RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18331/us-reestablish-deterrence

The complacency with which the Biden administration has come to view military threats, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as a thing of the past has led to a misguided prioritization of issues such as climate change as the biggest threat facing the US. This misguided focus has come at the expense of a realistic definition of what the US’s vital national interests are and should be in the face of actual national security threats.

Over the past two decades, US leadership has waned, especially as it has retreated from the Middle East and Europe — where its military presence has been reduced from 400,000 troops in the 1950s to just around 60,000 troops today. US credibility has been compromised, as its reputation for adhering to US commitments — failing to prevent the crossing of red lines in Syria and the Afghanistan debacle, to mention just two examples — has been wrecked.

Rebuilding deterrence will require a massive political and military recommitment to vital national interests. Those will require a policy reorientation that acknowledges that the US is the primary Western force in a world with global military threats from a variety of bad actors — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea primary among them.

“How many times do you have to make this point that if you don’t have more resources, you get political leadership that makes the case to the American people that we face threats on multiple fronts and if we want to defend our way of life as we know it and our interests around the world, protect our allies, not as acts of charity but because it benefits us, then you do it. And if you can’t do it, you can’t be a world power anymore…” — Former National Security Advisor, Ambassador John R. Bolton, Ronald Reagan Institute, February 24, 2022.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has proven, sadly, that US deterrence lies in tatters.

While Russia’s invasion represents an absolute low point thus far, US deterrence has been eroding for years. The cause is failed policies and ill-defined national interests, which bad actors such as Russia, China and Iran have clearly been noting.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/joe_bidens_crashandburn_foreign_policy_exposed.html

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, the Hudson Institute’s Walter Russell Mead pronounces the Biden administration’s great power diplomacy an unmitigated failure.  Mead’s criticism cannot be dismissed as a partisan attack — he is a member in good standing of the U.S. foreign policy establishment.  Mead is also steeped in history and geopolitics — two subjects that appear to have eluded the stalwarts of President Biden’s foreign policy team.

“Most … of the ideas Team Biden brought to the White House,” Mead writes, “failed to work,” and most of the changes that U.S. foreign policy will require today and in the immediate future “will be toxic to much of the Democratic base.”  And while Mead suggests that Team Biden was right about NATO and “democratic values” as necessary elements of U.S. foreign policy, he understands that providing peace and stability in the world requires paying more attention to hard-headed and emotionally unsatisfying geopolitics.

And it is here — on the playing field of geopolitics — where Mead rightly claims that Biden’s approach to great power politics has “comprehensively failed.”

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/17/bidens-nuclear-deal-with-iran-is-set-to-be-even-more-disastrous-than-obamas/

Russia’s demand for a sanctions exemption is the only thing stopping the new, deeply flawed nuclear deal from going forward.

Under the Biden administration, the “worst deal ever” is getting even worse. When President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA), he rightfully called it “the worst deal ever” because of its many serious flaws. But now, the Biden administration is close to announcing a new agreement to reinstate the JCPOA that is not only weaker but puts Russia in charge.

Making this worse, Russia is trying to exploit its prominent role in the new agreement by demanding that Russian trade with Iran — much of it weapons-related — be exempted from tough global sanctions imposed on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday claimed the Biden administration conceded on this issue.