One autocrat got the message. There is a new foreign policy sheriff in town. Erdogan's Turkey is a member of NATO that bought missiles from another autocratic regime. Russia, an adversary and cyber attacker of the US. Biden was not pleased and still is not completely pleased as Turkey returns the experts Russia sent with their missiles, but not the missiles. More to come. Putin massed his military at the Ukraine border, implying a threatened invasion and testing Biden's intent to resist. Biden and NATO reaffirmed their commitment to defend Ukraine's embryonic democracy on the border with other NATO members. Quietly, Putin withdrew his troops after a telephone conversation with Biden. . Next, there were threats by Russia to move their influence into the Balkans through Serbia. Slovenia proposed eliminating the autonomy of Bosnia and dividing it up. That was a concept the US slapped down. That has been met as well by calls to fast-track membership of countries there not already members of NATO, including Bosnia. Most in the Balkans already are NATO members, including Montenegro with its best submarine port in the Mediterranean. The Balkans are still a work in progress. Biden is no fool, nor is he ignorant, having served both as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for years and as vice-president. He will be meeting with both Turkey and Putin this summer. That should be interesting and maybe tense. This is a significant change from the Trump era, whose foreign policy was bootlicking and praising nuclear powers governed by autocrats, mostly adversaries of the US. The technique resembled appeasement, and the autocrats were emboldened to expand and rearm further from Russia to Iran to North Korea. His ending treaties designed to restrain China's expansion into the southeastern Pacific, and Iran's military nuclear ambitions backfired. Both China and Iran took advantage of the opportunity Trump's foreign policy gave them to expand economic and military interests into sensitive areas..of the South China Sea and Hamas and nuclear re-armament in the mid-east. Since Trump backed out of the Iran nuclear deal, it has increased its enriched uranium stockpiles. It has, however, agreed to international inspections fearing more international backlash and economic sanctions. Trump was a fool who thought flattery got him somewhere because he craved flattery himself. In foreign policy, that tomfoolery may have kept the guns from firing. Yet, it gave our adversaries a chance and breathing space to creep into our national interests and fill the void left by Trump's isolationist policies. In foreign policy, brute power and economic self-interest count above anything else.
WELCOME TO THE BLOG This blog reflects my views of current political issues.. It is also an archive for columns in the Sky Hi News 2011 to November 2019. Winter Park Times 2019 to 2021.(paper publishing suspended in 2021) My Facebook page, the muftic forum, posts blog links, permits comments, and sharing. Nonchat. private group: MUFTIC FORUM FACEBOOK GROUP allows comments . Non-political Facebook page: felicia muftic. Blog postings are continuously being edited and updated.
Tuesday, June 1, 2021
Biden's quiet, muscular diplomacy: A new foreign policy sheriff in town
If I have any bone to pick, it would be Biden turning over Afghanistan to the Taliban as he pulled out our skeleton force there. Whether Afghanistan will be a terrorist threat in the future to the US remains to be seen. However, the damage it will do to the rights of women there is going to be heartbreaking. The US has spent the past 20 years empowering and educating girls and women, and they will be the Taliban's first victims.
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