Coming to office touting his years as former President Barack Obama’s Vice President and years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 78-year-old President Joe Biden clearly isn’t the same person, as little as four years ago helping map out Obama’s foreign policy. Former President Donald Trump warned that Biden looked cognitively impaired, not the same person when he prided himself as a foreign policy expert. No long after Joe took office Jan. 20, Biden hosted as get to know you summit March 18 with high-ranking Chinese officials in Anchorage, Alaska. Biden sent his emissaries, 58-year-old Secretary of State Antony Blinken and 44-year-old National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, both neophytes on the world state. Both confronted China over genocide against Muslim Uygurs in Xinjiang Province and violating Hong Kong’s autonomy from Beijing.
Senior Chinese diplomat 71-year-old Yang Jiechi told Blinken and Sullivan that no country that admits to “systemic racism” against the African Americans should lecture other countries about human rights. From that point on, China and U.S. have failed to get on the same page, trading barbs and showing no signs of improving relations. “They’re struggling to engage and get the Biden team to change the way it’s talking about China,” said America Enterprise Institute’s senior fellow Zack Cooper. “My sense is that actually the leadership in Beijing right now, they are not looking for very much out of the bilateral interactions,” Cooper said, not seeing much grounds for progress. Then came Russia with Biden labeling Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “soulless killer” March 17, something that didn’t bode well for future talks. Biden seems like he’s prone toward offending everyone.
When Biden met Putin in Geneva June 16, the meeting ended far sooner than expected, leaving with nothing but a promise to try to deescalate tensions. Biden and Blinken had been criticizing Putin for his treatment of 44-year-old Russian dissident Alexi Navalny. Biden and Blinken demanded that Putin release Navalny, a known dissident, from serving his two-year-eight-month prison sentence. Biden and Blinken had criticized Putin for interfering in U.S. elections, then proceeded to call Putin out its treatment of Navalny. By the time they met in Geneva, Biden really didn’t know what to say to Putin to put U.S.-Russian relations on an even keel. Biden spent much of the 2020 campaign criticizing Trump for getting along with Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean President Kim Jong-un. So when Biden doesn’t get along with anyone, it’s a positive thing to the White House.
Then came last week’s disaster in relations with France, when Biden and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison cut a nuclear submarine deal, announcing that Australia was canceling its $48 billion submarine deal with France. So, not only are U.S. foreign relations in the tank with Russia and China, they’ve also hit new lows with France. French President Emmanuel Macron and Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian announced they were recalling U.S. and Australian ambassadors in an unprecedented move. Rightly or wrongly, France said the U.S. and Australia “stabbed France in the back,” something that’s harmed U.S.-French relations. Morrison said he discussed with Macron in June that the 2016 submarine contract was in trouble because diesel-electric-powered subs did not give the Australian navy enough range to complete its mission of patrolling all of the South Pacific.
China and Russia also weren’t happy hearing that the U.S. was sharing nuclear-powered submarine technology with Australia. Biden announce a new “quad” security deal in the Indo-Pacific region with the U.S., U.K., Japan and Australia, all attempting to deal with China’s aggression in international waters in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. China’s menacing incursions into Taiwan airspace has raised tensions in the Pacific Rim, where the U.S. considers itself a peacemaker. Beijing has been warning the U.S. to stay out of international waters in the South China Sea where China has built a number of menacing military installations threatening its neighbors in the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and Myanmar. Beijing was told by the International Court of Justice in 2916 at The Hague to respect international waterways and navigation, not to threaten war with its neighbors.
Biden has pushed U.S. relations with China and Russia into Cold War territory, without any plan in mind to find common ground. Antagonizing France was not something expected over the submarine deal, prompting French authorities to compare Biden to Trump. In Biden’s world, comarison’s to Trump are not favorable. Biden’s recent call with Xi Jinping did little to improve U.S.-Chinese relations. “This call was about keeping the channels of communication open,” said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. “What we’ve seen is the importance here is about engaging Xi directrly at the leader level due to the centralization of power and the power that’s in his hands,” Psaki said, making no sense. Biden didn’t help his relations with U.S. allies when he pulled out of Afghanistan abruptly, spreading chaos and causing the deaths of 13 U.S. soldiers from a deadly suicide bombing.
