Blinken Puts Lipstick on the Pig

Reading Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s latest essay in Foreign Affairs was a lot like listening to the famous “Joe Isuzu” auto ads almost 40 years ago. Joe would make the most outrageous statements about a car, followed by the declaration “he’s lying.” In an article entitled “America’s Strategy of Renewal,” Blinken made a similar series of unbelievable statements. Only the “he’s lying,” was missing.

Nearly four years into the Biden presidency, declared Blinken, “President Biden and Vice President Harris pursued a strategy of renewal, pairing historic investments in competitiveness at home with an intensive diplomatic campaign to revitalize partnerships abroad.” 

Indeed, that understates the president’s influence, at least according to the president. Attempting to justify his abysmal performance in his debate against Donald Trump, Biden insisted: “Not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world. Not—and that’s not hi—sounds like hyperbole, but we are the essential nation of the world.”

That the president believed the results of his policy warranted praise demonstrated his mental decline. Blinken’s enthusiastic embrace of the results, claiming the U.S. to be “in a much stronger geopolitical position today than it was four years ago,” is less excusable, a desperate attempt to preserve what little remains of his reputation. After all, who can look at the world today and imagine the American people saying to Blinken, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things.” (Matthew 25:23)

Unfortunately, the world wasn’t looking so good in January 2021 when Blinken took office. By almost every measure the world is a lot worse today.

Led by the United States, NATO is engaged in a proxy war against Russia, a nuclear-armed power, over Ukraine, which matters much more to Moscow than to the West. The conflict was tragically unnecessary, the result of Russian aggression, but only after three decades of Washington’s arrogant determination to treat Moscow like a defeated power and expand the transatlantic alliance up to Russia’s borders. Despite multiple warnings from Moscow, successive administrations challenged its security interests in ways the U.S. would never accept on its border. The Biden administration’s refusal to negotiate over NATO expansion in early 2022 was the final trigger for war.

The allies are now promoting a seemingly endless conflict with a country likely to expand and escalate the fight if it fears defeat. Cynical American policymakers defend the war as degrading Moscow’s military capabilities for just a few score billion dollars—while ignoring the tens or hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian deaths. Alas, there is no guarantee that the U.S. and its allies won’t be drawn into the struggle, especially if the Putin government decides to strike nations supplying Ukraine with arms or employ nuclear weapons against Kiev’s forces. Moscow also has embraced China, North Korea, and Iran, and such cooperation could grow even closer. Russia once promoted nonproliferation. Now Washington policymakers speculate on Moscow’s willingness to aid North Korean missile and nuclear development, which would put the American homeland at risk.

The Middle East is perhaps even more incendiary. The region’s multiple hostilities, conflicts, and crises, reflecting decades of counterproductive U.S. intervention in the region, are merging. Biden continues a long line of presidents putting foreign governments before the American people. The next iteration of today’s combat could involve full-scale war between Israel and Iran, with neighboring Arab states dragged in.

Regional stability and peace are impossible as long as Israel refuses to accept Palestinian self-determination. Yet Biden has provided essentially unconstrained financial, diplomatic, and military support for a government corrupted by violent ethno-nationalism. His administration also has left American personnel needlessly at risk in Iraq and Syria and would further entangle the U.S. in the region by turning the American military into a modern janissary corps, bodyguards to the Saudi royals, with the apparent mission to make the region safe for absolute monarchy.

Finally, Asia has slid closer to conflict on Biden’s watch. Almost delusional is Blinken’s description of administration policy toward North Korea, which is adding nuclear weapons and developing ICBMs, hoping to target the American homeland. He declared: “We were similarly clear-eyed when it came to” Pyongyang, making “clear our willingness to engage in direct talks with North Korea, but also that we would not submit to its saber rattling or its preconditions.” However, virtually no one believes that Kim Jong-un is willing to yield his nuclear arsenal. Unless Washington is prepared to adapt its approach to that reality and pursue more limited arms control, the North will become even more dangerous in the future.

Worse, the biggest potential conflict of all, between the U.S. and China, looms larger on Biden’s watch. Most importantly, the potential crisis over Taiwan has grown more acute, with the administration doing nothing to calm Chinese concerns over what it believes to be Taipei’s move, with American support, toward independence. With that a likely red line for Beijing to act militarily, Washington should press all sides to stand down. The administration also has put American credibility on the line over territorial disputes of little consequence, risking war over assorted rocks and other geographic features, such as Mischief Reef, Senkaku Islands, and Scarborough Shoal. The independence of Japan and the Philippines is important. Their control over every bit of territory they claim, not so much.

Worse is increasingly treating the People’s Republic of China as an enemy. The administration has engaged in an economic war against the PRC, intensifying Donald Trump’s protectionist campaign and seeking to deny China access to pacing technology. Although the administration has sought to expand official dialogue, it is reducing the shared economic interests which draw the two nations together. There are important issues over which Beijing must be confronted, but it is essential not to treat China as an enemy, which could help turn it into one. Today the PRC is increasingly willing to challenge the U.S. elsewhere—indirectly aiding Russia against Ukraine, significantly reducing pressure on North Korea, and aggressively challenging other Asian states.

Blinken makes much of the value of allies, treating them like Facebook Friends, the more the merrier. He declared, “The United States is in a demonstrably stronger position in both consequential regions today because of the bridge of allies we have built. And so, for that matter, are America’s friends.” Allies are useful when pursuing interests of mutual interest. Yet many, indeed, perhaps most, of Washington’s supposed friends and partners are security black holes, taking far more than they give.

At the very moment friendly states should be stepping up to take over responsibility for their own and their region’s security, the administration has been deepening allied dependence on the U.S. Biden has “reassured” governments which need to be scared to do more for themselves; he has “reaffirmed” security commitments to nations capable of defending themselves. Blinken’s policy undermined the very purpose of NATO. President Dwight Eisenhower insisted that the US military presence be temporary, a shield behind which the devastated continent could rebuild. He believed that if U.S. forces remained a decade later the policy would have failed. In contrast, Biden increased American force levels after the Russian invasion and devoted more money to Ukraine than any European nation. He continues those policies, despite growing opposition by Americans more concerned about the many challenges facing the U.S.

Particularly misguided is Blinken’s enthusiasm for “the most consequential shift” not “within regions but across them,” thereby “bringing about unprecedented convergence between Asia and Europe, which increasingly see their security as indivisible.” While the idea of allies promoting US objectives beyond their own areas sounds good in theory, it fails in practice.

First, security is not indivisible. Moscow is many things, but it poses no threat in Asia. Unlike China, Russia has never been at war with India, Vietnam, or Korea, and has no ongoing or prospective conflicts with Japan. The PRC has no territorial or other security issues with European governments. 

Second, it is more important for friendly states in Europe and Asia to fulfill their most direct responsibilities. Europeans still fail miserably in creating effective militaries and integrating their forces with those of their neighbors. Japan continues to lag well behind deploying sufficient capabilities to restrain China. What would best aid the U.S. would be European allies taking over responsibility for their continent’s security, and Japan taking the lead in preserving peace and stability in Northeast Asia. Instead, having allies playacting—wasting valuable resources and effort far abroad better deployed close to home—ultimately increases the burden on Americans. (In contrast, there are abundant areas for cross-regional cooperation in other areas, including economics and cyber.)

Whatever his intentions, Blinken has been a failure as secretary of state. U.S. policy consists of constant demands and threats, endless sanctions and penalties, and promiscuous intervention and war. In many areas, such as reflexive support for Israel, the administration’s foreign policy hasn’t been much different from Trump’s approach. In other ways Blinken & Co. have done worse. At least Trump demonstrated some reluctance to use military force. Relations with China are less stable today, with the increasing likelihood of naval confrontation in the Asia-Pacific. The Biden administration failed to exhibit any creativity in attempting to engage North Korea. Most dangerous is Biden’s intense proxy war against Russia. 

Overall, Americans are at greater risk today than in January 2021, when Blinken took over in Foggy Bottom. The administration’s policies, particularly its counterproductive intervention around the world, have put more distance between today’s reality and the ideal he says he sought to promote, “a world where countries are free to choose their own paths and partners, and … where international law, including the core principles of the UN Charter, is upheld, and universal human rights are respected.”

The United States is and should be engaged in the world. As Blinken observed, Americans benefit from “a free, open, secure, and prosperous world.” However, Washington’s ability to remake the world, at least at reasonable cost and risk, remains limited. And the interests of the American people should always come first. They are doing the paying and, more importantly, the dying, when it comes to Washington’s grandiose misadventures abroad. Something too often forgotten by Blinken, and so many other members of the foreign policy establishment. Renewing America at home doesn’t prevent Washington leading abroad. Nevertheless, renewing America should come first.