For Daniel, this post seems like an amazingly generous view towards the administrations diplomatic lack of substantial successes. Trump's pathetic team deserves no praise but neither does Biden's team. The lies, obfuscation and reliance only on strong arm tactics are getting thousands killed both in war and in ongoing murderous sanctions while at the same time oblivious to what is happening to the working class in this country and in Europe. As for their recent "efforts" in Africa, Ted Snider had a fantastic piece today in Antiwar.com. I highly recommend checking it out.
Biden's record is not "lackluster" - he is a vicious warmonger and sociopath. He could have done things differently with a few strokes of the pen. And once he took office, Biden became the only one who could have done things differently.
And Biden needs to be made to own his manifest crimes, not blame Mean Republicans.
1. Agreed, anyone complicit in this is bad and should feel bad; it's beyond the time that a person could claim ignorance.
2. Fair, but what share of the blame should be put on Congress (including Republicans, who would normally fight any Biden thing tooth and nail) for pretending the AUMF covers this, because they are also warmongers? What share should be put on We the People for not caring about foreign policy?
3. I would read with interest your essay supporting this claim, but surely Russia could have just...not invaded Ukraine? Like, just because I can predict that someone will commit war crimes if I do X doesn't mean I have a [consequentialist? deontological?] ethical duty not to do X. The other person should also not commit war crimes. Obv I'm using somewhat more extreme facts to make a point, but pre-invasion, I would have said it was 70% likely that Putin was just posturing by massing troops on the borders. Of course, I don't have access to non-public signaling he may have been doing.
To make sure I understand--is your point that the U.S. did many of the things in the RAND document and that, predictably, Russia retaliated by invading Ukraine?
And on a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you that, holding all other variables static, Putin would NOT have ordered the Ukraine invasion if Ukraine had abided by the Minsks? My prior is that he does not worry overmuch about having a sound casus belli.
Why on earth do you think Russia signed Minsk (which Ukraine promptly broke) and the Minsk-2 in the first place? Why did Russia spend years trying to get Ukraine to abide by Minsk-2, and trying to get Ukraine's western guarantors to induce Ukraine to comply?
For that matter, Merkel and Hollande both stated that Minsk-2 was entered into in bad faith on their part and on the part of Ukraine.
Even now, it is abundantly obvious that Russia does not want this war, and tries desperately to avoid escalation, while the West is quite happy to spend its treasure and Ukrainian blood. Witness how Russia was near a negotiated end to the war, before Boris Johnson came to Kiev, bearing a message from Biden.
If you continue to doubt, Russia was reducing its military spending in the years leading up to the war. Hardly the behavior of a tyranny seeking world domination, or even an invasion of Ukraine. Compare with the famously peace-loving United States.
With the exception of an oblique reference to assistance provided to Ukraine by U.S. allies, Walt completely overlooks the economic sanction wars that the Biden Administration is waging to cripple the economies and ensure the immiseration of populations unlucky enough to live in countries that have defied U.S. dictates. These sanction wars are illegal, aggressive, nasty, and extremely anti-diplomatic. Biden's diplomatic record is a great deal worse than lackluster.
1000% better than the previous administration. Blinken relative to Pompeo? Sullivan relative to Bolton? And the US’ allies are at least talking to them again, the idiotic unilateralism of the Trumpets thankfully faded.
Polite war criminals vs boorish open psychopaths. Great improvement.
Blinken gave the Saudis the green light to begin bombing Yemen back in 2015. But sure, he is polite and likable and gets along better with European allies.
And my first sentence isn’t snark. The internet seems to bring out a snarky tone in many people including me, but that first sentence was meant literally.
The fascinating albeit depressing fact about the US foreign policy community is that so much of it can be characterized along the lines of my first sentence. You have the openly crude bullying sadists and the polite ones and again that isn’t snark. Many educated liberals and some non- Trumpy conservatives tend to place a great deal of emphasis on the outward trappings of civility and will overlook support for brutal sanctions, proxy wars and outright war crimes so long as the person is civil and talks politely to his or her social equals amongst the European allies.
And I put no great stock in the moral values of those allies anyway.
I guess Susan Rice had no skin in the game, but the deputy NSA advisor called the shots.
OK, you know more than I, clearly.
As to your dystopic-or perhaps merely cynical-view of the foreign policy grandees, can't say you're completely wrong, the smoothest talkers can easily be the most psychopathic.
That said, right now, in April of 2023, I'll be very linear in my comment and take the current administration's policy positioning 100x over the last one. We can gladly debate historical precedence, but I see this as such a vast improvement (and even the Walt article was mild in its rebuke) it's not funny.. Chacun a son gout, Donald.
Obama is responsible for Yemen— the buck stops there. But the people underneath him could have resigned in protest rather than side with an immoral decision.
This idea, that you resign rather than support an unjust war, is something that seems unthinkable in modern day America. An official doesn’t have to do any whistleblowing or leaking of secret documents that might lead to jail. That is the choice that faces a low level government worker who sees something evil that he or she wants to expose. Keep quiet, go through channels which will accomplish nothing, quit and nobody notices, or leak documents and go to prison. People higher up in the bureaucracy can do something else. They just have to resign and call a press conference to explain why. I used to watch John Kirby on YouTube videos saying that the Saudis only bombed civilians because of imprecision in their targeting process. He could have just resigned rather than be a spokesman who recites apologetics for Saudi bombing. Or he could have done it when asked a question during his job as spokesman— condemn the war and resign, right in front of the Washington press corps.
This doesn’t happen. Instead someone like Manning leaks and people debate whether this person is a hero or a traitor and nobody ever questions the choices of a Blinken or a Kirby.
Read ‘Resignation In Protest’ by Ed Weisband. Written decades ago, but [even more] relevant today.
And you didn’t mention Cy Vance’s resignation, perhaps the last visible one from a Cabinet member, borne of principle, rather than ‘to spend time with family.’
The British MP’s often demonstrably resign, unlike Americans. I wonder why..
I'd like to see some hard and detailed stats on what State looks like post-Trump. The reporting at the time was that all sorts of senior people were leaving. It's hard to get something done through a large organization that's fully staffed, much less one where nobody knows what they're doing because they're green. I could see the SOTA situation arising from bad advice rather than bad presidential decisions.
For Daniel, this post seems like an amazingly generous view towards the administrations diplomatic lack of substantial successes. Trump's pathetic team deserves no praise but neither does Biden's team. The lies, obfuscation and reliance only on strong arm tactics are getting thousands killed both in war and in ongoing murderous sanctions while at the same time oblivious to what is happening to the working class in this country and in Europe. As for their recent "efforts" in Africa, Ted Snider had a fantastic piece today in Antiwar.com. I highly recommend checking it out.
Bull.
Biden's record is not "lackluster" - he is a vicious warmonger and sociopath. He could have done things differently with a few strokes of the pen. And once he took office, Biden became the only one who could have done things differently.
And Biden needs to be made to own his manifest crimes, not blame Mean Republicans.
Question that sounds combative on the Internet but is just me being a curious person: what are the manifest crimes (maybe the top 3 in your view)?
1. Support of Saudi genocide in Yemen.
2. Occupation of Syria.
3. The war in Ukraine is entirely intentional on the part of the United States.
Thanks.
1. Agreed, anyone complicit in this is bad and should feel bad; it's beyond the time that a person could claim ignorance.
2. Fair, but what share of the blame should be put on Congress (including Republicans, who would normally fight any Biden thing tooth and nail) for pretending the AUMF covers this, because they are also warmongers? What share should be put on We the People for not caring about foreign policy?
3. I would read with interest your essay supporting this claim, but surely Russia could have just...not invaded Ukraine? Like, just because I can predict that someone will commit war crimes if I do X doesn't mean I have a [consequentialist? deontological?] ethical duty not to do X. The other person should also not commit war crimes. Obv I'm using somewhat more extreme facts to make a point, but pre-invasion, I would have said it was 70% likely that Putin was just posturing by massing troops on the borders. Of course, I don't have access to non-public signaling he may have been doing.
rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html
Of course, Ukraine could have been instructed to abode by Minsk or Minsk-2.
To make sure I understand--is your point that the U.S. did many of the things in the RAND document and that, predictably, Russia retaliated by invading Ukraine?
And on a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you that, holding all other variables static, Putin would NOT have ordered the Ukraine invasion if Ukraine had abided by the Minsks? My prior is that he does not worry overmuch about having a sound casus belli.
Why on earth do you think Russia signed Minsk (which Ukraine promptly broke) and the Minsk-2 in the first place? Why did Russia spend years trying to get Ukraine to abide by Minsk-2, and trying to get Ukraine's western guarantors to induce Ukraine to comply?
For that matter, Merkel and Hollande both stated that Minsk-2 was entered into in bad faith on their part and on the part of Ukraine.
Even now, it is abundantly obvious that Russia does not want this war, and tries desperately to avoid escalation, while the West is quite happy to spend its treasure and Ukrainian blood. Witness how Russia was near a negotiated end to the war, before Boris Johnson came to Kiev, bearing a message from Biden.
If you continue to doubt, Russia was reducing its military spending in the years leading up to the war. Hardly the behavior of a tyranny seeking world domination, or even an invasion of Ukraine. Compare with the famously peace-loving United States.
With the exception of an oblique reference to assistance provided to Ukraine by U.S. allies, Walt completely overlooks the economic sanction wars that the Biden Administration is waging to cripple the economies and ensure the immiseration of populations unlucky enough to live in countries that have defied U.S. dictates. These sanction wars are illegal, aggressive, nasty, and extremely anti-diplomatic. Biden's diplomatic record is a great deal worse than lackluster.
Biden is a hawk. He doesn't have to think about appeasement....he's one of them. He's a f*&#% psychopath like all the neocons.
About 1000% better than the previous administration.
1000% better than the previous administration. Blinken relative to Pompeo? Sullivan relative to Bolton? And the US’ allies are at least talking to them again, the idiotic unilateralism of the Trumpets thankfully faded.
Polite war criminals vs boorish open psychopaths. Great improvement.
Blinken gave the Saudis the green light to begin bombing Yemen back in 2015. But sure, he is polite and likable and gets along better with European allies.
And my first sentence isn’t snark. The internet seems to bring out a snarky tone in many people including me, but that first sentence was meant literally.
The fascinating albeit depressing fact about the US foreign policy community is that so much of it can be characterized along the lines of my first sentence. You have the openly crude bullying sadists and the polite ones and again that isn’t snark. Many educated liberals and some non- Trumpy conservatives tend to place a great deal of emphasis on the outward trappings of civility and will overlook support for brutal sanctions, proxy wars and outright war crimes so long as the person is civil and talks politely to his or her social equals amongst the European allies.
And I put no great stock in the moral values of those allies anyway.
I guess Susan Rice had no skin in the game, but the deputy NSA advisor called the shots.
OK, you know more than I, clearly.
As to your dystopic-or perhaps merely cynical-view of the foreign policy grandees, can't say you're completely wrong, the smoothest talkers can easily be the most psychopathic.
That said, right now, in April of 2023, I'll be very linear in my comment and take the current administration's policy positioning 100x over the last one. We can gladly debate historical precedence, but I see this as such a vast improvement (and even the Walt article was mild in its rebuke) it's not funny.. Chacun a son gout, Donald.
Obama is responsible for Yemen— the buck stops there. But the people underneath him could have resigned in protest rather than side with an immoral decision.
This idea, that you resign rather than support an unjust war, is something that seems unthinkable in modern day America. An official doesn’t have to do any whistleblowing or leaking of secret documents that might lead to jail. That is the choice that faces a low level government worker who sees something evil that he or she wants to expose. Keep quiet, go through channels which will accomplish nothing, quit and nobody notices, or leak documents and go to prison. People higher up in the bureaucracy can do something else. They just have to resign and call a press conference to explain why. I used to watch John Kirby on YouTube videos saying that the Saudis only bombed civilians because of imprecision in their targeting process. He could have just resigned rather than be a spokesman who recites apologetics for Saudi bombing. Or he could have done it when asked a question during his job as spokesman— condemn the war and resign, right in front of the Washington press corps.
This doesn’t happen. Instead someone like Manning leaks and people debate whether this person is a hero or a traitor and nobody ever questions the choices of a Blinken or a Kirby.
Read ‘Resignation In Protest’ by Ed Weisband. Written decades ago, but [even more] relevant today.
And you didn’t mention Cy Vance’s resignation, perhaps the last visible one from a Cabinet member, borne of principle, rather than ‘to spend time with family.’
The British MP’s often demonstrably resign, unlike Americans. I wonder why..
I'd like to see some hard and detailed stats on what State looks like post-Trump. The reporting at the time was that all sorts of senior people were leaving. It's hard to get something done through a large organization that's fully staffed, much less one where nobody knows what they're doing because they're green. I could see the SOTA situation arising from bad advice rather than bad presidential decisions.