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Quote of the Day: Are We Winners or Losers?
Winning means getting Russia to withdraw from Syria, the Donbas and Crimea. A diplomatic victory is when China agrees to dismantle military bases on artificial islands in the South China Sea. Success involves getting Iran to stop arming and funding armed militias and terrorist groups in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq.
Losing, on the other hand, is something the West has become quite good at. Losing is watching construction continue on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline as Russia declares the country’s largest opposition party an illegal conspiracy. Losing is moaning about Chinese behavior in the South China Sea as the military balance tilts toward Beijing. Losing is crafting intricate webs of ineffectual sanctions as Russia’s reach and control inexorably expand. Losing is wringing one’s hands and issuing eloquent critiques as China intensifies its crackdowns in Tibet, Hong Kong and Xinjiang.
–Walter Russell Mead
Mr. Mead was reflecting on the ineptness of the Biden administration and the President’s empty and meaningless remarks at the G7 summit. Nothing Biden said demonstrated any resolve or strategy to hold our enemies accountable. Everyone seemed to love what Biden had to say, but as usual, his remarks were all words and no substance.
As we look ahead in the Biden Presidency, is there any hope that he will take a strong position on anything? Does he genuinely believe that his words will have any impact, aside from receiving polite applause from the political Left and his partners at the summit? Will people figure out that he only offers meaningless rhetoric?
Just like Obama, he will draw red lines, make threats and use an ominous tone in his criticisms of our enemies.
And no one will take him seriously.
Published in Group Writing
The fallacy is that the Biden administration and the Democrats are against the things you mention. They are not. Nor are the GOP from what I can tell.
Point taken, John. It’s hard to know where the GOP stands on almost anything.
I hope that’s true, but fear that, as long as the words he mouths parrot the aims of the Left, he’ll be the convenient figurehead to pushing their agenda through.
OTOH, this story was encouraging: Left aims to defeat another pipeline, but Native American business leaders defend construction. It appears that, now that the Keystone XL pipeline project has been stopped, the Left’s next target is Line 3, a pipeline from Canada into the US, whose job sites were vandalized earlier this month. Said Matt Gordon, a member of the White Earth Nation Tribe, and owner of a family construction company in MN:
It may be a small step, but it’s a step, and one in the right direction.
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Mr. Mead sets an awfully high bar for winning. I wouldn’t expect any particular policy to achieve those results any time soon. You’re not going to be able to just bully Russia and China into abandoning these countries and bases. You’re going to have to gradually undercut their ability or willingness to maintain them. Seems like the kind of thing that would take years of setting the stage, getting other countries on board, navigating hard-to-predict -changes in the world economy and political events. It’s a tall order, is all I’m saying.
The ‘winning’ that the Democrats, and especially the ‘work’ care about is the defeat of Republicans, conservatives, and ‘rednecks’ and ‘hillbillies’. This is far more important to them than any US winning in the international arena.
As the late and very great blogger Neptunus Lex wrote:
The innate character flaw of the political right, with its thrumming appeals to the logic of blood and soil, is its lamentable tendency to go in search of enemies abroad. The left, on the other hand, with its own appeals to the politics of envy and class warfare, is content to find mortal enemies closer to hand.
Sady yes: Biden will happily destroy the civil liberties of anyone who is unhappy with his regime. And he will do it as strongly as he thinks he can get away with.
I’ve seen a few things lately, at different levels, that show the unhappiness of the Left. We’ll have to wait and see . . .
It is a tall order, @daventers; I think Mead would be happy to see progress on any one of them–substantive progress. But it doesn’t appear that they plan to do much of anything. Everything needs a task force, must be taken under advisement, or calls for a “wait-and-see” attitude. I don’t see a hint of any movement on Russia or China or Iran, that would benefit this country or the world. So it’s pretty dire.
American elites, of both parties, are not interested in what is best for America. They are wholly interested in what is best for them as elites. As such none of what Mr. Mead sets out is winning for them. Winning for them is to be able to make money off of investment with China and dealings with other global elites. European elites look at Iran and Russia in much the same way. Western leaders quit representing the best interests of their respective nations some time ago.
Loosing is having the CCP choose your president and members of Congress. Loosing is having Big Pharma create an epidemic, so they can boost their sales with experimental vaccines. Loosing is having government prosecutors turning dissenters into criminals and criminals into dissenters. Loosing is letting environmental grifters make our lives cold, dark and painful.
Nordstream 2 is about Russia blackmailing Ukraine. I am not sure we have a dog in that hunt.
It’s so very sad, isn’t it @raxxalan? It doesn’t seem so long ago that, in spite of our cynicism about politics, we believed that most of government was acting on our behalf. Too many people have their fingers in the proverbial pies now. And we are left to speculate and grieve the loss.
Also: quite a few members of the coalition that elected Biden are motivated largely by *anger*. Some are furious at Israel, and want to see it destroyed, or at least ‘put in its place.’ Some are furious at men. Some are bitter at those who are more economically-successful than they are. And some believe that Americans in general have it too easy and want that changed.
None of this has anything to do with improving America’s position among other nations.
It is a tall order because we haven’t been playing the game for so long that we are now way behind. It is like anything you neglect for too long it becomes much harder to correct it. Especially anything that is unpleasant or hard. Thing is it won’t become easier if we don’t do anything about it. It will just become harder. Biden isn’t going to do anything about this for 4 years. As a result we will be in much worse shape when the next president takes over.
There’s no doubt that anger can be all-consuming, and for many pretty satisfying. It leaves little room for creative endeavors. Good point, David.
You really, seriously believe this is what happened?
It is indeed. However I also think it is time for the rest of us to sharpen our pitchforks and get the tar hot and the feathers ready. Metaphorically speaking of course.
I can’t help but wonder where we would be along the paths of winning and losing if Trump had eked out a win back in November. Surely he would not abide ineffectual sanctions. We might not be winning at this point, but we might be moving in that direction. I think of the old GWB meme, “Miss me yet?”
Absolutely. We studied anti-viral treatments for SARs for 17 years and had proven that HCQ was effective. We had proven that Ivermectin was effective in March 2020. Instead of using safe and effective treatments, the medical community promoted bogus, fraudulent studies in their leading journals denouncing them! The medical community used PCR tests inappropriately to generate a fear and confusion. Together those two things lead to lockdowns and a lobal tragedy. This should have been a bad flu season, but where is the profit in that? Where is the *power* for the politicians that avoid a crisis?
I completely agree. Trump was relentless in making sure that other countries didn’t take advantage of us, and in issuing sanctions, @joelb. I heard that the new president of Iran has no intention of negotiating key items that we were supposedly going to demand this time around–on their ballistic missiles and support of terrorist activities. I’m quite sure Blinken will cave in to their demands.
Susan, good quote. I’m an admirer of Walter Russell Mead.
Do you know whether he said anything, elsewhere in the selection that you quoted, about what we should do to prevent Chinese expansionism, or Chinese mistreatment of people in places like Hong Kong, Tibet, or Xinjiang? I think that it is difficult to craft an effective response.
Mead is critical of sanctions against Russia, calling them “ineffectual,” though perhaps that is not a criticism of sanctions in general, but only of the weakness of the specific sanctions imposed on Russia.
Do you have any suggestions about what we should do?
Here’s the link of Mead’s column (although it may be behind a paywall). He was short on specifics, but firm on how meaningless Biden’s efforts were at the G7. Regarding my own ideas–if China doesn’t come forward with the info on the Wuhan lab (and I don’t expect they will), I’d like to see some kind of sanctions. I’d like to be sure the people of Hong Kong are seriously considered in our immigration programs. Regarding the Chinese mistreatment of people, I don’t see what we can do except complain and wring our hands. Unless we come back to sanctions. But I think if sanctions are issued for Russia and/or China, I’d like to see a strategic plan, rather than a slapdash effort.
What would you suggest?
Well said. Achieving policy goals requires first having a strategy. Mead’s list is a “first draft” of a strategy, identifying the desired or intended ends. But that’s just one third of what’s needed: a coherent strategy also includes both the ways and means. “Policy” (ways) are what gets funded (means). For example, good start would be to task the Department of Defense to start planning how to achieve the desired ends, without necessarily invading Crimea to drive the Russians out. (Greater presence of the US Navy in the Black Sea? More training rotations of US forces in bi-lateral exercises with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland? Increased funding of remote air strike capabilities on road, rail infrastructure targets, say…bridges and causeways?)
However, I’m well aware that the current administration has none of these strategic goals. In all honesty, I’m not seeing any strategic goals of any sort, other than perhaps that of “Don’t make the Chinese angry, or they’ll release embarrassing information about the President and his family.”
I wish you were in charge, @postmodernhoplite. You are spot on about strategy, and I think the administration has no idea what that means. So I guess we’ll flounder around for the next four years. Maybe the best we can hope for is that it’s not too disastrous.
It will also likely require building a strategy that will last through at least a couple of presidential administrations, even with changes in parties.
I am not as sure on this. Trump had a fantastic Middle East foreign policy plan which he executed brilliantly. He was very good in Latin America as well helping to build a consensus to handle the migration problem. On Russia he was very effective in practice and terrible in rhetoric. On China he was very effective in rhetoric and not all that effective in practice. I think the issue is that Trump had 4 or 5 foreign policies and not a coherent vision. Don’t get me wrong we would be in far better shape with Trump than with Biden, but realistically we need a strong leader who has a coherent vision for foreign policy and that wasn’t Trump. A simpler way of putting it is that Trump was tactically brilliant but didn’t have a strategic plan, like so much else of his presidency.
For China much of the damage is done; however, three things should be happening as a matter of course:
For Russia we should definitely not allow the Nord Stream 2 project to go forward. As it is by allowing that to move forward we have effectively rewarded Putin’s bad behavior.
Fair question, @dong – Does the US have a strategic interest in Ukraine? Of itself, I don’t see a direct interest in Ukraine for the US. However, the Nordstream 2 pipeline also will hurt Poland’s economy, an ally who is a key strategic partner. The new pipeline allows Germany to cut Poland out of the existing natural gas market, enabling Germany to purchase Russian exports at a lower, subsidized price and weakening Poland at the same time. This strengthens Russia in the region, and hurts the interests of other EU and NATO states in the region: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
What a pity that there are no historical examples of past German-Russian engagement to help us understand how this apparent mutual cooperation might affect other states in the region.
The first thing that has to be recognized is that the US cannot take on Russia and China at the same time. It is a sure fired way of losing. Priorities have to be set and as a result someone else’s interests will have to be forfeited. I am not sure Walter Russell Meade has wrapped his head around it.
Either puny Russia is the problem and Taiwan is toast as Japan makes accommodation with China.
Or China is the problem and we don’t worry so much about Ukraine, the Baltic countries and Nordstream. And move away from Nato.
What Republicans are offering is a bluff and muddling through. Biden is just muddling through. Not at all sure either will work. Both show a remarkable lack of recognition of overstretch
You make a fair observation @hangon that US strategic resources are not unlimited. We certainly do not have the means to confront both Russia and China with a meaningful land-based military capability (we’d lose a ground war in either Russia or China by themselves, much less at the same time.)
However, a strategy based upon denying either China (the principal threat) or Russia (the secondary threat) power projection access is possible (and I think could be successful, if implemented aggressively). This would require US land force capability be re-aligned to support enhanced US Naval and Air power capabilities. Allow me to add that, as a 30-year US Army veteran, it is VERY hard for me to say out loud that I’ve come to believe that it’s time for the Army to take a supporting role to the US Navy. (Ack!)
Do you also believe that Trump was onboard with the conspiracy, given that he advocated, project-managed, and funded the vaccine development?