Meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first time in over year, President Joe Biden hoped to show he was up to the task of engaging in the kind of diplomacy at a time of war in Ukraine and the Middle East. Since taking office Jan. 20, 2021, Biden has provoked Communist China to the point both nuclear superpowers were talking about war over Taiwan. Biden said Sept. 27, 2022 that he would commit U.S. troops to defend Taiwan in the even of a Beijing invasion. Xi has made reunification with the Island of Formosa a major part of his Communist platform, challenging Taiwan and the United States. Formosa has been independent since the 1949 Maoist Revolution when Gen. Chaing Kai-Shek led a band of nationalists to the Island of Formosa to escape Mao Zedong’s Communist Revolution. Whatever the history, Biden breached the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act.
Telling the press that he would send troops if needed to defend Taiwan, Biden set U.S.-Chinese relations back for a generation. Xi can’t live with Biden breaching the Taiwan Relations Act signed into law by former President Jimmy Carter, ending the 1954 Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, requiring the U.S. to recognize only one China. So, when Biden and his national security team led by 61-year-old Secretary of State Antony Blinken and 45-year-old National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan accused China of genocide against Muslim Uyghurs in Western China, U.S.-Chinese relations headed south. Getting Xi to attend the APEC [Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation] summit in San Francisco was big deal. It gave Biden an opportunity to show he was still capable of diplomacy at his advanced age. Everything went OK when Biden was scripted by his handlers, then he went off script.
Biden, known for his gaffes through his long political career, has been prone toward even more reckless statements as he aged. “Look, he is. He’s a dictator in the sense that he’s a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that is based on a form of government totally different from ours,” Biden told reporters following his four-hour meeting with Xi, trying to mend fences. Chinese press picked up on Biden’s remarks a quickly reported Biden’s wisecrack to the Xinhua official Chinese Communist Party news agency. Xi met for a 2,000 a plate dinner last night with U.S. business leaders, announcing he would send giant pandas as a goodwill gesture to the San Diego Zoo. What was Biden doing calling Xi a “dictator,” trying to undermine all the goodwill created at the APEC summit? Biden’s Asian-Pacific staff bent over backwards to pull off a flawless meeting with Xi.
When it comes to diplomacy, Biden has reverted to his old anti-Communist ways in his old age, unable to control his mouth with reporters, showing the loss of control seen in the elderly. When you consider Biden’s offensive statements toward Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling him a “murderous thug,” it’s no wonder the U.S. is at war with the Kremlin using Ukrainian troops. Biden dumbfounded Ukraine’s 45-year-old President Volodymyr Zelensky telling the press he would send U.S. troops to defend Taiwan but refusing to send troops to Ukraine. Biden has committed untold billions, now approaching $200 billion, to Ukraine in an effort to degrade the Russian military to the point it can no longer wage war. No European country, no matter how they don’t like Putin, wants to see the Russian military degraded creating a major power vacuum in Eastern Europe.
Yesterday was not the first time Biden called Xi a “dictator,” when he did so in June in San Francisco after he ordered the shoot down of a Chinese spy balloon that drifted over the Continental United States. “The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with to boxcars full of spy equipment is he didn’t know it was there. No, I’m serious. That was the great embarrassment for dictators, when they don’t know what happened,” Biden told donors in San Francisco last June. Speaking disparagingly about world leaders is never a good idea, especially when trying to improve relations. Biden’s gaffe relates to the fact that he no longer has the usual restraints needed to conduct diplomacy as president of the United States. All the work of his foreign policy team to put U.S.-Chinese relations back on track could be derailed because of his impulsive remarks.
Biden comments to the press following his high-wire diplomacy act with Chinese President Xi Jinping shows he’s not in control of himself. Recent Yahoo/YouGov polling shows that 75% of voters don’t think Biden is fit for another four years in office. If his comments after meeting with Xi don’t prove it, nothing will. When it comes to Ukraine, the same recklessness has dominated Biden’s decisions to join the Ukraine War against the Kremlin. Biden could have worked out a diplomatic arrangement with Putin to avert a war that has cost U.S. taxpayers nearly $200 billion with no end in sight. With that kind of judgment, it’s no wonder that Biden would call Putin and Xi dictators, not realizing the costly consequences to the United States. If Biden’s given four more years, it’s unfathomable the damage he could cause for U.S. foreign policy and national security.
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.
