Biden ‘Sleepwalking Into Disaster’ on Foreign Policy Front at Midway Point, Experts Say

Biden hit the midway point of his presidency earlier in the day, a period during which the White House has claimed successes on the economic front while some critics have slammed him for record-high inflation, the border crisis, and a foreign policy that has escalated tensions with both Russia and China. Biden, like all US presidents, was the victim of forces beyond his control, Lazare cautioned. “He entered the White House promising to be a big-spending FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] and thus succeeded in pushing through his $1.9-trillion American Rescue Plan less than two months after taking office. But it backfired due to mounting inflationary pressures, which it undoubtedly helped aggravate,” he said. The rapid and humiliating Taliban conquest of Afghanistan in July 2021 during Biden’s first year in office was a disaster that just about everyone in Washington had a hand in creating over the previous 40 years, Lazare acknowledged. On the economic front, the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed in November 2022 put new strains on the Atlantic Alliance, Lazare said. “[The act] has left Europeans unnerved due to its outrageously protectionist industrial policies,” he said. Ukraine Dangers The Biden administration unveiled another $2.5 billion in military aid for Ukraine on Thursday, bringing the total to around $27.5 billion since Biden took office. Lazare said this type of continual support has the US headed for a potential world war. Biden’s failure to pursue any serious means of resolving the conflict meant it was bound to get steadily worse, Lazare predicted. “Just as the Entente more or less maneuvered Austro-Hungary into going to war against crazy little Serbia, the Atlantic Alliance maneuvered Russia into going to war against Ukraine by engaging in actions that were increasingly provocative and confrontational,” he said. Biden risked going down in history alongside disastrous UK leader Herbert Henry Asquith who led his country into a catastrophic world war with Germany back in 1914, Lazare said. Despite all this, Lazare added, the US media had covered Biden sympathetically so far in contrast to their unrelenting attacks on his predecessor, Lazare said. “Joe Biden may be a B- president so far, but I’m sure his report card will be bristling with F’s before too long,” he said. Feckless MediocrityRetired Ambassador Chas Freeman, who served as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs in the Democratic Clinton administration, noted that Foreign Policy had assembled 20 analysts who had nothing but praise for Biden’s diplomatic performance. Biden, he added, has also recklessly sparked conflict and crises with major superpowers. “Biden and his team have catalyzed and subsequently escalated a dangerous proxy war between the United States, Western Europe, and Russia in Ukraine [and] escalated tensions with China amidst rising concern about the possibility of a war over the status of Taiwan,” Freeman said. He also abandoned diplomatic efforts, Freeman added, to constrain Iran’s development of nuclear weapons, which has driven Russia, China, and Iran together. In addition, Biden has doubled down on protectionism and repudiated the “rules-based order” of the World Trade Organization, thereby generating discord with US allies in both Europe and Asia, he said. Biden’s vacillating policies had also produced a visible reduction in US influence in the Middle East, including a rift with Saudi Arabia and a default on any effort to counter the replacement of apartheid in Israel by renewed ethnic cleansing, Freeman said.Original News : https://sputniknews.com/20230121/biden-sleepwalking-into-disaster-on-foreign-policy-front-at-midway-point-experts-say-1106542582.html