It may seem a little unusual to talk in terms of an Obama- Biden Foreign Policy but that was exactly the term the vice president Joe Biden chose to employ during his bizarre address to the European Union earlier this week. There is something mildly amusing about the thought of Biden attempting to elevate himself to such a position in the world’s collective imagination where he would be on a parity with the Great Obama. However that’s really where the hilarity should stop, from then on it’s all rather more concerning.
Biden’s speech to the EU was not only alarming because of the way that it seemed to express support for a Federal Europe; a total disregard for national sovereignty, not to mention the way in which the vice president bestowed the most undeserved levels of praise on the strikingly undemocratic Lisbon Treaty and described the European Parliament as the ‘bastion of European Democracy’. No where the speech really entered into a category of its very own levels of absurdity was when Biden directly stated that it was not Washington that should be considered the Capital of the Free World but rather Brussels, along with all its unelected Eurocrats presumably. But was it these people who oversaw the intervention in the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans in the 1990s or replaced oppressive and radically religious tyrannies in Iraq and Afghanistan with democracies? I think not.
Indeed it is not just the EU that the Obama-Biden administration has been actively courting. No the White House has found a new love of transnational organisations as seen with the pledge Obama made early on in his presidency to work more closely with the UN. At the risk of sounding tiresome I shan’t mention all the usual worn out statistics about the UN but rather simply point out that this organisation is currently hosting a conference on the ‘Inalienable Palestinian Rights’. This should surely beg the question of what kind of Rights the rest of us might hope to receive in the UN’s world vision. Since when did an organisation supposedly committed to equal rights for all peoples and nationalities start holding conferences on the Rights of just one group of people?
Where Obama’s Administration really enters into treacherous waters is with its horrifyingly naive view of Diplomacy and ‘soft power’. At a speech Obama gave this weekend at West Point, the elite military training college, the President once again outlined his belief that Diplomacy was the way forward for American Foreign Policy. Yet surely America’s recent total inability to limit the aggressive behaviour of States such as North Korea and Iran should have been enough to signal to anyone even mildly acquainted with reality that this approach is failing and humiliatingly so at that. What is even more concerning is that this approach has even crashed and burned with nations that should have been more easily won over. As the political commentator Bill Kristol pointed out the whole point of having someone like Obama as President is he was supposed to be able to get on side those borderline States that Bush was said alienate. Yet now we see two perfect examples of such borderline States, Turkey and Brazil, not supporting US foreign policy but rather doing a deal with Ahmadinejad’s regime that they hope will act as a screen for the Islamic State’s development of Genocidal weapons. Isn’t Turkey supposed to be part of NATO? And what business does a South American country have aligning itself with an Islamist Regime?
Clearly Obama’s Foreign Policy has only served to embolden the enemies of western democracy and weaken the position of America. The ideas behind Obama’s strategy are laughable but the consequences could all too quickly become tragic.
Biden’s speech to the EU was not only alarming because of the way that it seemed to express support for a Federal Europe; a total disregard for national sovereignty, not to mention the way in which the vice president bestowed the most undeserved levels of praise on the strikingly undemocratic Lisbon Treaty and described the European Parliament as the ‘bastion of European Democracy’. No where the speech really entered into a category of its very own levels of absurdity was when Biden directly stated that it was not Washington that should be considered the Capital of the Free World but rather Brussels, along with all its unelected Eurocrats presumably. But was it these people who oversaw the intervention in the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans in the 1990s or replaced oppressive and radically religious tyrannies in Iraq and Afghanistan with democracies? I think not.
Indeed it is not just the EU that the Obama-Biden administration has been actively courting. No the White House has found a new love of transnational organisations as seen with the pledge Obama made early on in his presidency to work more closely with the UN. At the risk of sounding tiresome I shan’t mention all the usual worn out statistics about the UN but rather simply point out that this organisation is currently hosting a conference on the ‘Inalienable Palestinian Rights’. This should surely beg the question of what kind of Rights the rest of us might hope to receive in the UN’s world vision. Since when did an organisation supposedly committed to equal rights for all peoples and nationalities start holding conferences on the Rights of just one group of people?
Where Obama’s Administration really enters into treacherous waters is with its horrifyingly naive view of Diplomacy and ‘soft power’. At a speech Obama gave this weekend at West Point, the elite military training college, the President once again outlined his belief that Diplomacy was the way forward for American Foreign Policy. Yet surely America’s recent total inability to limit the aggressive behaviour of States such as North Korea and Iran should have been enough to signal to anyone even mildly acquainted with reality that this approach is failing and humiliatingly so at that. What is even more concerning is that this approach has even crashed and burned with nations that should have been more easily won over. As the political commentator Bill Kristol pointed out the whole point of having someone like Obama as President is he was supposed to be able to get on side those borderline States that Bush was said alienate. Yet now we see two perfect examples of such borderline States, Turkey and Brazil, not supporting US foreign policy but rather doing a deal with Ahmadinejad’s regime that they hope will act as a screen for the Islamic State’s development of Genocidal weapons. Isn’t Turkey supposed to be part of NATO? And what business does a South American country have aligning itself with an Islamist Regime?
Clearly Obama’s Foreign Policy has only served to embolden the enemies of western democracy and weaken the position of America. The ideas behind Obama’s strategy are laughable but the consequences could all too quickly become tragic.
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