WASHINGTON, DC — President Joe Biden’s tenure will likely bring a return to “the failed policies of the Obama administration” abroad, conservative foreign policy experts predicted during a webinar on Wednesday hosted by the Center of Security Policy (CSP) think tank.
Nile Gardiner, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, and Claudia Rosett, journalist and foreign policy fellow with the Independent Women’s Forum, joined CSP President and CEO Fred Fleitz to discuss how early indications show Biden will most likely make a sharp reversal of Trump foreign policy initiatives and a revival of former President Barack Obama’s strategy.
“Elections have consequences and the election of Joe Biden means that he is throwing out the successful policies of President Trump — his America First policy, which made America safe — and reverting to the failed policies of the Obama administration,” Fleitz said.
These failed policies include the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the 2015 Iran nuclear deal; deferring authority to the United Nations; appeasing China; supporting Palestinian political leaders at the expense of Israel; and domestic energy policies that will make the U.S. more dependent on hostile nations, the experts predicted.
Fleitz said the Biden administration has made “disturbing statements about priorities” like “putting climate change above looking at the threat of Iran, and Russia, and China.”
All three experts said China is of particular concern.
Fleitz said both Biden’s Defense Secretary General Lloyd Austin and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines have refused to call China an adversary, instead calling it a competitor. Fleitz said some believe “enemy” is a more apt description of the Chinese Communist Party.
Rosett said Biden’s foreign policy moves so far represent “grab bags” of gifts for China, including an executive order forbidding the use of terms that associate the Chinese coronavirus with China. The virus was first documented in Wuhan, central China, and no evidence exists that it was present in humans anywhere else before the first diagnoses in late 2019.
“It basically defers to the propaganda and demands of China’s Communist Party,” Rosett said.
She said Biden rejoining the Paris Climate Accord on his first day in office is another nod to China.
“Again, that’s a gift to China to go right back into the Paris Climate Accord — it brings us back into a non-binding agreement that greatly favors China,” Rosett said, adding that, in reality, the agreement is a “choke [on] our own economy in the interest of so-called unity with China.”
“And we’re now seeing the Biden administration saying that the PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization] can reopen its mission in Washington,” Rosett said.
“So there’s a whole set of things here that can only embolden enemies of America at a time when America has plenty of internal problems to worry about,” Rosett said.
Gardiner emphasized that Biden’s foreign policy is rooted in his history as vice president.
“Joe Biden owns the Obama foreign policy over the course of eight years and that policy, quite frankly, was a complete and utter disaster,” Gardiner said. “And we’re likely to see a return to that approach — an approach of American weakness on the international stage. An unwillingness to act where necessary.”
“The reality is, over the course of the last four years, U.S. leadership on the world stage was far stronger than it was under Barack Obama,” Gardiner said.
All three experts said they were concerned that, rather than taking these threats seriously, Biden has expressed that his main focus when it comes to national security is climate change.
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