https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17213/us-china-russia-thucydides-trap
The Paris Climate Accord is more of an aspiration than a strategy while the Iranian nuclear problem has always been a way of avoiding the real issue: the danger that the Islamist regime poses for regional peace and stability.
[T]he Biden doctrine, if one might suggest such a label… could cause lasting damage because it concerns relations with China and Russia.
Is China [and Russia] a rival, a challenger, a competitor, an adversary or an enemy? Is the US heading for a cold, lukewarm or even a hot war…?
[W]ithout answering that question it won’t be possible to develop serious policies to deal with them.
The phrase “Russia wants to subvert our democracy” has become a Bidenian leitmotiv. And, yet, the same Russia is invited as a partner in stabilizing Libya, finding a future for Syria and helping keep the mullahs on leash.
You don’t deal with an adversary, even a troublemaker, the same way you do with an enemy.
[T]here are enemies who, like the bug in a Voltaire short story, are suicidal; they prefer to attack and die rather than live to make peace.
George Shultz always advised against taking on two powerful challengers at the same time, even though the US needed to plan for simultaneously fighting two major wars.
When Joe Biden started his presidency with the slogan “diplomacy is back!” some wondered what that meant in terms of a coherent foreign policy. Diplomacy, as every sixth-grader knows, is one of the many means needed to implement a policy. On its own, it is either an academic conceit or another name for charade. In the past week or so we have observed diplomacy, as practiced by the new administration, both as a conceit and a charade.
As a conceit, it appeared in the headline-catching slogan “America is back in the Paris Climate Accord” launched by Washington. Now, however, we know that the “return” is so full of “ifs and buts” that even the French, initially applauding loudly, are beginning to wonder whether they have been sold a bill of goods. Another example was furnished by the tedious scrimmage over the “nuclear deal” with the mullahs in Tehran.
President Biden had hinted at a quick return to the path traced by his former boss Barack Obama. Based on that assumption, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab imagined a scenario that would lead to defanging the mullahs with a lasting solution to the 42-year old “Iran problem.” Now, however, we know that Raab may have jumped the gun as the Biden team are still wondering what to do about a deal that Robert Malley, the diplomat in charge of the dossier, has described as defective.
In the broader scheme of things, these two examples may do little harm.