Joe’s Global Goofs: Making Russia Great Again, One Blunder at a Time

by Jeff Childers

Let’s review Biden’s cratering foreign policy. But don’t worry, everything is going just terrible. The Wall Street Journal ran a long-form, multi-media-laden story yesterday headlined, “How Putin Rebuilt Russia’s War Machine With Help From U.S. Adversaries.” I would rewrite that headline, instead wording it, “How Biden Rebuilt Russia’s War Machine With Help from NATO.”

The Journal’s disquieting sub-headline tossed in, “Iran, North Korea and China are supplying the people and know-how to tool up Russia’s factories and churn out arms for the war in Ukraine.”

Who did they think Russia would turn to for help after getting completely cut off by sanctions? But the story is much bigger than the Proxy War arms race.

To fully grasp the spectacular failure of Biden’s aggressive neocon policy, if you can call flying by the seat of one’s trousers a policy, we must first note a few historical facts.

Following the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, post-communist Russia was prepared to join the West. It even applied for NATO membership. But sneering NATO elites found Russia’s application incomplete, only letting it become a junior member of NATO’s Partnership for Peace in 1994.

Kind of like a NATO version of the awkwardly named Webelo; not quite a Boy Scout. Not yet. Maybe later.

The problem was neocons in the U.S. distrusted post-Soviet Russia. They were suspicious, convinced the country would flare back up into a communist superpower any minute. Instead, U.S. necons thought the new Russian Federation should be completely defeated and broken up, into tiny, manageable, bite-sized mini-states.

Thus began a long, painful post-Cold War cold war, the new Second Cold War. The war’s aims were to effect Russian regime change, overthrowing the new Russian Federation just like we overthrew the Soviet Union, and install a U.S.-friendly government. The eventual goal was to eradicate Russia, by dividing the Russian Federation into its component parts.

And so NATO, breaking a series of “informal” promises not to expand, continued inexorably marching east, through Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and a succession of smaller Baltic states toward Russia, finally landing next door in Ukraine.

Turning to Israel, over the post-Soviet years Russia developed friendly diplomatic ties to the Middle East’s lone democracy. This included substantial trade and a large Russian-speaking population in Israel. As its relationship with Israel grew, Russia respectively cooled its relations with Iran and Israel’s other regional aggressors.

Post-Soviet Russia also broke off its support to pariah states Cuba and North Korea. Before this month, Russia has always taken a hands-off approach to the two internationally isolated communist countries, respecting U.S. sanctions and its “pro-democracy” policy.

In other words, Russia was cooperating with the U.S.’s so-called international rules-based order. But now, as the Journal’s headline explained, the blundering necons, grasping for total, non-negotiable, hegemonic control, have managed to reverse decades of progress with Russia.

Russia’s relationship with China, which was downright chilly before the fall of Soviet Union, is closer than ever. Russia is furious at Israel over support for Ukraine, and now is working closely with Israel’s ally, Iran. Last week, Russia made a historic visit to Cuba, restarting the frozen engine of cooperation with the U.S.’s closest enemy, which was until now running on fumes. Yesterday’s Miami Herald headline, describing the conclusion of the Russian trip to Cuba:

 
But even more significantly, yesterday, President Putin and North Korea’s Glorious Leader, the little rocket man himself, signed a full-on mutual defense treaty. Yesterday’s AP headline:

 
That was disastrous news for U.S. ally South Korea. The South Koreans must be freaking out. Their little garbage balloon war just took a hideous turn. Like Israel, South Korea — surely bullied into it by the U.S. — also picked sides with Ukraine in the Proxy War.

Nobody should be surprised at any of these developments. Now that Russia has been sanctioned into the same pariah-state status as Cuba and North Korea, it has nothing at all to lose from partnering up with them. Not only that, but right after Joe Biden green-lighted Ukraine’s use of U.S. missiles to attack Russia’s cities two weeks ago, President Putin responded by warning that two could play at that game: Russia could arm U.S. enemies too.

Now he’s doing it. Why the neocons stubbornly ignore Putin’s warnings like a basket of deaf adders is a mystery for the ages.

In other words, decades of post-communist progress in knitting Russia into the Western international order was thrown overboard in two short years by the deranged Biden Administration. Sanctions had turned defiant Cuba and North Korea into third-world non-threats. Now the engine of U.S. opposition is running backwards.

Israel may soon regret its decision to side with the U.S. against Russia. Now that the rubber has hit the Middle Eastern road, Israel is starting to learn exactly what kind of alliance it has. This week’s headlines reveal Joe Biden’s Cold War with Israel, as things heat up in its post-October 7th wars. Yesterday’s UK Independent headline:

 
Biden is mad at Israel, because on Tuesday, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted a video accusing Biden of deliberately withholding, or at least slow-walking, Congressionally-authorized military aid. Tuesday’s AP headline:

 
Netanyahu’s short video was a political hand grenade tossed right into the middle of Biden’s careful fence-walking between his pro-Palestine and pro-Israel Democrat base.

Team Biden is not, as they say, amused, as the AP’s headline suggests.

Responding to Netanyahu’s accusation, intersectional White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defensively blurted, “We generally do not know what he’s talking about. We just don’t.”

They generally don’t know what he’s talking about. Generally.

Finally, trust in the U.S. seems generally to have drained down to low tide. In Taiwan-crisis news, this week China accused Biden of trying to provoke a war there. Monday’s Business Insider headline:

 
One would find President Xi’s claim laughable, except, well, you know. Maybe it was that “hellscape” crack.

Scientists would need an electron microscope to detect any trace of success in Biden’s pugilistic foreign policy. In other words, outside the U.S., Biden is failing everywhere his neocon ambassadors have been dispatched.

At least President Xi seems to be acting rationally. The other non-Western world leaders also seem wise and temperate compared to the Former Vice-President, whose main form of slurred speech consists of wearing aviator sunglasses indoors and pounding the podium like a certain mustachioed 1930’s chancellor I won’t mention.

 
In two years, Biden’s neocon foreign policy, which was designed to abolish Russia, has instead created the Russian superstate the neocons have always feared. Increasingly, Russia, its allies, and its BRICS replacement system seem to the world to be a plausible, more sane alternative than the existing U.S. order with its dilapidated, dementia-addled leadership.

It is difficult to imagine a more spectacular failure. It’s like they never learned Aesop’s fables in kindergarten.

Once upon a time, a dog carried a juicy bone in his mouth while trotting contentedly across a bridge over a stream. Glancing down into the water, the dog saw his own distorted reflection and mistook it for another dog with an even bigger bone. Greedy to get the bigger bone, the moronic dog barked menacingly at his blurry counterpart. But when he opened his mouth to bark, the bone fell out and dropped into the water, leaving him with nothing but ripples in the stream.

The bone is Russia’s efforts to cooperate with the U.S.-led international order after the fall of communism. The mirage is the neocon’s paranoia about a Russian superstate. The dropped bone is American citizens, who are now cursing a blue streak and sitting painfully in the creek bed, nursing a broken ankle, cold, wet, and muddy, having been dropped off the bridge when Biden barked.

Or something like that! Maybe The Dog with the Bone is not an ideal metaphor. Maybe The Scorpion and the Frog would be better. Either way, you get the point.

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