Back in August, against the advice of just about everyone, President Biden stubbornly moved ahead with his disastrous decision to hastily pull all US troops out of Afghanistan. We are now seeing the direct results of probably the worst foreign affairs debacle in American history.
Our two principal adversaries on the world scene for the last three quarters of a century or so (since World War II) have been Russia (previously the Soviet Union) and China (more specifically the Chinese Communist Party.) Yes, we have other enemies/foes/rivals: Islamic jihadist terrorists, drug cartels, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela to name some of the more troublesome, but Russia and China are the ones who can go toe to toe with us, have nuclear weapons, major militaries, etc.
And now, because Joe Biden telegraphed to the world that a weak US Administration is currently in the driver’s seat, bad actors across the globe are doing what bad actors do – acting badly.
Respecting your time, let’s stick to just the two worst, and most powerful, bad actors – Russia and China. First, Russia.
Putin is amassing troops, tanks, and equipment on Russia’s border with Ukraine, which of course was part of the former Soviet Union until it secured its freedom back in 1991 when the Soviet Union imploded. Putin famously called the breakup of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” And in my opinion, Putin‘s overriding goal is to reestablish the old Soviet empire to the greatest degree possible by bullying its weaker neighbors into submission.
With respect to Ukraine, Putin already forcefully took back Crimea, and has been militarily besieging Ukraine in the Donbas region of the country for years now. 14,000 people have already lost their lives due to Putin‘s brutal aggression. Now it appears he’s ready to invade even more of Ukraine with up to 175,000 troops. It’s possible that he’s just testing Biden‘s will, and the will of our NATO allies, but it’s also very possible Putin will invade. But Biden‘s obvious weakness, as was fully on display with the Afghan pullout, is undoubtedly playing an important role in Putin‘s calculation.
And then there’s China. Within days of the announcement of Biden‘s embarrassing run for the exits in Afghanistan, the Chinese state-run media was claiming that Taiwan would see the same “fate” as Afghanistan – the US would abandon Taiwan. We’ve seen a ramped up aggressiveness by China against Taiwan, most visibly displayed by hundreds of Chinese warplanes now routinely invading Taiwan’s airspace. As Cochairman of the Congressional Taiwan Caucus, I’ve been following this issue very closely for years now, and I am very concerned that China, under the tutelage of a particularly aggressive and reckless president-for-life Xi Jinping, may relatively soon make the fateful decision to invade Taiwan.
And President Biden‘s projection of weakness on the world scene could lead China, and other adversaries, to miscalculate, and assume that America is a “paper tiger,” as Chinese propagandists suggested after the Afghanistan pullout, rather than the most formidable foe any bad actor could ever have.
The bottom line is this: as Ronald Reagan once famously said, we should strive for “peace through strength.” We must be strong – economically, morally, and militarily. And we must project that strength in everything we do. We don’t have to be bullies, or intimidate other nations, as China and Russia do. But the bad actors across the globe must believe that we are strong, and that we will rise to whatever challenges are presented to us. And this is the best way to secure peace, in an ever more dangerous world.
Unfortunately, Joe Biden is doing just the opposite.