Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)

The Biden 10-step plan for global chaos

- VICTOR DAVIS HANSON Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguis­hed fellow of the Center for American Greatness and a classicist and historian at Stanford’s Hoover Institutio­n. Contact at authorvdh@gmail.com.

WHY is French President Emmanuel Macron cozying up to China while trashing his oldest ally, the United States?

Why is there suddenly talk of discarding the dollar as the global currency?

Why are Japan and India shrugging that they cannot follow the U.S. lead in boycotting Russian oil?

Why is the president of Brazil traveling to China to pursue what he calls a “beautiful relationsh­ip”?

Why is Israel suddenly facing attacks from its enemies in all directions?

What happened to Turkey? Why is it threatenin­g fellow NATO member Greece? Is it still a NATO ally, a mere neutral or a de facto enemy?

Why are there suddenly nonstop Chinese threats toward Taiwan?

Why did Saudi Arabia conclude a new pact with Iran, its former archenemy?

Why was Egypt secretly planning to send rockets to Russia to be used in Ukraine, according to leaked Pentagon papers?

Since when did the Russians talk nonstop about the potential use of a tactical nuclear weapon?

Why is Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador bragging that millions of Mexicans have entered the United States, most of them illegally? And why is he interferin­g in U.S. elections by urging his expatriate­s to vote for Democrats?

Why and how, in just two years, have confused and often incoherent President Joe Biden and his team created such global chaos?

Let us answer by listing 10 ways by which America lost all deterrence:

1) Biden abruptly pulled all U.S. troops from Afghanista­n. He left behind to the Taliban hundreds of Americans and thousands of pro-american Afghans. Biden abandoned billions of dollars in U.S. equipment, the largest air base in central Asia — recently retrofitte­d at a cost of $300 million — and a $1 billion embassy. Our government called such a debacle a success. The world disagreed and saw only humiliatio­n.

2) The Biden administra­tion allowed a Chinese high-altitude spy balloon to traverse the continenta­l United States, spying on key American military installati­ons. The Chinese were defiant when caught and offered no apologies. In response, the Pentagon and the administra­tion simply lied about the extent that China had surveilled top secret sites.

3) In March 2021, at an Anchorage, Alaska mini-summit, Chinese diplomats unleashed a relentless barrage at their stunned and mostly silent American counterpar­ts. They lectured the timid Biden administra­tion diplomats about American toxicity and hypocrisy. And they have defiantly refused to explain why and how their virology lab birthed the COVID-19 virus that has killed tens of millions worldwide.

4) In June 2021, in response to Russian cyberattac­ks against the United States, Biden meekly asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to at least make off-limits certain critical American infrastruc­ture.

5) When asked what he would do if Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden replied that the reaction would depend on whether the Russians conducted a “minor incursion.”

6) Between 2021 and 2022, Biden serially insulted and bragged that he would not meet Muhammad bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, and one of our oldest and most valuable allies in the Middle East.

7) For much of 2021, the Biden administra­tion made it known that it was eager and ready to offer concession­s to re-enter the dangerous Iran nuclear deal — at a time when Iran has joined China and Russia in a new geostrateg­ic partnershi­p.

8) Almost immediatel­y upon inaugurati­on, the administra­tion moved the United States away from Israel, restored financial aid to radical Palestinia­ns and both publicly and privately alienated the current Netanyahu government.

9) In serial fashion, Biden stopped all constructi­on on the border wall and opened the border. During the 2019 Democratic presidenti­al primary, Biden made it known that illegal aliens were welcome to enter the United States — some 6 million to 7 million did. He reinstated “catch and release.” And he did nothing about the Mexican cartel importatio­n of fentanyl that has recently killed more than 100,000 Americans per year.

10) In the past two years, the Pentagon has embarked on a woke agenda. The Army is short by 15,000 in its annual recruitmen­t quota. The defense budget has not kept up with inflation. One of the greatest intelligen­ce leaks in U.S. history just occurred from the Pentagon.

The Pentagon refused to admit culpabilit­y and misled the country about Afghanista­n and the Chinese spy balloon flight. The current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called his Chinese communist counterpar­t and head of the People’s Liberation Army to advise him that the U.S. military would warn the Chinese if it determined an order from its commander in chief, former President Donald Trump, was inappropri­ate.

This list of these self-inflicted disasters could be easily expanded.

But the examples explain well enough why our emboldened enemies do not fear us, our triangulat­ing allies judge us unreliable and calculatin­g neutrals assume America is in descent and too dangerous to join.

Yet without America, the result is a new Chinese order in which, to quote the historian Thucydides, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

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