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FOREIGN POLICY

On China, Biden Is an Empty Suit We desperately need to beef up our China policy. by Steve Postal

https://spectator.org/category/politics/asia/

The Biden administration continues to show itself to be an empty suit on foreign policy. In the wake of the crisis, er, challenges on the southern border, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez called Biden “the migrant president.” After President Biden confirmed in an interview that yes, Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “killer,” Putin wished Biden good health and challenged Biden to a “basically live … open, direct discussion.”

Add China to the list of countries making us a laughingstock. The opening remarks of last week’s meeting between the Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan with China’s foreign policy chief Yang Jiechi and State Councilor Wang Yi in Alaska clearly reveal that the Biden administration lacks a credible, substantive China policy. There were several key takeaways from that meeting.

China does not believe the Biden administration will ever confront China, because Biden told them so.

Director Yang revealed that China is not at all threatened by the Biden administration, as “during the phone call between the presidents [of China and the United States], President Biden himself also talked about the importance of having no conflict or confrontation between our two countries.” Add to this President Biden’s past remarks seeming to sanitize the CCP’s genocide against the Uyghurs as a Chinese “cultural … norm,” the Biden administration has not given the CCP a reason to expect a hands-on approach from the United States.

The Biden team speaks of allies, but has no plan to leverage those allies.

Secretary Blinken was quick to mention that he had visited Japan and South Korea and that our two allies were “very interested in the discussions” that the U.S. and China are having, but he failed to articulate any policy from our alliances that would counter CCP aggression.

In response to what were essentially empty words from Team USA, the Chinese delegation discussed Japan and South Korea much more substantively. Director Yang replied,

China’s Warning to Biden A lecture in Alaska shows that adversaries sense U.S. weakness.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-warning-to-biden-11616360915?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

That was some tongue lashing a senior Chinese official delivered last week in Anchorage to top Biden Administration officials in their first meeting. This is the new reality in U.S.-China relations, as adversaries look to see if they can exploit President Biden as they did Barack Obama.

The two sides had agreed to two minutes of opening remarks each. Secretary of State Antony Blinken kept his short and hospitable, though he did say the U.S. has “deep concerns with actions by China, including in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyber attacks on the United States, and economic coercion toward our allies. Each of these actions threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability.”

China’s director of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, Yang Jiechi, then went on a 20-minute tear (including translation) about the superiority of “Chinese-style democracy” and America’s sins. The latter included a reference to Black Lives Matter, human-rights problems, and that the U.S. “has exercised long-arm jurisdiction and suppression and overstretched the national security through the use of force or financial hegemony.”

Mr. Yang added: “So we believe that it is important for the United States to change its own image and to stop advancing its own democracy in the rest of the world. Many people within the United States actually have little confidence in the democracy of the United States.” As we’ve noted, the Chinese like to echo the woke U.S. media critique of America.

Mr. Blinken responded that the U.S. “acknowledges our imperfections, acknowledges that we’re not perfect, we make mistakes, we have reversals, we take steps back” but then make progress again. This is true enough, but needlessly defensive after a foreigner’s public assault on U.S. interests and values.

China: What to Do About It? by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17191/china-what-to-do-about-it

Amendments to China’s National Defense Law, effective the beginning of this year, take away sweeping powers from the State Council, which leads China’s civilian government, and give it to the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission. These powers include the power to mobilize all of society for war.

Everything they do, whether it is seemingly innocuous, such as measuring a mountain or putting a rover on Mars, is a means of claiming sovereignty, of enlarging the People’s Republic. Now, of course, there are, in addition to these incursions, China’s militant, hostile, belligerent acts…. The question is, what are we going to do about it?

China will land a Rover, its Rover, on Mars in either May or June…. China’s officials have been talking about moon and Mars as if they are sovereign Chinese territory — part of the People’s Republic.

They look at near heavenly bodies the same way they do the South China Sea, something that should be theirs. This means that if they get there, China believes it has the right to exclude other nations.

Today let’s focus on three things that China is doing relating to genetics. First, China is collecting the world’s DNA. Second, China is genetically engineering the Chinese to become a superhuman race, in other words, eugenics. Third, Chinese researchers are working on pathogens, new pathogens, artificial ones, to create the world’s next pandemic.

The story here is that we allowed the Chinese to plunder our society for data.

This whole subject was brought to the attention of the American public by John Ratcliffe, then director of National Intelligence, when he wrote that China was trying to grow super‑soldiers. Ratcliffe mentioned that China is already conducting experiments on people in the People’s Liberation Army to enhance their abilities, to create, as he called it, “biologically enhanced capabilities.”

The Chinese regime does not have ethics or morality. It is not restrained by law. It does not have a sense of restraint. The regime is trying to create the perfect communist. China has the ability and the will to do this, which means that the world has got to prevent this experimentation.

China can become number one in two ways. It can enhance its own CNP ranking by becoming stronger, or it can decrease the CNP rankings of other countries. That’s where pathogens come in. This notion of decreasing CNP of others meant that China had no inhibitions about spreading the coronavirus around the world.

Now, China’s ranking of CNP will increase dramatically, of course, if the next disease leaves the Chinese alone and sickens only foreigners.

The spreading of the coronavirus is indeed an application of unrestricted warfare. Many analysts have said that biological warfare does not work. I can understand why they say that, but unfortunately we have just seen a disease kill about 2.4 million people as well as hobble societies across the world.

COVID-19 is the ultimate proof that biological weapons work. If Chinese scientists actually succeed in developing viruses that attack only foreigners, China could end up as the only viable society in the world. This is communist China’s weapon against the world and against the United States as well.

[O]n January 20 — just hours after taking the oath of office — Biden issued an executive order that repealed President Trump’s executive order of May 1st, 2020, preventing grid operators in the US from buying Chinese equipment. This means China is now free to sell sabotaged equipment to the US.

[W]e should impose costs on China for spreading COVID‑19. Recently, we passed that grim milestone of more than 500,000 deaths. This pathogen is not finished with us yet. We have to impose these costs on China to convince Xi Jinping that he cannot spread the next disease beyond his borders.

[W]e need to have the President of the United States impose costs on China for what it’s doing in Hong Kong. President Trump started imposing costs but did not do enough. I hope that Biden, who ran on a campaign of trying to help the people of Hong Kong, will do so.

Right now, the Chinese economy may be growing, but it did not grow at the 2.3 percent that Beijing announced for 2020. It is probably just a smidgen over zero, if it is zero.

We are approaching a point where ‑‑ this will be critical ‑‑ where Biden will have to decide whether to run to the rescue of China’s regime. We know that Nixon in 1972, George H.W. Bush in 1989, and Bill Clinton in 1999 rescued Chinese communism. I hope Biden does not do that a fourth time.

[T]he Biden team — and they have talked about this in public — they say, “We will impose costs on China for those things which are unacceptable, we will criticize them on others, and we will cooperate where there are common interests.” I don’t think we can do that because I do not see that we have common interests with a country that’s trying to overthrow our government. My message is: understand the fundamental nature, the hostility, and the maliciousness of China, and remember one other thing. That is, China deliberately released the disease that has killed more than 500,000 Americans. That alone means there can be no cooperation with China.

We need to say this to France, to Germany, to everybody else, that this is a zero‑sum game. You either work with the US or we do not consider you to be our friend. I think Israel would choose the right side. I am not so sure about some of the other countries mentioned…. [T]his is something where American presidents have not communicated to our friends, allies, and partners how we feel about China. I say we should no longer support China’s Communist regime.. We consider it to be an enemy, and we will act to protect ourselves in an appropriate fashion. Just tell Biden, in May 2019, People’s Daily ran a piece that declared a “people’s war on the US.” That is all Biden should need to know.

We know the Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and others are dying in these facilities. The only thing that separates the People’s Republic of China and the Third Reich is that China has not gone to mass exterminations — yet. This meets the definition of “genocide” in the Genocide Convention of 1948. If Biden needs another message, this is not just a policy choice for him. We are a party to that Genocide Convention, which requires signatories to “prevent and punish” acts of genocide.

“What should Biden do?” One of the things Secretary Pompeo said that really unnerved the Chinese was talking about in‑person diplomacy, talking to the Chinese people directly. ….Biden needs to do the same thing. Not every solution is military. As a matter of fact, our solutions with China are not military. It really starts with talking to the Chinese people.

What does China really want?

Biden’s firing squad stands in a circle With no one in charge, none of Washington’s recent threats is consistent with identifiable policy objectives David Goldman

https://asiatimes.com/2021/03/bidens-firing-squad-stands-in-a-circle/

The Biden Administration last week set a new historical record by threatening sanctions against Germany, India, Russia and China in the space of 72 hours. Germany and India are, or at least were, American allies.

Washington is angry at Germany for building a natural gas pipeline with Russia, at India for purchasing a Russian air defense system, at Russia for mistreatment of President Putin’s opponents and at China for treatment of its Uighur Muslim minority.

None of Washington’s recent threats is consistent with identifiable policy objectives. On the contrary, recent outbursts from Biden and his cabinet will cement a Sino-Russian alliance against the US, undermine US efforts to rebuild relations with European allies and damage US efforts to create a “Quad” alliance against China in the Pacific.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that no one is in charge at the White House, and that senior officials are jockeying for position in a power vacuum by signaling to domestic constituencies. But the net effect recalls the old joke about the firing squad that stands in a circle.

President Biden March 16 called Russia’s President Putin “a killer” who “has no soul,” and averred that Putin would “pay a price” for allegedly trying to help Trump in the 2020 presidential election—an unprecedented combination of threat and insult that no Western leader ever has uttered except in wartime.

Visiting India last week, Lloyd Austin, “the guy who runs that outfit over there” in Biden’s description, warned India not to go through with its planned purchase of Russia’s S400 air defense system, to “avoid any kind of acquisitions that would trigger sanctions.”

According to news reports, Austin is the US secretary of defense. India is supposed to anchor the “Quad,” a four-way alliance among the US, Japan, Australia and India to contain China’s ambitions in the Pacific. Threatening one’s prospective allies with sanctions is not the conventional way in which alliances are built.

Middle East Reality Welcomes President Biden Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

 https://bit.ly/2P1wNbk

 US policy in the Middle East

Since the 7th century, the Middle East has been one of the most tempestuous epicenters of domestic, regional and global wars and terrorism. The Middle East has frustrated US policy-makers, whose genuine attempts to promote peaceful-coexistence, human rights, democracy and international law have – too often – fueled social and political disintegration, repression, domestic and regional wars and global terrorism. 

For example, in 1978/79, the US intent to advance the cause of human rights and democracy in Iran, led to the embrace of Ayatollah Khomeini (an old religious leader in exile….) and betrayal of the Shah, providing the tailwind for the transformation of Iran from the American Policeman of the Gulf to the worst enemy of the US and all its Arab allies, a major proliferator of terrorism, wars and ballistic capabilities.

In 1990, the US considered Saddam Hussein an ally (the enemy of my enemy is my friend….), unintentionally providing a “green light” to his invasion of Kuwait (during Saddam’s meeting with US Ambassador April Glaspie).

In 2003, the US toppled Saddam Hussein, crushed Iraq’s Sunni dominance of Iraq and empowered the Iran-backed Shiites, which unleashed a ferocious civil war and intensified Islamic terrorism.

In 2009, the US spurned the pro-US President Mubarak and courted Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood – aiming to advance the cause of human rights and democracy – which catapulted the Brotherhood to power in 2012/13, and energized their attempts to terrorize and topple every pro-US Arab regimes. 

‘Tough’ U.S.-China talks signal rocky start to relations under Biden By Humeyra Pamuk, David Brunnstrom, Michael Martina

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-alaska/u-s-chinese-diplomats-clash-in-first-high-level-meeting-of-biden-administration-idUSKBN2BA2A7?il=0

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – U.S. and Chinese officials concluded on Friday what Washington called “tough and direct” talks in Alaska, which laid bare the depth of tensions between the world’s two largest economies at the outset of the Biden administration.

The two days of meetings, the first high-level in-person talks since President Joe Biden took office, wrapped up after a rare and fiery kickoff on Thursday when the two sides publicly skewered each others’ policies in front of TV cameras.

The talks appeared to yield no diplomatic breakthroughs – as expected – but the bitter rivalry on display suggested the two countries had little common ground to reset relations that have sunk to the lowest level in decades.

The run-up to the discussions in Anchorage, which followed visits by U.S. officials to allies Japan and South Korea, was marked by a flurry of moves by Washington that showed it was taking a firm stance, as well as by blunt talk from Beijing warning the United States to discard illusions that it would compromise.

“We expected to have tough and direct talks on a wide range of issues, and that’s exactly what we had,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters moments after the Chinese delegation left the hotel meeting room.

Life after death for the neoconservatives Biden’s embrace of neocon dogma will accelerate a Chinese-Russian-European coalescence that will dominate the world economy David Goldman

https://asiatimes.com/2021/03/life-after-death-for-the-neoconservatives/

Delusions die hard. The obsession of American foreign policy after the fall of communism was pro-Western democracy in Russia, and the foreign policy establishment has never forgiven Vladimir Putin for returning Russia to the sort of authoritarian governance it has endured for all but a few brief years of its history.

The obsession is back with Joe Biden – and, with it, the neoconservatives who dominated the failed administration of George W Bush.

For several reasons, President Biden’s March 16 denunciation of Putin as a “killer” without a soul ranks among the dumbest utterances ever by an American leader – and that’s a crowded field. To begin with, heads of state do not insult each other this way, except in wartime.

Secondly, the Biden administration proclaims its concern about competition from China, but American pressure has pushed Russia into a reluctant but resilient alliance with the Middle Kingdom.

Third, Washington will need Moscow’s tacit cooperation to revive the Iran nuclear deal, a key Biden foreign policy objective, and calling Putin out hardly furthers this objective.

Fourth – and most important – Western Europe is determined to improve its relations with Russia. Biden’s outburst will persuade Paris and Berlin that this administration is as loopy as the last one.

The “Russia question” appears to have surfaced in response to a March 16 US intelligence community assessment that “Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy, and the Democratic Party.”

The 15-page public document is fluff. We heard it all before in December 2020, when fifty former intelligence officials denounced news reports of Hunter Biden’s corrupt ties to Ukrainian oligarchs as Russian disinformation.

Biden Admin’s High-Level China Meeting Shows Dangerous ‘Reset’ Already Underway Plus the media’s Trump-GA election call catastrophe Benjamin Weingarten

https://www.newsweek.com/bidens-reset-communist-china-beckons-opinion-157663

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan are set to meet with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) counterparts Wang Yi and Yang Jiechi today in Anchorage, Alaska, in what some have speculated is an effort to “reset” relations between the two powers.

The Biden administration has played down this idea—having vacillated previously on its desire for a “reset”—while China has indicated that it welcomes bilateral relations, on its terms.

But the truth of the matter is that by dint of having any such meeting, Team Biden is signaling that a reset is already well underway.

That the administration seeks to engage China without preconditions—and, further, from a position of relative weakness when it has professed it will only do so from strength—validates the view that the executive branch is reverting from a posture of hostility to one of accommodation. This holds regardless of whatever “tough talk” administration officials will likely say they communicated in the aftermath of the meeting.

China has done nothing in the early days of the Biden administration to merit this powwow. Therefore, it is proper to view the Alaska exchange as a de facto reward for the CCP’s continued malign behavior. The CCP continues to persecute Xinjiang’s Uyhurs, crack down on Hong Kongers and threaten the Taiwanese. With respect to its dealings with the West, the CCP has continued its coronavirus cover-up by obstructing the efforts of those investigating the origins of the pandemic that it unleashed upon the world.

In spite of this malign behavior, while it has tsk-tsked China over its human rights abuses and expressed muted criticism over China’s stonewalling of the World Health Organization (WHO) in its pandemic “investigation,” among the Biden administration’s first acts was to rejoin the WHO.

Does the fact it legitimized this CCP-captured organization, becoming party to it again without it having made any discernible reforms, indicate the administration is engaging from a position of strength?

Biden Imposes His First Sanctions on Chinese Officials Ahead of Bilateral Meeting New sanctions are against 24 officials previously targeted by the Trump administration over Beijing’s suppression in Hong Kong Chun Han Wong

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-imposes-his-first-sanctions-on-chinese-officials-ahead-of-bilateral-meeting-11615976219?mod=world_major_2_pos6

HONG KONG—The Biden administration added new sanctions against two dozen Chinese officials it says have undermined Hong Kong’s partial autonomy from Beijing, signaling a continuing strong U.S. line on an issue that has contributed to fraying bilateral ties.

Announced Tuesday evening in Washington, the measures marked the first time the Biden administration imposed sanctions on Chinese officials. The move comes shortly before senior U.S. and Chinese officials are due to arrive in Alaska on Thursday to hold the first high-level in-person talks between the two countries since President Biden took office in January.

The measures extend the confrontation between the U.S. and China over the governance of Hong Kong, where Beijing has stepped up suppression of dissent in the face of Western criticism. U.S. objections to Chinese policies in the former British colony have fueled bilateral tensions, along with discord over issues such as trade, technology and global influence.

In a statement on the new sanctions, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken cited Beijing’s plans—approved by Chinese lawmakers last week—to revamp the electoral system in Hong Kong, a move meant to ensure that only people whom China’s Communist Party considers “patriots” will be allowed to govern the former British colony.

Mr. Blinken said the 24 officials targeted in Tuesday’s action were deemed to have “reduced Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy.” All of these officials, who include senior Chinese lawmakers and Hong Kong-based security officials, had already been hit with sanctions by the Trump administration.

Biden Blows Hot on Tehran, Cold on Riyadh By Kenneth R. Timmerman

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/biden_blows_hot_on_tehran_cold_on_riyadh.html

The Biden administration has announced that it is “recalibrating” its relationship with Saudi Arabia to include cutting off arms sales, rehabilitating the Houthis in neighboring Yemen, and intentionally snubbing Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, widely known by his initials, MBS.

Democrats in Congress and the media have long made a cause célèbre of the Saudi Crown Prince. They despise his ruthless crackdown on corruption, because he has centralized the money-font in his own hands. They fear his hostility toward Iran, his friendliness toward Israel, and do not comprehend his seemingly progressive views toward women and Islam.

But what really irks them the most was his close relationship to President Trump. For that alone, in the eyes of the Biden administration, he deserves to be punished.

So it was that the new Director of National Intelligence, Avril Raines, took the unusual step recently of declassifying a three-page intelligence community assessment that the Crown Prince “approved” the gruesome murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident who had become the darling of Washington Post journalists and lobbyists for Saudi rival, Qatar.

In the political world, it was a two-fer: the “damning report” was intended to damage President Trump, who despite reading it continued to lionize the Crown Prince and expanded U.S. arms sales to the Kingdom. And, of course, it showed MBS as a cold-blooded killer.

Or did it?