OPINION:
President Biden’s diplomacy has two themes: Comic relief and appeasement. Two statements and two actions, all recent, prove the point.
First, Mr. Biden said, “We have plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean.”
Then, as he finished a speech advocating gun control, he said: “All right. God save the queen, man.”
Both statements were bizarre and indicative of his failing mental condition. Two actions demonstrate appeasement.
Mr. Biden’s latest project is to revive the 2015 Obama nuclear weapons deal with Iran that was canceled in 2018 by then-President Donald Trump. Then there was Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to China.
In what The Wall Street Journal characterized as a “remarkable retreat,” Mr. Biden is pursuing an unwritten agreement with Iran that would enable it to reach the point at which it could produce nuclear weapons but trust it to go no further in return for relief from U.S. sanctions.
There would, of course, be no way to verify Tehran’s compliance.
Mr. Biden wants an unwritten agreement in order to avoid the 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, which would require him to send any written agreement to Congress for review.
On June 12, Mr. Biden gave Iraq permission to buy about $2.76 billion in Iranian gas despite U.S. sanctions. This is inconsistent with his February 2021 statement that the U.S. wouldn’t give Iran concessions in order to get the talks restarted.
In return for vague promises from Iran, Mr. Biden will bail out its economy. There is no reason — good or bad — for such an agreement other than Mr. Biden’s obsession with undoing everything Mr. Trump did.
Iran is already capable of producing nuclear weapons in weeks, not months or years. It may already have nuclear weapons sold to it by North Korea.
Any new agreement with Iran would give it cover to produce, in secret, both nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them.
Mr. Biden evidently wants to sweep Iran’s nuclear threat under the rug until after November 2024, which the ayatollahs would be glad to do. But, as this column has often stated, any Biden nuclear weapons agreement with Iran would make a nuclear war in the Middle East — which could easily spread to Europe and the U.S. — a near-imminent danger.
Mr. Biden’s pusillanimity in diplomacy was further demonstrated in Mr. Blinken’s mission to Beijing to reduce tensions between us and China.
Mr. Blinken’s trip was delayed from February when the Chinese sent a spy balloon over America. Mr. Biden didn’t order it shot down until it had passed over the nation. Since then, China has constantly labeled the U.S. an aggressor, alleging that we shot down an “innocent” weather balloon that had gone off course.
Playing into China’s blame-the-U.S. game, Mr. Biden said on June 17 that “China has some legitimate difficulties unrelated to the United States, and I think one of the things that balloon caused was not so much that it got shot down, but I don’t think the leadership knew where it was, knew what was in it and what was going on.”
He thus exonerated China of blame in the sequence of events.
Mr. Blinken received a chilly reception in Beijing, with no red carpet or ceremony marking his arrival. His meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping lasted only 35 minutes. It ended with Mr. Xi giving Mr. Blinken a diplomatic scolding. He said, “I hope that through this visit, Mr. Secretary, you will make more positive contributions to stabilizing China-U.S. relations.”
The worst outcome of Mr. Blinken’s mission was his statement after meeting with Mr. Xi. Mr. Blinken said, “We do not support Taiwan independence.” It was gratuitous and nearly an open invitation to a Chinese attack on Taiwan.
It’s entirely clear that Mr. Xi, rather than wanting to reduce tensions with the U.S., is looking to increase them. He has no respect for Mr. Biden’s weak-kneed approach.
At a May 30 top-level meeting on national security, Mr. Xi said, “We must be prepared for worst-case and extreme scenarios, and be ready to withstand the major test of high winds, choppy waters and even dangerous storms.” At that meeting he also told China’s generals to “dare to attack.”
What are Mr. Xi’s “worst-case and extreme scenarios”? His military is training for them with increased flights of combat aircraft testing in Taiwan’s air defense identification zone since last year. In April, Chinese forces encircled Taiwan and practiced maneuvers for invading the island nation.
Mr. Biden often says that we and China are competitors, not adversaries. Mr. Xi has a different view of the nations’ relationship.
In four speeches in March, Mr. Xi spoke of war readiness and in one, told his generals to “dare to fight.” He also announced an increase in the defense budget — which had already doubled in a decade — of more than 7%.
Mr. Xi is preparing for war, though Messrs. Biden and Blinken don’t seem to believe that he is. They want the American public to ignore the nuclear threat of Iran.
We can laugh at Mr. Biden’s statements about building a railroad across the Indian Ocean and saying “God save the queen.” But his appeasement of Iran and China is no laughing matter.
• Jed Babbin is a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and contributing editor for The American Spectator.
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