Distorting Biden’s Foreign Policy Record To Promote Harris’ Candidacy
By Francis P. Sempa
August 17, 2024
The great James Burnham in The Machiavellians distinguished between the “formal” and “real” meaning of political rhetoric. The formal meaning of such rhetoric, Burnham wrote, helps to disguise the real meaning. The American foreign policy establishment has begun to spin the foreign policy legacy of President Joe Biden. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Jessica Matthews, Distinguished Fellow and former president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, claims that although “it is too soon to judge the historical significance of Joe Biden’s one-term presidency, it is clear that the past four years have witnessed remarkable achievements in foreign policy.” But this narrative is not just about Biden’s supposed foreign policy legacy. It is also an effort to boost the foreign policy credentials of Vice President Kamala Harris.
According to Matthews, Biden shifted U.S. foreign policy “from an unhealthy reliance on military intervention to the active pursuit of diplomacy backed by strength,” strengthened our alliances, deepened our presence in Asia, promoted multilateralism, and ended the war in Afghanistan. “Biden,” she writes, “has made profound changes in foreign policy--not to accommodate American decline but to reflect the country’s inherent strength.”
Matthews credits Biden with “boldness” in withdrawing from Afghanistan--others would describe it as amateurish and humiliating. She claims that Biden’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “has been both skillful and innovative” and “masterful,” forgetting perhaps that he was the president that failed to deter that invasion. Biden’s “strength” that supposedly backed his diplomacy consisted of diminished relative naval power, a military leadership that prioritizes diversity, equity, and inclusion and efforts to combat climate change, an emboldened Iran in the Middle East, and an even more aggressive China in the western Pacific. It was during Biden’s presidency that Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea grew closer--his administration did nothing to attempt to widen potential cleavages among the so-called “axis of autocracy.”
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/08/17/distorting_bidens_foreign_policy_record_to_promote_harris_candidacy_1052328.html
