executive” target=”_blank”>President Biden could not have been more clear<.
Biden speaks at the COP26 climate summit.
(Fox News)
foreign-policy” target=”_blank”>Biden is the guy who got elected< and Newt Gingrich praising Biden’s words and some on the Left saying he went too far. Now there’s a legitimate debate over whether the president took a risky step and put us closer on the path to a military confrontation with Beijing.
But to dismiss Biden’s words as a “gaffe” is just lazy thinking.
The pattern has become unmistakable. Biden called Vladimir Putin a war criminal, then said he was just offering his personal opinion as opposed to urging an international legal process. Biden said Putin shouldn’t be allowed to remain in power – a clear misstep that got us nothing – and the White House walkback said the president wasn’t calling for regime change. Soon afterward, Biden repeated his, well, personal view.
The other day in Japan, CBS’s Nancy Cordes asked: “You didn’t want to get involved in the Ukraine conflict militarily for obvious reasons. Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?”
“Yes,” the president said.
U.S. President Joe Biden, March 31, 2022.
(REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo)
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After a pause, and obviously hoping to elicit more, she said: “You are?”
“That’s the commitment we made,” Biden said.
Actually, there’s no specific requirement that U.S. troops world-regions, emboldened by Putin’s move on Ukraine, decides to invade what it considers a breakaway province. Past presidents have committed only to providing the Taiwanese with arms to defend themselves.
What Biden was doing was breaking through the mushy diplo-speak favored by the foreign policy establishment, in which our policy is one of “strategic ambiguity.” This isn’t even new. He has pledged twice before as president to defend Taiwan militarily.
So which provides the stronger deterrent: a straightforward “yes,” or letting Xi Jinping guess what the American response might be?
The rushing out of the White House statement – “As the president said, our policy has not changed” – did little to calm the global furor.
By yesterday, Biden even seemed back on board. Asked if he would send U.S. troops to protect Taiwan’s democracy, he said: “The policy has not changed at all. I stated that when I made my statement.”
Uh, actually no.
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So is this some form of nine-dimensional chess? Maybe Biden and his lieutenants are playing a good cop-bad cop routine, where the government can officially insist that no policy is changing while the president keeps signaling that he wants tougher action. It’s like when a judge tells the jury to disregard some piece of inadmissible evidence, which prosecutors mentioned knowing full well it would be hard to unhear it.
If that’s not the case, Biden should order anyone who purports to speak for him to stop contradicting him. It does foster an aura of confusion.
President Joe Biden in an updated file photo.
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
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donald-trump” target=”_blank”>Donald Trump used to rip up<
The Biden media narrative is far more sympathetic. He is, after all, a past chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with eight globe-trotting years as vice president under his belt. He is obviously knowledgeable about geopolitics and knows many world leaders.
Unless the mixed signals are intentional, those who work for Biden should stop undermining his pronouncements.
