by Jed Babbin
Asked how American families who can’t afford to pay $5 per gallon of gasoline can survive, Biden’s National Economic Council Director Brian Deese said, “This is about the future of the Liberal World Order and we have to stand firm.”
President Joe Biden has thrust us into a new liberal world order of high inflation, open borders, shortages of critical items such as food, and so many disasters in foreign policy that they’re too many to catalogue.
The future of Biden’s liberal world order is one in which our economy will crater and our adversaries both major and minor will be able to capitalize on our weaknesses. Some already are doing so. They, unlike Biden, understand how our military is being weakened by his injection of “wokeness” into every aspect of military life.
Macron told Biden:
I had a call with MbZ [United Arab Emirates leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan]…. He told me two things. I’m at a maximum, maximum (production capacity). This is what he claims. And then he said [the] Saudis can increase by 150 (thousands barrels per day). Maybe a little bit more but they don’t have huge capacities [before six months’ time].
Macron’s coaching of Biden wasn’t behind closed doors. It was performed on camera for reporters, which was disrespectful to Biden. It’s far from unusual for a French president to disrespect an American president or even to embarrass him in front of reporters. But the fact that Macron told Biden what he did — obvious facts Biden should know from diplomatic and intelligence sources — is more than disrespect. It shows how little confidence NATO leaders of many nations have in Biden.
That lack of confidence is well earned. While the media wants to blame it on everything except Biden’s overwhelming incompetence, the lack of confidence grew quickly from the first days of Biden’s presidency. Biden canceled the Keystone Pipeline permit on his first day in office and went on to quickly give Russian President Vladimir Putin a five-year extension of the New START Treaty without getting anything in return. He rejoined the Paris Climate Accords, again without getting anything in return that would benefit the United States.
If any question of Biden’s competence remained, it was quickly shattered by Biden’s debacle in withdrawing suddenly from Afghanistan last August. He did so without consulting with NATO leaders, many of whom had troops and other assets in Afghanistan and were caught unaware by Biden’s sudden announcement of his decision to cut and run.
The media excuse Biden’s incompetence at every opportunity. Last Thursday, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour conveniently forgot Biden’s Afghanistan debacle while saying that the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, would cause the Taliban to no longer respect the United States.
Two days after Macron tried to coach Biden, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that NATO was increasing its NATO Response Force from 40,000 troops to 300,000. Where he plans to get those troops from is another matter. Stoltenberg, a former prime minister of Norway, engineered an end to Turkish objections to Finland and Sweden joining NATO. Biden reportedly had no hand in that diplomatic maneuver.
Biden has announced that we will — again — increase our troop strength in Europe. We already have over 100,000 troops in Europe, and now added to them will be more troops, including a permanent troop presence in Poland. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Biden is also sending more Navy destroyers to Spain, an air defense battery to Italy, and two squadrons of F-35s to the United Kingdom.
The question is what will these additional forces do? What they are apparently intended to do is deter further Russian aggression. They won’t because the only thing that would deter the Russians would be the death of Russian President Putin or the defeat of Russia in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has wisely refused to trade pieces of his nation for what would be nothing more than a temporary peace. And Russia’s aggression in Ukraine grinds on with no end in sight. Russian forces are reportedly gaining ground in the Donbas region while both sides are gaining more casualties, and Ukraine is expending more ammunition than NATO nations will choose to supply.
To his credit, Biden has been sending weapon systems and ammunition to Ukraine, but he, too, plays on the media’s biases to pretend that his domestic problems are because of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. He said last week that Americans are going to have to deal with high gasoline prices as long as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues. The two issues have nothing to do with each other.
The disrespect for Biden is not confined to Russia and NATO. About 40 U.S. citizens (not counting those abandoned by Biden in Afghanistan) are being held by various countries as hostages. Iran holds at least four and Venezuela holds about eight others.
Last March, Biden administration officials went to Venezuela seeking to obtain oil by reducing sanctions against that nation. They came back empty-handed. Roger Carstens, a former Green Beret officer, is now Biden’s Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs and one of the very few holdovers in the State Department from the Trump administration. He went to Venezuela seeking their release last week and also came home empty-handed.
Biden will, as Macron warned, come home from Saudi Arabia without a guarantee of more oil production. The Saudis don’t like Biden for two big reasons.
During his 2020 campaign, Biden promised to take revenge on Saudi Arabia for the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent dissident and sometime writer for the Washington Post. Biden vowed to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state.
The Saudis are also very angry at Biden for his unrelenting effort to renew Obama’s 2015 Iran nuclear weapons deal. Like Israel, the Saudis would be a prime target for Iran’s nuclear weapons.
All of these facts add up to Biden’s new liberal world disorder. Even if he is succeeded by a strong Republican president, our recovery from Biden’s mess will be long and difficult if it can happen. And that’s a very big “if.”
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American Spectator contributing editor Jed Babbin served as a deputy undersecretary of defense in the George H. W. Bush administration. He writes the “Loose Canons” column for The American Spectator and often appears as a talking warhead on television and radio. He is coauthor (with Herbert London) of the book The BDS War Against Israel. He is also the author of Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe are Worse Than You Think. You can follow him on Twitter@jedbabbin.
