Opinion | The Biden administration—worse than Bush
By Tom Fowdy
Last week Joe Biden went public in the bid to double down on the respective conflicts in Israel and Ukraine. Wielding the argument that the future of "fellow democracies" matters to America, the President argued that both countries must win their respective conflicts to "keep America safe" and subsequently made an appeal for $100 billion in order to find both of them. In conjunction with this, the President, as well as Secretary of Blinken, posted giant red graphics on social media that stated: "Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy." The inflammatory nature of these posters reflected the extremity of the ones frequently posted by Mike Pompeo targeting China, and represent as such the most extreme rendering of US foreign policy.
America's foreign relations are underpinned by a zealotry that the security and prosperity of America depends on the inevitable triumph of democracy abroad. To some extent, this is of course misleading, not least because the United States backs authoritarian regimes whenever it sees fit, yet this is truly otherwise how "American exceptionalism" is, the idea that the United States has a divine right and mission to remake the world in its own ideological image, and therefore must embed itself in conflicts and wars, either directly, or indirectly around the world. It is arguable that this rhetoric is merely a justification for exerting the US national interest in the fundamental goal of retaining its position as the global hegemon.
In 2001, following the 9/11 attacks, the George W. Bush administration responded with the infamous quote of "You are either with us, or against us." The US national security strategy of the following year argued that remaking the world in a democratic image was integral to defeating terrorism, a NeoConservative wishlist of course which could not have been more detached from reality. The strategy subsequently opened up decades of war, conflict and turmoil in the Middle East which did not change course until the Trump administration reorientated America's foreign policy strategy to "great power competition", thus the goal became the targeting of Russia and China.
Yet arguably, the world is in a much worse place today than it was during the Bush years, and because of that the Biden administration is much more dangerous. While the fanaticism of the Bush administration is hard to beat, it came during a time whereby American power was unchallenged and the bulk of the backlash was focused towards smaller actors, such as Saddam Hussein or the Taliban, who despite the propaganda were not truly a threat to the United States or its hegemony, and therefore as destructive as these wars were they were regionally contained conflicts, even if their ramifications served in the transition to the world we now see today. In turn, as outrageous as these conflicts were, nobody directly opposed the United States due to the power disparity and because obviously terrorism is truly seen as a common challenge, most states were happy to cooperate to some extent.
But the current situation is different. That's because the United States is losing its dominance and feels increasingly insecure. Similarly, the stakes and consequences of the conflicts in which the Biden administration is vesting itself are much, much higher. Now we are not talking about small actors such as Iraq or the Taliban, we are talking about large great power competitors such as China, Russia and Iran which the US seeks to suppress in their respective regions, leading to conflicts which have the potential to be on a global scale. The feared decline of American hegemony is seeking the US to aggressively challenge its rivals in an uncompromising way, making diplomacy impossible, militarizing their respective peripheries, attempting to isolate them and subsequently leading to the break out of war.
Then, once those respective conflicts break out, the US sees no interest in resolving them and believes that a zero-sum win on American preferences is the only acceptable outcome. In doing so, the US has played a hand in the unleashing of destructive wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and in turn, has sought to escalate and prolong them despite the humanitarian consequences. However, in contrast to Bush, the US does not this time "directly" put its boots on the ground but rather sees benefit for itself in "outsourcing" the conflict to another state which it then supplies to profit the Military-Industrial Complex, thus not having to pay for the responsibility of deaths. Thus rather than seeking any resolution the Biden administration has turned around and committed itself to the all-out promulgation of these wars in spite of the consequences, this is worse than Bush because comparatively speaking, Bush never gained the opportunity to do so much more damage. Likewise, even for all his aggression against China, it truly seems improbable that Donald Trump would have ever embedded America in these conflicts. He would have made some very unhinged and threatening rhetoric, but would have ultimately struck a deal to resolve them in a way seen as unacceptable to the US NeoConservative establishment, who are now firmly back in control.
The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Tom Fowdy:
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