“Woke” ideology and the defense of Ukraine; Blinken confronts top Chinese diplomat in Munich; President Biden undertakes historic visit to Kyiv
Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) in International Law, Harvard University
Introductory note to readers
Today’s article consists of three separate parts.
The first considers why so many college students and younger members of the cultural elite seem to be filled with passion about certain “woke” issues, but are curiously silent about a major moral issue of our times, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and what to do about it. The attitudes of youth toward the war are an important component of public opinion regarding support for Ukraine.
The second considers the “undiplomatic” meeting between Antony Blinken and Wang Yi, the top diplomats of the U.S. and China, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference this last weekend.
The third reflects briefly on President Biden’s historic trip to Kyiv on February 20.
The three parts are all related to the Russian war against Ukraine, and represent different aspects of the struggle to defend the country.
The attitudes of youth toward supporting Ukraine, the nature of Secretary of State Anthony Blinken‘s approach to diplomacy, and the historic nature of President Biden’s trip to Kyiv each represent an important strand in the unfolding Ukrainian story.
By looking at these different strands in the story at the same time, we can begin to see the relationships between them. We can note that the Biden administration has done a relatively poor job of explaining in simple terms to non-experts what the stakes are in the war and why our support of Ukraine is of critical importance.
Some of our efforts to generate support for assisting Ukraine should be aimed at college students and other youth. These should be drawn into discussions of questions such as: What makes for good diplomacy? What should our goals be? What are the stakes in the conflict?
Finally, everyone should take an interest in the impact of President Biden’s bold trip to Kyiv on public attitudes, both at home and abroad.
Which raises a related question: What are the U.S. and its partners in the West doing to persuade the fence-sitting countries in the “Global South” to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the barbarism of its generals and soldiers, who are committing countless war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine?
“Wokeness” and the Russian war against Ukraine
Valerie Browne of The Telegraph quotes a Ukrainian soldier to telling effect:1
A Ukrainian soldier has warned the West is too busy fighting for transgender and feminist rights when they should be preparing for the threat of Russia invading countries beyond Ukraine.
“Today it’s Ukraine. Tomorrow it’s Poland, Germany. We’ve already destroyed more planes than the British Army has in total and Russia keeps fighting,” said Artem, 32, who is just about to join his brigade stationed in Bahkmut.
Adding: “If you will not help Ukraine now, you will fight Russia in five years. If you’re thinking about human rights, transgender, feminists you’re not thinking about your country.”
The Observer has often wondered how so much energy could go into “woke” protests and demands on college campuses and in workplaces2 while so little energy could go into raising awareness of the stakes in the war of Russian aggression against Ukraine. Or how so much energy could be spent ferreting out Americans who were slave owners or who had some connection to slavery 200 years ago, self-righteously condemning them for transgressing our 21st century values, and so little attention could be spent fighting to eliminate slavery where it exists in the world today, in countries like Saudi Arabia.
To make this statement is not to defend slavery, but rather to question those who scour history not to learn from it but rather to find villains upon whom they can heap scorn and moral indignation. It is easy and pretty much cost-free to attack dead men and women who lived centuries ago. It is quite another thing to fight current injustices and those responsible for them, when to do so may require critics to put some skin in the game as it were, to personally risk something if they are going to seriously attempt to correct the injustice.
What is, really, the explanation for the deafening silence among American college students and younger members of tbe cultural elite on one of the greatest moral issues of our times? To what extent are we morally obligated, both as individuals and as a nation, to enter the fight to defeat Russian fascism and aggression, and the barbarism of Russian soldiers? Do young people have an important role to play in shaping the world they and their children will inhabit in the future?
If they do, why are they so silent?
Antony Blinken’s undiplomatic meeting with Wang Yi
Secretary of State Antony Blinken set the harshly negative tone of U.S.-China relations in his first meeting with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi in Anchorage, Alaska in March 2021, when he in effect used the meeting as a platform to publicly denounce China, instead of seeking to establish personal relationships and conducting diplomacy.3
At his meeting with Wang Yi on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference earlier this week, Blinken remained true to form, using the meeting to publicly denounce China.4
Blinken is a most undiplomatic top diplomat of the United States. He seems to prefer arguments in the media to the real work of diplomacy.
This should not surprise us very much, as he had virtually no diplomatic experience at the working level prior to assuming his current job. To be sure, he served as Deputy Secretary of State under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but any “negotiations” at that level—particularly when one is not leading them—are not the same as the years of experience negotiating with foreign officials which an ordinary diplomat acquires while serving in a foreign country.
At the Munich meeting, one of the biggest issues was whether China will provide military aid to Russia.
Public confrontation at that conference and in the meeting with Wang Yi, I would submit, was not a well-chosen means to pursue that goal. China can be denounced by other officials in other venues, and at other times.
The goal of diplomacy when meeting with an adversary is to persuade that adversary to do or not to do something in furtherance of one’s own foreign policy goals.
Blinken apparently doesn’t know how to do this.
For example, when he was trying to secure the release by Russia of Whitney Griner, the women’s basketball star, Blinken tried to pressure Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov through press leaks and public statements. Any diplomat could have told him that that was a ploy which would fail, which it did.
When Blinken met with foreign minister Wang Yi in the first bilateral meeting at the ministerial level, in Anchorage, Blinken was reportedly confrontational in his private meetings with Wang Yi, and sought to embarrass and humiliate him and China in his public remarks to the press.5 This gambit failed in a spectacular way. Only days later, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov traveled to China and concluded a strategic partnership agreement with President Xi Jinping.6
China’s ambassador to the U.S.,Qin Gang, who is now the foreign minister of China (Wang Yi, now on the Politburo, remains the top diplomat) set forth China’s views on the war in Ukraine in terms which were quite conciliatory in the context of the existing relations with the U.S., in an op-ed in the Washington Post on March 16: 2021. The U.S. response was Blinken’s confrontational meeting with Wang Yi in Anchorage.7
The preparations for the meeting were seriously flawed. The U.S. announced sanctions against individuals in Hong Kong the day before the meeting. No social events were scheduled to allow the participants to mix informally and to get to know each other socially. The Americans did not even host a dinner for the visiting Chinese delegation—a sharp break with diplomatic protocol,
and a stinging insult to the Chinese delegation.
Neither Blinken nor Sullivan seemed familiar with diplomatic protocol. Even the conference tables were set in a confrontational manner, with the Americans squarely facing the Chinese in direct physical confrontation. A large round table might have been more appropriate.
The meeting last week in Munich did not go well. Blinken, in public statements and apparent leaks, made it clear that in the U.S. view China was responsible for the failed meeting. Wang Yi, who in December became a member of the Politburo but remains the top Chinese diplomat, made it clear in his speech to the Conference and remarks to the press that China viewed the U.S. as being the one at fault.
The United States needs a top diplomat who knows how to conduct diplomacy, and who can reverse the personal animosity in relations between U.S. and Chinese officials that currently exists. In view of the personal antagonism which exists between the Secretary of State and Politburo member Wang Yi, it would appear that Antony Blinken cannot perform this job.
President Biden’s historic visit to Kyiv
President Joe Biden’s surprise visit to Kiev on February 20, where he met with Volodymyr Zelensky and others8, was just the kind of highly symbolic move which can move masses. It may some day be compared to Ronald Reagan’s challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev in Berlin: “Mr Gorbachev, Tear down that wall!”, or to John F. Kennedy’s proclamation during his 1963 visit to West Berlin, “Ich bin ein Berliner”.
Lluís Bassetts, a leading commentator for Spain’s El País, expressed his reactions in the following terms:9
Revised Google translation
It was an unusual visit, historic like few others. There could be no message of greater political forcefulness or significance, even military significance.
…
Biden’s identification with the positions of the Zelensky government, expressed with extreme clarity at the Munich Security Conference in discussions between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba, constitutes the framework in which the Peace proposals coming from Beijing must be understood. They will hardly be acceptable if they are limited to a fragile ceasefire that serves to resupply Russian troops, or if they do not contemplate the restoration of the territorial integrity and national sovereignty of Ukraine guaranteed by all treaties and international agreements, including the United Nations Charter, to which Russia is bound. They are summed up in a few words from Biden with epic and binding resonances: “One year later, Kyiv resists, Ukraine resists, democracy resists.”
Valerie Browne, “West ‘too busy with woke rights to combat Russia’; ‘If you don’t help Ukraine defeat Russia now, you will fighting them five years’ says a Ukrainian soldier,” The Telegraph, February 11, 2023 (9:30 am).
See, e.g. , Erik Wemple,, “The New York Times newsroom is splintering over a trans coverage debate,” Washington Post, February 24, 2023 (6:45 a.m. EST);
See,
1) “Ukraine War, March 16, 2022: Washington Post op-ed by Chinese Ambassador to U.S. should be applauded, and approach supported by shifts in U.S. policy; P.R.C. is bound by U.N. Charter prohibition of the use of force, even against Taiwan, but don’t even think about independence for Taiwan; Kissinger’s “one country” approach has worked for 50 years; U.S. and China should jointly celebrate 50th anniversary of Shanghai Communique,” The Trenchant Observer, Updated March 17, 2022).
2)”Ukraine War, March 31, 2022 (II): The war strategy of the West in perspective,” The Trenchant Observer, March 31, 2022
Excerpts:
”Biden is still caught in his emotional anti-China policy, and has not even begun to take the measures he could to improve U.S.-China relations.
The U.S. needs to reaffirm the “one China” policy set by Henry Kissinger in the 1972 Shanghai Declaration, and make clear that it does not support independence for Taiwan. Now would be a good time to celebrate the 50th anniversary of that Declaration. Once the U.S. has got its policy straight, a summit with Xi Jinping might be in order. The U.S. needs to broaden the issues it discusses with China beyond threats of what it will do if China supports Russia militarily or in evading sanctions.
The U.S. needs to learn again how to talk to China. The language of international law is highly recommended. Clear-eyed realism is required.
The disastrous confrontation by Anthony Blinken with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi at the ministerial meeting in Anchorage, Alaska in March 2021 was a huge diplomatic failure. Only days later China announced its strategic alliance with Russia. It is imperative to find some way to heal the damage done by Blinken in Alaska.
See, e.g., Edward Wong, “U.S. Warnings to China on Arms Aid for Russia’s War Portend Global Rift; Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken says Washington has indications that Beijing is strongly considering giving military aid to Moscow for the war in Ukraine,” New York Times, February 19, 2023;
See, e.g., “How it happened: Transcript of the US-China opening remarks in Alaska; China's Yang: 'Is that the way that you had hoped to conduct this dialogue?'“ Nikkei Asia, March 19, 2021 (22:54 JST).
This transcript of remarks at the opening of the summit reveals both the conciliatory initial remarks of the Chinese diplomats, and how upset they became listening to Blinken’s and National Security Asviser Jake Sullivan’s opening remarks.
See “China and Russia form common front against the West,” The Trenchant Observer, March 24, 2021.
See Mark Magnier (Anchorage), “US-China summit in Alaska turns civil after fiery start, but no room for hosted dinner;As face-to-face meeting begins, top diplomat Blinken says US will outline ‘deep concerns’ about Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan.Beijing accuses Washington of using its financial and military might to squeeze other countries,” South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), March 19, 2021 (6:11 a,m,)
Sabrina Siddiqui, “Biden Makes Surprise Visit to Kyiv in Show of Support for Ukraine; Half a billion dollars of additional aid is pledged before anniversary of war’s start,” Wall Street Journal, February 20, 2023 (updated at 8:40 p.m. ET).
Sabrina Siddiqui was one of only two reporters who accompanied President Biden on his trip to Kyiv.
See,
1) Lluís Bassets, “Desafío y humillación de Putin;; No hay mensaje de mayor contundencia política ni trascendencia incluso militar que la visita de Biden a Zelenski,” El País, el 20 de febrero 2023 (08:41 EST);
2) Lluís Bassets, “Putin’s challenge and humiliation; There is no message of greater political forcefulness or even military significance than Biden’s visit to Zelenski,” El País, February 20, 2023 (08:41 EST);
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See also “Why I care about the war in Ukraine,” Trenchant Observations, June 26, 2023,