Iranian relations, and take U.S. personnel out of harm’s way.

What’s not to like, Joe?

Getting Nowhere with Cuba and North Korea

Late in his second term, Barack Obama orchestrated a bold rapprochement with Cuba. After lifting financial and travel restrictions, Obama visited the island in March 2016 to meet with Cuban leader Raul Castro. It wasn’t a full opening. Washington maintained a trade embargo and refused to close its anomalous base in Guantanamo. But it was a start.

Donald Trump brought a quick end to that fresh start by re-imposing the restrictions that Obama had lifted.

Joe Biden promised to resurrect the Obama policy. Trump’s reversals, he said as a candidate, “have inflicted harm on the Cuban people and done nothing to advance democracy and human rights.” And yet, as president, he has done nothing to reverse Trump’s reversals.

As Karen de Young writes in The Washington Post, “Under Trump restrictions, non-Cuban Americans are still prohibited from sending money to the island. Cruise ships are banned from sailing from the United States to Cuba and the dozens of scheduled U.S. commercial flights to Cuban cities have largely stopped. Tight limits remain in place on commercial transactions.”

The reason for the new administration’s lack of action, beyond its concerns about human rights in Cuba and its fear of Republican opposition in Congress boils down to domestic politics. Robert Menendez, the Democratic senator from New Jersey who never liked the Obama-era détente with Cuba in the first place represents a key obstacle in Congress. And public opinion in Florida among Cuban-Americans, which had swung in favor of rapprochement during the Obama period, has now swung decisively in the other direction, thanks to a steady diet of Trumpian demagoguery.

Here, the Biden administration could try something new by closing Guantanamo. The administration is already launching a quiet effort to close the detention facility at the base by resolving the status of the several dozen inmates. He should go even further by rebooting Guantanamo as a center for U.S.-Cuban environmental research, as scientists Joe Roman and James Kraska have proposed.

North Korea, meanwhile, is the one place in the world where Trump sought to overturn decades of U.S. hostility. His attempts at one-on-one diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un didn’t achieve much of anything, but it still might have served as a foundation for future negotiations.

Biden has instead followed the script of all the administrations prior to Trump: review policy, promises something new, fall back on conventional thinking.

The administration finished its review of North Korea policy in April. Biden rejected his predecessor’s approaches as misguided. And he has relied on the usual big-stick-and-small-carrot policy that stretches back to the 1990s. On the one hand, he extended sanctions against the country and has maintained a military encirclement. On the other, his emissaries have reached out to Pyongyang, with a special representative for North Korea Sung Kim saying this month that the United States would meet with Pyongyang “anywhere, anytime, without preconditions.”

“Without preconditions” is fine. But what about “with incentives”?

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, North Korea is more shut off from the world than usual. It is preoccupied with the economic challenges associated with its increased isolation. In his annual address in January, Kim Jong Un made the unusual admission that the government’s economic program fell short of its goals. More recently, he has said that his country is “prepared for both dialogue and confrontation, especially … confrontation.”

Biden should focus on the first half of Kim’s sentence. South Korea’s progressive president Moon Jae-in, nearing the end of his own tenure, very much wants to advance reconciliation on the peninsula. Instead of beefing up its military containment of the isolated country, Washington could work with Seoul to break the current diplomatic impasse with a grand humanitarian gesture. Whether it’s vaccines or food or infrastructure development, North Korea needs help right now.

Military Exceptionalism

It’s still early in the Biden administration. Remember: Obama didn’t achieve his major foreign policy achievements in Iran and Cuba until later in his second term. Biden no doubt wants to accumulate some political capital first, by repairing relations with allies and participating in multilateral fora on the global stage and achieving some economic success on the home front.

The administration’s position on military spending, however, suggests that Biden is wedded to the most conventional of thinking.

The United States is poised to end its intervention in Afghanistan and reduce its commitments in the Middle East. It is not involved in any major military conflicts. Everyone is wondering how the administration is going to pay for its ambitious infrastructure plans.

So, why has Biden asked for a larger military budget? The administration’s 2022 request for the Pentagon is $715 billion, an increase of $10 billion, plus an additional $38 billion for military-related spending at the Energy Department and other agencies.

True, the administration is hoping to boost non-military spending by a larger percentage. It is planning to remove the “overseas contingency operations” line item that funded the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But if there ever was a time to reduce the U.S. military spending, it’s now. The pandemic proved the utter worthlessness of tanks and destroyers in defending the homeland from the most urgent threats. Greater cooperation with China, a renewed nuclear pact with Iran, and détente with both Cuba and North Korea would all provide powerful reasons for the United States to reduce military spending.

To use Joe Biden’s signature phrase, “C’mon, man!”

John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus, where this article originally appeared.

 

 

Avanza activismo a favor del pueblo palestino

Blanche Petrich

https://www.jornada.com.mx/2021/07/03/politica/015n1pol 

Periódico La Jornada
Sábado 3 de julio de 2021, p. 15

Después de 11 días de bombardeos israelíes sobre Gaza, en mayo de este año se generó un cambio radical en la percepción de la opinión pública mundial en torno a ese conflicto del Medio Oriente y hoy es posible avanzar en la solidaridad y el activismo a favor del pueblo palestino como antes no se podía, asegura Maren Mantovani, directora del Comité Palestino por el BDS, como se denomina al movimiento por el boicot, la desinversión y las sanciones como una forma de presión contra el sistema de apartheid de Israel.

Durante el coloquio que organizó el Colegio de México, Palestina más allá de Gaza, ella y otros activistas de Europa, Chile, México y una representante del movimiento juvenil palestino explicaron los alcances de estas campañas.

En México, por ejemplo, se promueve la campaña Stop Cemex, que busca presionar a esta empresa mexicana para que cese su venta de cemento para la construcción de los muros de Cisjordania y los asentamientos ilegales de israelíes en los territorios ocupados de Palestina.

En el marco del boicot académico, que según explicó Araceli Cortés Galán, doctorada en pedagogía por la UNAM y del Centro de Estudios de África-Asia del Colmex, se busca que universidades y centros culturales dejen de tener programas de colaboración con centros de conocimiento sionistas y se ha logrado que la Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (ENAH) se sume a los “espacios libres de apartheid israelí”. Desde el BDS México se propone también que el Colmex haga lo mismo.

Otro objetivo es presionar a favor de que más gobiernos del mundo reconozcan al Estado palestino diplomáticamente. En el caso de México, explicó Cortés, se pretende que la Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores sea congruente con el principio de la autodeterminación y con su discurso de la coexistencia pacífica de dos estados y formalice su relación con Palestina.

Otra campaña es la promoción de un boicot comercial a la poderosa industria armamentista israelí, una de las mayores del mundo, que exporta hasta 70 por ciento de su producción militar a países del sur global, particularmente en América Latina. Francisco Abogasi, de la Pontificia Universidad de Chile y coordinador del movimiento BDS latinoamericano, recordó que las armas que han sido utilizadas recientemente para reprimir a los jóvenes en las favelas de Brasil y en las protestas estudiantiles de Colombia y Chile son compradas a Israel.

Budour Hussein, abogada y periodista palestina radicada en Jerusalén, describió los rasgos que tiene el movimiento palestino actual, lo que piden y piensan los jóvenes en la calle. “A los que crecimos después de la intifada nos dijeron la generación perdida porque sólo queremos vivir. Y sí, queremos vivir, hacer tik toks, subir fotos en Instagram, pero también queremos nuestra libertad, nuestra identidad palestina, no la que aprendimos en la escuela donde domina la narrativa sionista. Decimos: soy palestina y punto. No hablamos de derecho internacional. No esperamos ya nada de los líderes del mundo ni de los demás gobiernos, ni de la autoridad palestina ni de los partidos. Hay una ausencia de liderazgo y sólo vemos posible el cambio desde la calle”.

La joven, poeta, invidente e integrante del Centro de Investigación y Derechos Humanos y Asistencia Legal en Jerusalén (JLAC, por sus siglas en inglés), explicó que para esos nuevos movimientos de palestinos, sea en Gaza, en Cisjordania o en Jerusalén, las movilizaciones en las grandes ciudades del mundo fueron una inspiración. Pero mayo, para ellos, significó un cambio de paradigma. Ya no queremos esperar a lo que las organizaciones puedan hacer. Queremos hablar de liberación total. Nuestro modelo de resistencia dejó de ser una voz pasiva. Ahora es un modelo de confrontación.

 

Tic-tac… sexenal

La oportunidad prevalece y el momento urge a revisar la reserva y el alcance del poder. Resuena el tic-tac de la cuenta regresiva, ojalá el Ejecutivo se siente y respire hondo.

 

René Delgado

 

julio 02, 2021

https://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/opinion/rene-delgado/2021/07/02/tic-tac-sexenal/

Si de por sí el tiempo vuela, el ánimo y el arrebato transformador del presidente López Obrador lo precipitaron y, ahora, el tic-tac de la cuenta regresiva lo orilla a consolidar los ajustes emprendidos, jerarquizar prioridades, bajarle a la confrontación y preparar la sucesión o, bien, a radicalizar la postura y apretar el paso, asumiendo el peligro del tropiezo, la trampa o el fracaso.

De la actitud política que el mandatario finalmente adopte dependerán no sólo el curso y desenlace del sexenio, sino también el destino del movimiento que armó y encabezó, la suerte de quien pueda sucederlo, así como aquello que a él tanto obsesiona: la memoria de su paso por Palacio.

Síntoma de la circunstancia presidencial es destacar, como parte del informe de gobierno a medio término, una encuesta con percepciones favorables y no una relación de la obra que pudiera amparar y reimpulsar la gestión. No es la opinión pública quien debe rendirle cuentas, es al revés.

Más allá de la voluntad, el reloj sexenal marca la hora en la cual el Ejecutivo debe calcular la reserva de poder y recalibrar su alcance. Qué hacer, qué corregir, qué dejar y qué alistar. En breve, la hora de determinar si toma una avenida o se adentra en un callejón.

…

El discurso presidencial pierde fuerza y se torna cansino, sobre todo, cuando a casi medio sexenio transcurrido, los ajustes operados no arrojan sus frutos y, por naturaleza, los cambios provocan turbulencias.

Recargar los males del pasado y las dificultades del presente en el adversario; negar la realidad con datos sin sustento; dar por hecho lo dicho; confrontar sin afrontar; jactarse de ser distinto a los antecesores, dejando ver un parecido familiar; denunciar sin castigar la corrupción; tolerar rémoras y cobijar impresentables; subrayar lo evitado y no lo logrado; alentar a los ultras a ir tras los moderados o los leales sin ceguera o contra el extraño enemigo disfrazado; distraer con temas de ayer o personajes de hoy; encabezar sin dirigir al partido; agraviar a sectores sociales que, quizá, lo respaldaron; sobajar a colaboradores con tal de brillar sólo él ante los reflectores… ese discurso ya dio de sí, así se inventen nuevos capítulos, secciones o episodios en la conferencia matutina.

Asimismo –como dicho en otro Sobreaviso, “La Marcha de los Cien Días”, la acertada modificación o retoque de los símbolos del poder ya dejaron de rendir dividendos e, incluso, se revierten. El Jetta blanco estacionado; el avión presidencial guardado; los vuelos en aerolínea comercial; la simulada desintegración del Estado Mayor Presidencial; la conversión de la residencia oficial de Los Pinos en museo de sitio ya no constituyen novedad ni generan identidad entre el mandatario y su base social. Falta el paso del símbolo al signo político.

Como todo, las rutinas también agotan y se agotan y, sobra decirlo, el ejercicio del poder desgasta.

…

A punto de iniciar el segundo tramo del sexenio, lógicamente la realidad dejará caer su peso sobre la esperanza, dejando el resultado como única medida del vínculo entre una y otra, de su cercanía o distancia, de lo real y lo ideal.

En particular, tres cuestiones amenazan esa relación entre deseo y realidad. El deterioro de los servicios públicos o la tibia reacción ante fenómenos naturales y antinaturales –más de una vez cuna de tragedias–, a causa de recortes no bien calculados ni realizados y hechos en favor de programas y obras sin destino cierto. La inseguridad pública y la violencia criminal que, como desde hace años, empapan de sangre la conciencia y cavan fosas en el alma y, ante las cuales, ningún efecto tiene reiterar una y otra vez que todas las mañanas a temprana hora se analiza qué ocurre con ellas. Y la inflación que se alza como una sombra sobre la expectativa económica.

Esas tres cuestiones amagan con una realidad que ningún discurso derrota y ponen en riesgo el trabajo fiscal realizado; la disciplina financiera sostenida; el giro dado en las políticas laboral, sindical y salarial; el replanteamiento de la relación con el poderoso socio y vecino, así como la atención prestada a los pobres…

De ahí la importancia de tomar asiento y respirar, antes de ponerse otra vez en pie de guerra y denunciar de mil un y formas supuestas tentaciones golpistas que, de pronto, quedan como el pretexto para ocultar la incapacidad de encarar y gobernar tanto frentes abiertos sin necesidad o como el afán de construir fantasmas para liberar el miedo.

…

Falta, pues, por ver si la madurez de quien supo acceder al poder de forma extraordinaria sin tener muy claro cómo ejercerlo con determinación, pero sin rudeza innecesaria, es acicate para reflexionar qué hacer, qué corregir, qué dejar y qué alistar.

El propósito de ejecutar un cambio radical en el régimen político y el modelo económico en el lapso marcado por el reloj sexenal llevó al mandatario a precipitar acciones, muchas de ellas marcadas por el atropello, la zancadilla o el tropiezo. Y, ahora, la actitud política tomada tras las elecciones revela cierta confusión, enojo y desarticulación en las acciones, justo cuando la circunstancia exige claridad, serenidad y reflexión.

Purgar a colaboradores no por ineficientes sino por desleales; mostrar desdén a quienes no se condujeron como él quisiera; entusiasmar y desanimar a posibles sucesores; abrazar a unos y abrasar a otros; descalificar al electorado que no le dio su voto, presumiendo infalibilidad en decisiones y acciones; y radicalizar la confrontación con la prensa perfila a un político reacio a entender la oportunidad que tiene y el momento en que se encuentra.

Ojalá el Ejecutivo se siente y respire hondo, sin dejar de oír el tic-tac.

 

The Vacuous Phrase at the Core of Biden’s Foreign Policy

June 22, 2021,

https://www.nytimes.com/section/todayspaper
By Peter Beinart

Anyone who slogs through the diplomatic verbiage generated last week by President Biden’s inaugural overseas trip will notice one phrase again and again: “rules-based.” It appears twice in Mr. Biden’s joint statement with Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, four times each in the communiqués the United States issued with the governments of the Group of 7 and the European Union, and six times in the manifesto produced by NATO.

That’s no surprise: “Rules-based order” (or sometimes, “rules-based system”) is among the Biden administration’s favorite terms. It has become what the “free world” was during the Cold War. Especially among Democrats, it’s the slogan that explains what America is fighting to defend.

Too bad. Because the “rules-based order” is a decoy. It’s a way of sidestepping the question Democrats should be asking: Why isn’t America defending international law?

Although now mostly directed at China and Russia, the phrase “rules-based order” began as a critique of Republicans. As the University of Chicago’s Paul Poast has detailed, the term gained currency after George W. Bush invaded Iraq without the approval of the United Nations Security Council, which exemplified his general disregard for international restraints on American power.

“Rules-based order” became shorthand for the Democratic alternative. And after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, and China in 2016 flouted an international ruling against its expansive claims in the South China Sea, the phrase gained new life as a way of distinguishing America from its increasingly assertive challengers. A key purpose of American foreign policy, Secretary of State Antony Blinken explained last month, is to “uphold this rules-based order that China is posing a challenge to.”

OK, but which rules, exactly, is America upholding? Biden administration officials don’t say. In fact, they never clearly define the term at all. Arguing about phrases like “rules-based order,” the political scientist Patrick Porter has noted, is like “wrestling with fog.”

That’s exactly the point. Since the “rules-based order” is never adequately defined, America’s claim to uphold it can never be disproved.

There is, however, a related phrase with a much clearer meaning: “international law.” For decades, diplomats and scholars around the world have used it to encompass the written and unwritten rules that govern the behavior of nations. And it is precise because international law is so much better defined that Biden officials — when speaking solely for the United States — use it far less.

If Mr. Biden or Mr. Blinken declared that America upholds international law, critics might ask how that squares with Washington’s continuing bipartisan love affair with sanctions so punitive that both current and former U.N. special rapporteurs have likened to them economic war. Skeptics might wonder why the United States refuses to sign or ratify dozens of international treaties — many of them endorsed by a vast majority of countries — including the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, the very treaty that the Biden administration condemns Beijing for violating its encroachments in the South China Sea. Or they might question why the United States still maintains a law that authorizes an American president to use military force to extricate Americans who are prosecuted by the International Criminal Court.

International law is contested and fragile, and not all countries shape it equally. But unlike “rules-based order,” it is not purely an American creation, which means it offers some independent standard against which to evaluate American behavior. For many Trump-era Republicans, that’s what makes it pernicious. Putting “America First” means liberating Americans need to care about what non-Americans think.

That’s not the Biden administration’s view. Mr. Biden and his top advisers recognize that international legitimacy constitutes a form of power. They badly want America’s allies — and American voters — to see America’s overseas behavior as less capricious and less predatory than the behavior of America’s chief rivals. They just are not willing to submit that proposition to any test other than one America writes itself.

This is why their efforts are likely to enjoy only modest success. Yes, non-Americans have more confidence now that the United States will do the “right thing” internationally than they did when Donald Trump was president. But according to an Alliance of Democracies Foundation poll taken in 53 countries recently, people around the world still view the United States as a greater threat to democracy in their country than China or Russia. If Democrats regularly asked whether America’s actions violate international law, they would find that sentiment easier to understand.

The literary critic Edward Said once wrote, “Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special.” The phrase “rules-based order” is the latest entry in America’s imperial lexicon. Given the Republican Party’s fervent hostility to international law, perhaps it’s the best a Democratic president can do. But the very nebulousness that makes “rules-based order” palatable in Washington ensures its ultimate irrelevance beyond America’s shores.

Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart) is a contributing opinion writer and a professor of journalism and political science at The Newmark School of Journalism at The City University of New York. He is also editor-at-large of Jewish Currents and writes The Beinart Notebook, a weekly newsletter.