Frederick Kempe (CNBC, 11/21/20) calls on Biden to restore “US global leadership” to “counter the growing influence of China.”
Joe Biden doesn’t become president for a month and a half, but already sections of the corporate media are calling on him to use US power to dominate the world.
Typically these calls are couched in benign-sounding euphemisms. For instance, CNBC (11/21/20) ran an article headlined, “How Biden Can Restore US Global Leadership After Trump’s Retreat From International Institutions,” which of course presumes that America ought to be planetary chief, despite the vast majority of those who live on Earth not being consulted.
Fred Kaplan of Slate (11/12/20) asserted that Biden’s “main goal is to restore American leadership in a world that’s keen to follow it.” The evidence suggests the opposite, as polling in countries closely allied with the United States like the UK, France, Germany, Japan, Canada and Australia finds majorities—strong ones, in many cases—have a negative view of America. That doesn’t matter, though, because the point of Kaplan’s assertion is to provide an ideological smokescreen: The world wants “American leadership,” goes the lie, so the American population should support their government’s overseas adventures.
Other corners of the commentariat offer clearer insight into what that “leadership” means in practice—namely violent US supremacy.
Peter Bergen of CNN (11/7/20) advocated Biden “restor[ing] America’s place in the world as the first among equals in a rules-based international order that has served American interests so well since World War II.” For Bergen, this “rules-based international order” includes militarily occupying countries for indefinite periods. He writes that Biden “should retain a light Special Operations Forces footprint for counterterrorism missions in Afghanistan, and he should say publicly that the US commitment to Afghanistan is a durable one,” lest the US “give comfort to her enemies.”
This “commitment to Afghanistan” has been “durable” for at least 40 years, since the US (with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan) began arming far-right forces there. For almost half that time, the US and its partners have been occupying and bombing the country, with murderous US airstrikes falling on such sites as hospitals, mosques, weddings and an MSF trauma center (In These Times, 8/1/18). These brutal crimes have contributed to the 43,000 Afghan civilians who are dead because of a war that the US started: None of these atrocities, it would seem, violate the “rules” that Bergen championed.
For the Economist (11/8/20), Biden’s pursuit of “the new art of world leadership” will see him “insist that Iran move back into strict compliance with the” Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal. “Persuading it to do so, without prematurely rewarding its regime with the lifting of sanctions, will be a big diplomatic challenge.” Part of the “art of world leadership,” then, is being careful not to jump the gun on “rewarding [Iran’s] regime” by taking reckless actions like letting Iranian civilians access medicine amid a global pandemic (FAIR.org, 4/8/20).
It’s not exactly clear what Thomas Wright (Atlantic, 11/22/20) means by “liberal internationalism,” but he seems to think that Barack Obama’s eight years of constant warfare weren’t hawkish enough.
In the Atlantic (11/22/20), Thomas Wright said that Biden “must . . . be cognizant of the precariousness of his liberal-internationalist worldview,” another anodyne phrase. “Liberalism is under siege at home and abroad,” he wrote, and “it will not automatically endure.” Wright provided no specific definition of the “liberal-internationalist worldview,” but hinted at its contours when he said that he hoped the Biden administration’s approach to the world would be similar to that of his former boss: “Biden,” Wright contended, “should certainly entrust senior positions to people who tend toward the Obamian worldview.”
That worldview included carrying out more than 500 drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen in the name of fighting Al Qaeda, an endeavor that killed hundreds of civilians. It included partnering with Saudi Arabia to attack Yemen under the flimsy pretext of curbing Iranian influence in the country. That war has caused the country to be ravaged by cholera and hunger, and has added to Obama’s Yemeni body count by killing untold thousands of civilians in a US/Saudi bombing campaign (Middle East Eye, 11/17/17). It included making sure Israel was fully stocked with ammunition (Al Jazeera, 7/31/14) as it carried out an assault on Gaza that killed more than 2,000 Palestinians. It included supporting a coup in Honduras (Jacobin, 12/12/18). This is the “Obamian worldview” that Wright recommends to bolster the “liberal-internationalist worldview.”
Not that Wright wants Biden’s foreign policy to be a carbon copy of Obama’s; he praises Vice President Biden for breaking with his boss in his willingness to “send lethal assistance to Ukraine” and his greater stress on “competition with China and Russia.”
One of Wright’s recommendations for responding to the apparent “siege” on liberalism is to “codify” support for NATO “by introducing legislation that requires congressional approval if the United States is to leave NATO,” so that a future US president cannot easily withdraw from the alliance. Similarly, Bergen said that “Biden should reaffirm American commitments to NATO.” In the Washington Post (11/8/20), Jackson Diehl described it as “positive” that, in his estimation, Biden “will reaffirm US support for NATO.”
Since 1999, NATO has added Poland, Czechia, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Albania, Montenegro and North Macedonia as members (Wikipedia).
NATO is a war-making institution. It is through this alliance that the US and its partners shredded Libya, where NATO—in the process of allegedly protecting Libyan people—carried out serious crimes against the Libyan population, including a missile attack on a crowd of civilians that killed 47. The invasion empowered racists who have subjected Black Libyans and African migrants to slavery, rape, torture and ethnic cleansing, as NATO set in motion nearly ten years of proxy war for Libyan resources that has killed thousands of civilians (In These Times, 8/18/20).
NATO is also the instrument that has carried out much of the war in Afghanistan, repeatedly partnering with the US to kill civilians, including children: A US/NATO bombing in Helmand province, to pick one of many horrific examples, may have killed more than 100 civilians (Washington Post, 7/1/07).
All the while NATO has—despite assurances Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton made to Russian leaders Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin—expanded ever-closer to the Russian border, adding 14 member states in Central and Eastern Europe since the end of the Cold War, a major driver of US/Russian tensions in recent years (Jacobin, 7/16/18).
When the corporate media gushes over NATO, this is what they’re praising.
Anti-China demagoguery also splatters the pleas for Biden to shore up American imperialism. For Slate’s Kaplan (11/12/20), “American leadership” entails the US “getting serious about competing with China.” through a combination of “diplomacy and confrontation.” The Post’s Diehl (11/8/20) was enthusiastic about the prospect of Biden “standing up to…Xi,” and about
Biden’s plan to forge a coalition of democracies to confront the surging global wave of autocracy. The 21st century has reopened the contest of the 20th over the nature of human governance: China is propagating a model of high-tech totalitarianism.
“If the president-elect rejects domestic radicals—including the so-called democratic socialists—and fights against our foreign communist enemies, we must all support him,” says Yuri Pérez (NBC, 11/7/20)—suggesting that democratic socialists aren’t part of “we” Americans.
An NBC op-ed (11/7/20), which didn’t bother with the liberal pieties of many of the above-mentioned pieces, argued that
during the campaign, [Biden] did seem to realize that the United States is facing a second Cold War with China. And so, if the president-elect rejects domestic radicals—including the so-called democratic socialists—and fights against our foreign communist enemies, we must all support him, whether or not we voted for him.
We’re already seeing quite a lot of “confrontation” with China and “standing up to Xi,” and it looks like this: Two US Navy carrier groups holding exercises in the South China Sea, where China and several of its neighbors have a territorial dispute, as the US surrounds China with military bases while threatening to engage the country in a new nuclear arms race and spend them “into oblivion” (In These Times, 8/17/20). It looks like the US sending a nuclear-capable B-52 to the South China Sea, along with cruisers, destroyers and submarines, on top of flying over the area with two B-1B supersonic bombers that were designed to carry nuclear weapons, and sailing a guided missile destroyer within 12 nautical miles of Chinese military bases (The Nation, 7/30/20). These steps bring America perilously closer to war with China, over territory thousands of miles from the continental United States, yet these commentators feel no need to disavow such tactics as they insist on the supposed need for America to “fight…against” China.
If the pundits get their way, Biden could secure “US global leadership” by flattening large parts of the planet.
Yes, liberalism in the US is champing at the bit of a Biden Presidency to restore the spectacle and thunder of American Imperialism while spreading US-style democracy by bellicosity, by drone, by bomber, by missile. Lucky world.
I am a pacifist ( nobody uses the term anymore). Therefore all the US attempts to rule the world scare me and the people of the world. Are we back to the Roman Empire? All for what? Power and money? But these for me are no reasons.
Why can’t any author write an article on how Trump reduced the amount of war the US is participating in? This author infers it, but cannot bring himself to say it. The participation in war would have been even less if the generals had not lied to Trump.
Implies, not infers (for any grammar police)
Tim go read “Media Silent as Trump Declares Wars” over on Black Agenda Report. BTW, this is one site where I had once read an article that capitulated to the idea of Trumpty at least not getting us into a new war…but then the headline above popped up in June.
So I would say D.J.T’s record on wars is complicated. It pales in comparison to the empirical reality of the countries where we have troops deployed…our efforts have produced little to no deescalation in these places, and our behavior abroad, putting our troops in harms way, has not produced a safer world for the people whose countries we occupy.
We cannot forgot about all of the ways Trump escalated and increased the use of U.S. military forces domestically: like how Trump sent troops to the southern border against peaceful, unarmed refugees, and Trump’s clandestine Goon Squads whose behavior was akin to rendering terrorist suspects abroad, in unmarked battle uniforms, with unmarked vehicles.Trump did this to his own U.S. citizens.
Oh yeah, I forgot, you don’t consider these to be an “increase of war.” The people who got jailed, some of them journalists who were exercising their First Amendment Rights, would beg to differ.
Trump also declared a de facto war on the truth, the deadliest toll of which was probably caused by his hand waiving facetious drivel about Corona—as the so-called leader of the free world (my ass). You want people to act like that didn’t happen too?
Oh well deluders are gonna delude.
You apologists for Trump are “cultists the lot of ya’!”
I don’t mind a difference of opinion. I mind dishonesty or redefining terms to fit a person’s narrative. Sending troops to a border is not an increase in war. Declaring a “war” on truth is not a war. Somebody being jailed is not an increase in war. Declaring “war” on some black agenda, is not a war.
Deluders are going to delude. We agree on that.
Where do you get your news from? Please tell me it isn’t hyperlink texts labeled “just for you.” What sources do you rely on (besides the NYPost) that are non-corporate funded, accredited independent news, media, and journalism? Enlighten us, I won’t judge.
List them for us Tim. From the way you strung together your reactionary reply, maybe you missed that “Black Agenda Report” is the name of a news radio magazine and website “from a Black Left perspective.” Yes or no?
Your critiques of the DNC. the conventional left and progressivism, led me to believe that you would at least be curious about the material over at a site like BAR, or even Counterpunch.
How about “Jacobin” for labor and worker’s rights news? You heard of it? Probably not. Anything from the actual left wing in this day and age is like hieroglyphics to you eh?
We were talking about actual wars, not redefinitions of the word war.
Try to keep up.
The neoliberal war machine is on the ascendency. Only the neocons could do it better. Both share the same foreign policy, so what could go wrong?
Give it to Trump that he didn’t invade anyone with boots, and he mostly reduced troop counts in Syria and Afghanistan. But, Trump did likely drone bomb with abandon at a higher rate than the Nobel Peace Prize winning Obama. We’ll not know the extent of the drone bombings until Trump abdicates. He did allow Israel to get away with shenanigans and even stirred the pot himself with the Embassy move. If MBS didn’t kill Khashoggi, Trump would have been able to be further dragged into Saudi Arabia’s vision of a post-Palestine Middle East.
Who will the USA invade? It will need to look like a humanitarian or peace keeping operation. Yemen, Myanmar, and Venezuela are on my ranked “watchlist.”
Likely with abandon? Either you know or don’t know. You’re not expected to
be an expert on all subjects. Just say you don’t know and move on. You don’t get to speculate that he did it with abandon. Again, speculation as to what Trump would have done with Khashoggi. Let’s just leave it at that he’s the first president in 19 years to reduce the war. Republicans didn’t. Democrats didn’t. Trump did. We’ll see what Biden does.
Tim, I think Fritz’ point was something like:
‘While Trump may not have formally started any “new wars”, he did plenty of damage to the world, all the same. His capitulatory ignorance and dim witted ability to think in terms of diplomatic solutions, was a gift wrapped boon to the Military Industrial Complex. Instead of recalling all of our troops from theater, on his first day in office, like he yapped about during his campaign, he left the well-oiled-machine of US Imperialism in place. Trump won no favors to the victims of the US war machine.’
At least that’s what I read. Not that relativist gobbledygook you slung.
Ah, recalling on the first day. You mean like Obama could have done, but didn’t?
Tim,
You said “We were talking about actual wars…”
No, I offered a counter narrative to your brainwashed notion that Trump should be worshipped as if he were a man of peace. You are deep in the swamp lapping up that corporate bullshit aren’t you?
Then you twisted my first reply into claiming that what I had posted mentioned a ‘war on the black agenda’, it did not, go back and reread it. Had you actually humored me even a tiny bit by reading the byline of the article I referred to, you would have seen that it was a report about how Trump made declarations of military action in Venezuela, and the MSN didn’t bat an eye.
“Try to keep up”
Really? You are the one lagging behind, ducking and dodging as usual. I noticed how you cowardly avoided listing where you get your news. Figures
Tim, you said “Like Obama could have but didn’t”
So let me get this straight; I’m to believe that something Trump and Obama equally did not do is somehow magically a net gain for your argument? How?
BTW: you oughta know I did not support Obama.
This tactic of yours of constantly spinning shit with an old-worn-out “whataboutism” is so 2017. Get a new act.
Maybe this is all you have to rationalize your boot licking of Trump? Weak.
No courage,
“I’m going to just make up stuff so I can get mad about Trump” “I’ll redefine terms so that I can justify why I’m mad at Trump” “I’m just going to vent” “I’ll start whole new topics.”
I think I know your smell.
Tim,
“I think…”
Outstanding! At least now we know the lights are on.
“…I know your smell.”
Sweet!
I’d rather be the shit-house-door on a tuna boat than some disgraced politician’s groveling bootlicker. —U N S A T.
You will realize one day that you do not owe Trump a damn thing, and that no one will disown you if you stop holding water for that con-job and his political party that gives zero hoots about you.
As a reminder, you are on the third reply now, and have yet to say where you get your news. Well?
Smell ya’ later skater
No Courage,
Wall Street Journal, Fox, and Yahoo. You’ll discount Fox. I’ll discount your NYT, LAT, WP, ABC, NBC, etc. I happen to read FAIR and Yahoo because I like to see what the other side has to say. You ever watch Fox?
Tim, thank you for answering that.
No newspapers or TV for me.
I do a manual search for news and politics, always with a wiped browser, and using as many different counter algorithm techniques as I can.
I hate being molded into thinking (impossible to avoid) so I never click suggestion or bookmark the sites I visit.
I try to fight the algorithms. I’m an Idealist so I peruse the news by what interests me, not what is being talked about by the MSN.
My “go-to” media and news sites are FAIR, and Counterspin, Democracy Now! The Nation, Counterpunch, Black Agenda Report, Jacobin, Public Citizen, The Intercept, Robert Scheer’s weekly podcast “Scheer Intelligence”, Chauncey Devega’s weekly show, Jimmy Dore’s YouTube channel, Majority Report YouTube channel, Current Affairs Magazine (the Nathan J. Robinson run outfit), World Socialist Website, Glenn Greenwood’s Twitter, Alternet, Daily Kos, Truth dig Archives, Bernardo Kastrup (for Idealism philosophical noise)
Should have been “Glenn Greenwald’s Twitter” wow!
Hey Tim,
It’s not surprising, that you listed “Fox” as your primary source for news. Do you combine your viewing of Fox with, other “conservative” radio, and/or online perusing of sites besides Yahoo, and FAIR too?
Believe me, I know how hard it is to give up listening and watching to something that you’ve gotten used to. It isn’t so easy to switch cold turkey. It is too convenient right? Except, this is not good for your mental health…try to stop watching FOX a little less each day, until you can go a whole 24 hours without it. You will see what I mean, how much less stressed out you will become, (just from that one 24 hour break).
Have you ever seen the movie “The Brainwashing Of My Dad”?
Check it out if you haven’t. It is about a lady who saw her Dad go from left of center, to hard right curmudgeon. What was so shocking was how quickly he changed, it only took a few months or years after switching to FOX News.
The Murdoch family would rather burn the U.S. to the ground than give up that fat wad of cash they’re raking in from ad sales, online clicks and television ratings.
Anyways, take care of yourself Tim
You are delusional if you think Bidens going to do anything for anybody but himself ! He is in fact the only senator whom ran on a foundation to protect social security then after being elected senator drafted law seeking to totally eliminate social security all together for programs which in his words were much more necessary like foreign aid. Given his involvement in ukraine this is no surprise. Furthermore it is not only statistically impossible but legally impossible for him to have supposedly recieved as many votes as being claimed ! They overplayed their hand once it was known Trump recieved 87 % of the vote dominions program being designed to specifically cater to pollster input manufactured votes for biden according to pollster input to give him 113% of the vote ! Which is literally impossible. Mike pence is constitutionally bound to block any election results should they be even slightly in question and this is exactly what he will do weither cnn msnbc cbs or any other fake news outlet likes it and furthermore the democrats promises to media you know that billion dollar tax exempt deal will be broken and they will be imposed a multi media tax. The same guys whom promised to stop it will be behind creating it and all the fake media will go bankrupt because of it ! Watch and see !
Steve,
That is bullshit buddy. Where did you hear those lies about the “Dominion programs”? Let me guess; some unaccredited, unvetted, and unaccountable online blogger or other conspiracy theorist turned “news source”? Or was it these asshat-TV-tabloid stations owned by right wing partisans, who front as legitimate network news: OANN, Newsmax, or FOX?
Those are lies you are trying to spread brother. Go read the article by the non-partisan, centrist news site the Associated Press titled, “Smartmatic Does Not Own Do inion Voting Systems”. Hopefully you are not one of these types who absolutely refuses to read anything that counters the narrative in their FaceBook news feed, or god forbid is different than their beliefs?
The article the AP ran in fact-checking the claims about Smartmatic or Dominion, should help you to become aware that there is objective information out there.
Also, the company, “Smartmatic” that provides I.T. support for the Dominion machines is suing Newscorp, OANN and Newsmax for libel, defamation, and false testimony. I say good for them.
Steven,
No, not at all, the Congressional Election Certification is a formality since Biden has already been certified as winner, in both the Electoral College tally, and from the 50 State Attorneys General.
Mike Pence will be submitting to the will of the People on January 3rd. So people can read it for themselves, here is what Article II, Section 1. paragraph iii. of the actual Constitution of the United States says about Mike Pence’s job of certifying the election:
“….of the government of the United States directed to the president of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall them be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President…”
All Pence (the President of the Senate) will be doing is adding up the totals which decisively went for Biden.
Also, if this nonsense of Pence being “constitutionally bound” to anything other than adding up votes, is something you heard, or read on the “news” you watch, maybe try reading the actual U.S. Constitution next time, before you go off half-cocked, accusing others of watching “Fake News.”