President Joe Biden promised in his first month in office to stand up to authoritarianism around the world. But his squandering of America's global power—which he once described as "the grounding wire of our global policy"—has only emboldened authoritarianism's advance.
The shocking consequences of this dissipation of American strength were on display in recent reporting about a November meeting between President Biden and Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping. Xi told Biden that Communist China seeks to reunify Taiwan with the mainland—and will use military force if necessary. That desire should surprise no one. But what should be shocking is that Xi felt carefree enough to reportedly issue this threat to President Joe Biden's face during a bilateral discussion that was intended by the U.S. side to "reduce tensions."
To understand why Xi felt so emboldened, witness the worldwide disorder that President Biden's failed foreign policy has wrought.
In May 2021, the Biden administration trashed the Abraham Accords—President Donald Trump's landmark peace agreements between the Jewish state of Israel and four Arab nations—only to later reverse itself after outrage from Congress and the pro-Israel community.
In August 2021, the entire world watched in real time as President Biden botched the U.S. and allied withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The Biden administration's incompetence and lack of planning yielded an avoidable tragedy in Afghanistan—one in which U.S.-trained Afghan security forces collapsed as the Taliban seized back power in Kabul, and 13 U.S. servicemembers were killed as American and allied militaries evacuated in humiliating and truly chaotic circumstances.
In February 2022, the Biden administration, after waiving sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, not responding to Russian hack of the Colonial pipeline, and extending the imbalanced new START treaty for five years with no concessions, unsurprisingly failed to deter Vladimir Putin from ordering Russian forces to invade Ukraine.
In September 2022—as massive protests broke out in Iran after Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who had refused to wear a headscarf, died in the custody of the regime's morality police—President Biden muted his response. He allowed his special envoy for Iran, Rob Malley, to continue pursuing concessionary negotiations with the world's biggest state sponsor of terrorism to revive the fatally flawed Iran deal that President Trump had sought to bury.
Malley—who in 2008 infamously said "it's a mistake to only think" of Iran-backed Hezbollah and Hamas "in their terrorist violence dimension"—would see his security clearance suspended by the State Department this year amid revelations that the FBI is investigating him for mishandling of classified information.
Worse, the Biden administration's refusal to fully enforce sanctions against Iran only rebuilt the regime's bank accounts, which had been depleted under President Trump's maximum pressure campaign, and further fueled the terror-sponsoring regime's war machine in the Middle East.
Indeed, on October 7, 2023—only days after Biden's national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, astoundingly claimed "the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades"—Iran-backed Hamas terrorists launched surprise attacks that killed over 1,200 people in Israel, including 35 Americans. But as Israel prosecutes its war to dismantle Hamas, the daylight between the Biden administration and our ally has unfortunately grown.
As Hamas orders Palestinian civilians in Gaza to stay in harm's way and unashamedly uses them as human shields amid Israeli counterterrorism operations, President Biden faces mounting pressure to condition—or even end—U.S. support to Israel from his far-Left base that is alarmingly antisemitic and seemingly sympathetic to Hamas.
This is the world that Xi Jinping has watched emerge over the last three years, as President Biden's foreign policy has projected weakness while appeasing and enriching America's adversaries to the growing alarm of our allies and partners.
It's no wonder Xi felt so untroubled in November about declaring Communist China's intentions with respect to Taiwan so directly to President Biden.
The simple truth is that our nation—and frankly, the world—cannot afford four more years of disastrous American leadership under Biden.
By contrast, during the four years of Donald Trump's presidency, we witnessed the dismantling of ISIS, tough economic sanctions and robust domestic energy policies that helped keep Putin's expansionist fantasies at bay, toughness with regards to China, historic Middle East peace agreements forged by the revolutionary Abraham Accords and, most remarkably, no new wars.
While President Biden has talked a big game about his foreign policy chops, declaring shortly after taking office that "America is back. Diplomacy is back." The evidence and the results tell a very different story.
In November, voters will face an important decision.
The choice should be clear. Whereas Joe Biden has failed to live up to his own promise to advance the security of the American people, Donald Trump will restore peace through strength and make America great again.
Bill Hagerty is a U.S. senator from Tennessee who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
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