Common sense in U.S. foreign policy ended Jan. 20, the day 78-year-old President Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president. Biden didn’t take too long to revive his hatred of 68-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of mistreating 44-year-old Russian dissident Alexi Navalny. On Aug. 24, 2020, Navalny was poisoned in Tomsk, Siberia, allegedly with Soviet-made Novichok, the same poison used March 4, 2018 in Salisbury, U.K., to poison former FSB agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. Former President Donald Trump took Russia’s internal affairs in stride, not jumping on the media bandwagon condemning Putin for interfering in U.S. elections and democracy. Trump couldn’t figure out how Russia interfered in 2016 when former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton won nearly 3 million more popular votes in the presidential election.
Today’s announcement that U.S., Canada, Britain and EU would sanction members of the Chinese Communist Party for alleged “genocide” of Muslim Uyghurs, not to mention a crack down on pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. Whatever the reasons, U.S. foreign policy returned to the Obama era, where the U.S. acted in concert with the EU on matters related to human rights. When Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met in Anchorage, Alaska for a summit with China March 18, both insulted chief Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi and state councilor Wang Yi slamming China for human rights abuses. Yang held up the mirror to Blinken and Sullivan that the U.S. is in no position to lecture China on human rights when it’s slaughtering black people in American streets. Two days after the summit, the State Department joins the EU with more U.S. sanctions.
Biden’s foreign policy for his first 60 days has been built on insulting China and Russia, actually calling Putn a “soulless killer” March 16. Finding more ways to harm U.S. national security, Biden’s foreign policy team has managed to alienate two the U.S.’s biggest global adversaries, all for bogus reasons. There’s simply no evidence that China has perpetrated “genocide” on its Muslim Uyghur population. Nor can the U.S. say with a straight face that Putin is any more a killer than any other U.S., EU or other foreign leaders, routinely calling to assassinate its enemies. When former President Trump ordered the drone strike on Iran’s Al-Qud’s leader Qassem Soleimani Jan. 3, 2020 near Baghdad, who was the killer then? Certainly not Putin. Calling Putin a “killer” for going after a known insurgent calling for the overthrow of the Russian state, certainly can’t call him a killer.
If Democrats and the U.S. press had their way, they would have locked up Trump for the Jan. 6 riot and mob scene, something that brought Trump a second impeachment trial. Putin watched carefully while Democrats and the U.S. press almost convicted Trump of “incitement of insurrection,” when he had nothing to do with the Jan. 6 mob scene, other than complaining about eh Nov. 3 election results. Putin watched the U.S. government go after a former U.S. president, certainly not a known dissident with a clandestine organization designed to topple the Russian government. Yet the U.S. and EU put Navalny on a pedestal for doing anything possible to destabilize Putin’s 20 reign of power. U.S. and EU officials justify new sanctions because Putin went after a known insurgent who’s called for the overthrow of the Russian government. What’s Putin to believe other than the U.S. and EU want him out.
Blinken continues to bash Russia and China, making more incendiary statementa about the Peoples Republic of China [PRC]. “Amid growing international condemnation, the [Peoples Republic of China] continue to commit genocide and crimes against humanity,” referring to the Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang. “The United States reiterates its calls of the PRC to bring an end to the repression of Uyghurs, who are predominantly Muslim, and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang, including by releasing all those arbitrarily held in internment camps and detention centers,” Blinken said, all but wrecking U.S.-Sino relations. Biden called the U.S. a “systemically racist” country Jan. 27, pointing to a history of discrimination by the White majority against blacks. China chief diplomat told Blinken in Achorage that the U.S. is not in a position of lecture other sovereign states about human rights.
Joining Canada, U.K. and EU, Biden signaled, like former President Barack Obama, that the U.S. will no longer act unilaterally when it comes to foreign policy. Acting collectively with its allies, Blinken’s State Deparment thinks they have more clout, than going it alone like Trump. Well, when Obama and Biden were in power, they watched Putin invade the Crimean Peninsula March 1, 2014, and did nothing in response. Biden and Blinken can talk about collective action but no one in Europe wants to pick a fight with Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping. When Blinker accuses Beijing of genocide with the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, what’s his proof. Chinese officials reject in the strongest possible terms accusations of “genocide.” Overstating the case against Beijing in Xinjiang, Biden and Blinke cheapen their case against China because there’s no proof of ”genocide.”
