Nimble. Smart. Good judgment. With a crackerjack foreign policy team. The president we need, and the president we have--Part One
Ukraine sliding toward defeat, and a world in crisis
Part One
Nimble. And smart. Good foreign policy judgment. With a crackerjack foreign policy team. This is what America needs. This is what is required by the foreign policy crises currently underway.
While we will vote for Joe Biden in November to avoid the return to the White House of a cunning and dangerous fascist, a person guilty of sexual battery amounting to rape, a seeming crime boss who appears to have sought to overthrow the government, and who was apparently guilty on many occasions of obstruction of justice, through witness tampering and attempting to intimidate judges, their staffs, opposing parties, and witnesses.
We must vote for Biden to avoid electing a fascist who does not support our democracy or the rule of law, a man who is seriously unhinged.
But we should do so with open eyes.
Nimble. Smart. With a crackerjack foreign policy team.
That is what we need. It is not what we’ve got.
Biden is not mentally nimble.
Biden is not smart, on his own, as his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan proves beyond a doubt.
Biden does not have a crackerjack foreign policy team, as their decisions on strategy in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Gaza amply demonstrate.
But it is what it is.
We are where we are.
In Ukraine, we are at the point of losing the military gains achieved in the fall of 2022, in Kharkiv and Kherson provinces and the Donbas.
Ukraine’s cities and civilian infrastructure, particularly the electricity infrastructure,, now stand defenseless against Russian attacks by missiles and drones, which have improved their precision guidance systems.
Joe Biden is not nimble. All he has done, as his attention is distracted by the Israeli -Hamas war in Gaza, and the recent attack on Israel by Iran, is to stand idly by.
To be sure, attention has been focused on securing House approval of the administration’s request for $60 billion in military aid for Ukraine. However, passage of that aid will not solve the fundamental strategic problems Ukraine faces, in defending itself against a nuclear power with more than three times its population.
When not surrounded by advisers, Biden is not particularly smart. His foreign policy judgment is dubious.
Nor does Biden have a crackerjack foreign policy team. Key officials are former staffers, including in particular National Security Council Adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. They both have impressive academic qualifications but neither has overseas on-the-ground experience in a foreign policy role.
Despite the positions they have held, riding on Biden’s coattails, at the end of the day they are still staffers. Sullivan’s great contribution to U.S. foreign policy has been to convince Biden that he needed a foreign policy that would benefit the middle class. Whatever that means. Unless it simply means a foreign policy that will help Biden and the Democrats win elections.
One might counter that a successful U.S. foreign policy would benefit the middle class, and everyone else.
In a world as complicated as the world we live in, facing the threats we face including a militaristic Russia determined to overthrow international law and the U.N. Charter, Sullivan’s focus on a foreign policy that will help the middle class is a crazy idea.
To subordinate foreign policy to pure electoral goals, beyond maintaining support for essential policies such as strengthening NATO and responding to Russian aggression, is crazy.
So that is where we are. That is who is running our foreign policy.
This is the weak hand we have to play in resisting Russian aggression and winning the war in Ukraine.
The situation in Ukraine grows more desperate by the day. You can hear it in President Wlodymyr Zelinsky’s voice and words when describing the current situation, in an interview with Amna Nawaz on PBS Newshour on Monday, April 15, 2024. You can hear and read about it in dispatches from foreign correspondents who are on the scene.
The situation is deteriorating very quickly, and a collapse of the Ukrainian forces cannot be ruled out. Only days ago the electrical power plant in Kharkiv was destroyed because, as President Zelensky explained, they ran out of air-defense missiles. They needed 11. They were four short. The consequence: Karkiv’s main power station was completely destroyed.
Ukrainians could always capitulate, some leaders in the West seem to think.
They could agree to a “frozen conflict” which left Russian troops in control of the parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporhizhzhia, and Kherson provinces and the Crimea which they currently occupy. Provinces which Russia has purportedly annexed, notwithstanding the fact that acquisitions of territory by military conquest are void under international law.
Such a capitulation and “frozen conflict”, however, would signal the collapse of international law and the U.N. Charter-based international legal order. None of these leaders have thought through the implications of such a development.
Moreover, Vladimir Putin and Russia show absolutely no interest in such a resolution of the conflict.
What could a nimble and smart U.S. leader with a crackerjack foreign policy team do, now, to reverse the accelerating slide toward defeat at the hands of the Russians in Ukraine?
Even if such a leader is not in sight, it will be useful to explore what he or she might do. Perhaps others can help pick up the slack.
Part II (to follow)
James Rowles is a former Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and professor of international law at other universities.
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