National Security Adviser Jake Sulliva, 45, continued his smoke blowing, extending an olive branch to China on the eve of the U.N. General Assembly, hoping to repair PR damage done to the Biden White House before the 2024 election heats up in 2024. President Joe Biden, 80, together with 60-year-old Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Sullivan have done everything since taking office Jan. 20, 2021 to alienate Communist China. Blinken and Sullivan met with high-ranking Chinese officials in Anchorage, Alaska March 18, 2021 at a get-to-know you summit, promptly accusing Beijing of genocide against Muslim Uyghurs in Western China. Blinken and Sullivan set the exact wrong tone leading to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) visiting Taiwan Aug. 4, 2022, promising the Republic of China undying support with Beijing threatening to take over the island nation.
Relations with China went from bad to worse when Biden said Sept. 23, 2022 that he would commit troops to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion. Chinese President Xi Jinping accused Biden of violating the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, a treaty singed by former President Jimmy Carter, ending the 1954 Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty and recognizing Beijing as the only China. Carter’s Taiwan Relations Act left no ambiguity about the U.S. commitment to Communist China. Yet Biden decided to throw gasoline on the fire, prompting Beijing to make threatening military gestures to Taiwan. So, when it comes to U.S.-Chinese relations, things have been moving toward a military confrontation, with Biden’s political advisers seeing only headwinds moving into 2024. Sullivan’s attempt to mend fences is purely political tied to the 2024 election.
Sullivan has done nothing but provoke and antagonize Xi Jinping since stepping into his National Security Adviser role. But now that Biden faces reelection with the worst U.S.-Chinese relations since the 1949 Maoist Revolution, he decides to send an olive branch before next week’s U.N. General Assembly. Whether admitted to or not, Biden can’t conduct U.S. foreign policy without alienating U.S. adversaries, now fighting a proxy war against the Russian Federation in Ukraine. Why does it shock the U.S. press when 73-year-old Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says the U.S. is at war with Russia? What does the White House think it’s been doing for the last three years with Russia and China? Blinken and Sullivan have antagonizing Russia and China since Day One taking Cabinet jobs. Suddenly, because it’s an election year, Sullivan thinks he can turn things around.
Meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Malta, Sullivan thinks he can mend fences before the U.N. General Assembly opens. Sullivan said it’s “part of ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication and responsibly managing the relationship,” said an unnamed U.S. official. Sullivan’s attempt to normalize relations is purely political because Biden faces many questions about his ability to conduct U.S. foreign policy. But whatever the excuse for Blinken and Sullivan, the fearsome anti-Russia and anti-Chinese tag team have tried to take down U.S.-Russian and U.S.-Chinese relations. Biden hasn’t talked to Xi in nearly a year, attesting, if nothing else, to his inability to conduct U.S. foreign policy. Sullivan wants to schedule a meeting between Biden and Xi on the sidelines to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation [APEC] meeting in November in San Francisco.
Biden has infuriated Xi with his threat to commit U.S. troops to defend Taiwan. Sullivan hopes Biden and Xi can discus bilateral economic ties, the Ukraine War and any differences that remain about China and the U.S. on Taiwan. Xi sees Taiwan as a territory of Mainland China, something Biden rejects. Biden and Xi last met on the sidelines of the Summit of the World in Bali, Indonesia. Whatever meetings have taken place since, it’s been low-level talks with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Treasury Secretary Jane Yelen. Whatever the meetings, China has not rolled out the red carpet with all the antiagonism coming from Blinken and Sullivan. Suddenly, the White House sees its foreign policy disaster heading into an election year, looking only at the political optics, not war-and-peace issues. Biden is not going to get Xi to denounce Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Biden and his foreign policy and national security team have done an abysmal job of managing U.S. foreign policy and national security. Instead of working on a peace plan in Ukraine, Biden continues to beat the war drums, giving Ukraine a blank check to fight the Kremlin, adding more lethal weapons. Biden, Blinken and Sullivan continue to prosecute the proxy war against the Kremlin, damaging relations with China and North Korea. North Korean President Kim Jong-un met with Putin in Vladivostok to discus bilateral relations and military cooperation in Ukraine. Treating foreign policy and national security as political issues before the 2024 election is a disgraceful failure of the Biden administration, putting the U.S. at risk of WW III and possibly nuclear war. Looking to buffalo the public before the 2024 election, the White House has too many windows to cover.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
