John Chuckman
COMMENT – JOE BIDEN’S OWN WORDS
What follows are two quotes from a recent speech by Joe Biden. They illustrate with unusual clarity what is wrong, when
it come to foreign affairs, with Biden and with the United States, a country
with immense problems it refuses to face. Of course, if the United States has problems,
then almost by definition, the world does. The United States is the world’s
epicenter for conflict.
“I 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’s aggressive actions — interfering with our elections, cyberattacks, poisoning its citizens — are over. We will not hesitate to raise the cost on Russia and defend our vital interests and our people.”
“If we invest in ourselves and our people, if we fight to ensure that American businesses are positioned to compete and win on the global stage, if the rules of international trade aren’t stacked against us, if our workers and intellectual property are protected, then there’s no country on Earth — not China or any other country on Earth — that can match us.”
What Is wrong with these statements?
The first one, about Russia, is a fabrication from beginning to end. It represents just another big glob of regurgitated Hillary Clinton Russophobia. Rather than being informative or helpful, it promotes hostility and misunderstanding.
Putin has little patience for fools, so I doubt Biden spoke to him in this “I made it clear” tone. If Biden truly did touch on any of this nonsense, then I’m sure it was in a vein which allowed Putin to listen politely, fully understanding the strange demands made by politics, while perhaps briefly rolling his eyes for listening associates.
How can you build anything, much less international relationships between major powers, based on statements which simply are not true?
You cannot, but the real truth, hidden under the lies and braggadocio, is that the United States does not want to build a relationship with Russia. Not at all. It must pretend to want to do so for appearances to allies and the world.
America views Russia as a competitor and a potential competitor in many things. And America does not welcome competitors. Particularly when it comes to matters like Europe. America, for seventy-five years has kept Europe in a “friendly occupation,” cutting it off from developing relationships with Russia which any glance at a map will tell you are natural and inevitable. European industry with Russian energy and resources becomes a much stronger world competitor with America.
Over time, America has made many adjustments in the relationship with Europe to make Europe feel more like a partner than a dependent. Europe is held captive in part by its own geopolitical Stockholm Syndrome, identifying with its captor. America has also turned Europe into a captive market for costly military goods, becoming in effect a kind of “company store.” Still, in the end, economics will tell, and the economics are with a European-Russian relationship.
Keeping Russia as a kind of enemy is a way to hide fear of competition, quite apart from a convenient excuse and motivator in domestic politics. The spillover effects don’t hurt America’s voracious defense industry either.
So, what is wrong with Biden’s second statement, the one about “no one matching us”?
It is just pure childish fantasy, but it, too, is larded with lies, like the one about the rules of international trade being stacked against the United States. For decades after WWII, America’s heyday on the world scene, America itself helped create those rules and build the organizations to which they belong.
Suddenly, new competitors come along, notably China, and somehow the rules are “stacked against” poor old America. It is a ridiculous thing to say. And it comes out of the hard fact that in many things, America cannot compete with China. China will overtake America before very long and ultimately have an economy several times the size of America’s.
And just the same for the “protection of intellectual property.” Intellectual property is protected, but it is something by its very nature impossible to do perfectly, especially in the Age of Electronics. Anyway, the use of other people’s intellectual property is not a one-way street. America uses its massive, intrusive NSA facilities and other means to steal intellectual property, including from its own allies.
And if you study the history of the United States, you will learn that it was notorious for stealing inventions and copyrighted materials from Europe from the late Eighteenth Century right through much of the Nineteenth. Charles Dickens was angered on his visit to America to find his latest book from London reprinted in a new edition in Boston for which he received no royalties.
It was the same with all kinds of gadgets and farm implements. A visitor to Britain would buy or steal a copy or a drawing and bring it home where craftsmen worked hard to duplicate it.
The sense of much of the statement is right in keeping with Trump’s colossally ignorant stuff about making America great again. It is comic-book stuff about a superhero being tied down by rules and pygmies.
The lies are a little more palatable for being embedded in wishful childish thinking rather than hostility to others, as in the first statement. But they are still lies, and you cannot build sound policy or relationships based on lies.
Both statements demonstrate what a limited man Biden is, limited in powers of observation and limited in thinking.
Saying that is to give Biden maximum credit.
What he really may be doing here is just retailing fables to the public with every intention of ultimately letting the Dark State – Pentagon, CIA, State Department – clear the matter up in its own inimitable way. He has always been a friend of the military and of empire. He is not the least squeamish about spilling other people’s blood.
In either case, we have nothing to feel comfortable about – an ignorant man spouting ignorance or a shill for the Dark State
SOME BACKGROUND REFERENCES READERS MAY ENJOY:
BIDEN HIMSELF:
THE NATURE OF AMERICAN POLITICS:
NATO:
WORLD AFFAIRS:
