If many of the deputies under Obama are all moving into the principal positions (including Biden) it’s got me picturing rows of sharks teeth.
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Thanks for the comments lads.
To be fair, my main concern is the foreign policy. While Trump has been scaring all along, and did much damage by retiring his country from international pacts, treaties and agreements, his isolationism at least meant no further big scale war under his tenure (at least not yet, fingers crossed that he leaves office without doing something stupid until January).
The Obama administration on the other hand prolonged GW Bush’s horrible warmongering policies in the Middle East and in Afghanistan, despite of Obama’s promises to end them.
If the same people return to power, they are likely to restart their interventionism, and an interventionist USA is a poison for the world since the start of the post-WW2 era, as @Arminius rightly wrote above.
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Valid concern I think, one I hadn’t considered.
I have an acquaintance from Eastern Europe (LFC fan) who has no love for Biden in any shape or form because of the war monger tag. The hatred for the US foreign policy and by extension the US runs very wide and very deep.
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Isolationist America has not exactly been ideal either. Partly, that is an indication of the no-win situation of superpower policy. But it also reflects the need for real understanding of global situations, which was woefully lacking in the Trump administration. The Middle East is in a significantly worse position than it was four years ago to my mind, and with far fewer clear options to improve the situation.
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I think any benefits from Trump’s isolationist policy are entirely superficial or co-incidental at best. It was much harder for Obama to extract the US from those situations than it was for Trump not to start anything new.
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That would include the Marshall plan as well. It’s not as black and white as that.
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We have more troops in Afghanistan and the Middle East than what he inherited, so why does Trump get credit for “isolationism” yet Obama is scorned for continuing the wars? The drone program, one of the biggest criticisms of the Obama administration, has also increased and become more problematic under Trump. Not only has he used them more often to kill more people and cause more damage, he has removed the safe guards that Obama’s team put in place to try and codify conduct in an emerging type of conflict. Yet Trump claims to be an isolationist and people just buy it.
What about assassinations of senior members of foreign governments? And that backed up by lies that fell apart within a day. Some people would say the ends justify the means, but the end of that situation was a Shia uprising in Iraq that made us have to shut the embassy in Baghdad for security reasons. Do you really get isolationist cred for that?
If we ignore all that, do you really get credit for being isolationist if you are propagating these conflicts and humanitarian crises by increasing your arms sales, sometimes covertly and illegally, to the regimes perpetrating them? What if we decide on international relations based on who buys our war making, devastation causing shit?
But even if we accept his line that he is really an isolationist, is that really for the good of anyone? Was it good that we let Turkey take care of their dispute with the Kurds by getting out of the way (not bringing the troops home, mind. We simply moved them out of the way)?
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The criticism isn’t just about Iraq and Afghanistan. Just one example is Yemen.
That Trump did nothing to make things better (or made it worse in some cases) is another story.
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Trump did not do nothing nor did he make it better. He has bombed yemen more than Obama did, killing more civilians and doing so with fewer standards for giving a shit about that. And that’s just what we did, let alone what we enabled the Saudis to do.
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How about reading it again?
Fair enough.
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Most people probably don’t know anything about Blinken as he’s been a fairly behind the scenes guy compared to recent SOSs. This is a good recent interview with him that gives some insight into how a Biden Admin will approach foreign policy
Note, it is one conducted on admittedly friendly grounds, given the two guys from PSW were colleagues of his.
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What’s your opinion on Obama’s Yemen policy then? Let me guess, doomed if you do, doomed if you don’t?
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My take on Biden is that he will start to repair the Federal Government, all departments, all levels, by getting some capable people in there to do the job. At present it is hollowed out, and Trump fires people on a whim and puts unsuitable people in place.
So… a return to normalcy or competence will be welcome. I have low expectations of anything happening in terms of movement, idea, progress… it’s a time to just try to get back to something resembling normal and functioning.
As for Yemen… my take is the US is financially intertwined with Saudi Arabia so has not done the right thing by Yemen. That may or may not change under Biden, and it may or may not even be a priority. I hope it is, but we will see.
One difference between Biden and Trump will be that Biden will know that there is in fact a place called Yemen, and he will have a grasp of the situation there. Now, whether or not that matriculates into something useful remains to be seen, but I’m as certain as can be that Trump wouldn’t even know of Yemen’s existence, much less have a grasp of the issues.
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It’s beyond ridiculous now. Absolutely impossible to debate anything without the ‘but, but Trump’ line. Ffs, many people have been critcising this stuff long before Trump took office. He’s gone now (or he will be gone soon) and the question was whether the same approach/policies of predecessors will be taken. And if that is a good idea or not.
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Made me wonder just how tenable are these policies that get wound up and unwound every 4 years. And I mean that domestically and abroad. At some point, the credibility of all polices will be shot to smithereens if the policies are regularly deconstructed and then rebuilt in their mirror images.
Feels like the country needs a 2-term presidency and a stable Congress to really move again.
My sincere answer on this, in my post above, was that Saudi and US are intertwined financially and something may or may not change. We’ll see. I hope it does! But it may not be near the top of US priorities once Biden takes office.
How is that? I understand unlike during the 1970s, USA now produces its own oils.
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Leaving aside this particular debate, it would be great if it were possible, in the future, not to immediately view any criticsm of Biden/Clinton/Obama or even fucking George W Bush as an endorsement of Donald Trump.
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We have reduced our dependence on oil exports from the Middle East. However, after Canada, Saudi Arabia remains our second biggest international supplier. Also, even though we have reduced our exports from the region, the global dependence on that region’s oil has actually increased. And so perhaps @RedOverTheWater meant there is perhaps a direct economic tie and more (but I probably shouldn’t speak for a poster who is far more knowledgeable than me).
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