Dotard Biden’s Seinfeld Trip to Asia
Apparently we're also going back to war in Somalia out of habit
In Planes, Trains & Automobiles, Steve Martin’s character gives John Candy’s some valuable advice: “And by the way, you know, when you’re telling these little stories? Here’s a good idea: have a point. It makes it so much more interesting for the listener!” This is advice President Joe Biden should but won’t heed on his first trip to Asia as president.
When Joe Biden goes to Japan and South Korea at the end of this week, a different popular reference should come to mind: Seinfeld. The show about nothing seems to inspire not only Biden’s trip, but also his administration’s entire lethargic and pointless approach to the Asia-Pacific.
Biden’s visit should have occurred over a year ago, since the region is more important to America’s future than any other and contains our most consequential ally (Japan) and most dangerous adversary (China). Furthermore, Japan is the rare and exceptional ally in that it doesn’t complain about what it wants America to do for it and snivel about not wanting to take sides in the free world vs. China fight.
Biden and his Secretary of State, who brings to mind a rumored Churchill quip about his Labour counterpart— “An empty taxi arrived at 10 Downing Street and Clement Attlee got out of it”—have been telling reporters for months that a big new policy on Asia and major rollout speech are imminent. But our ailing president and his sad and dumpy lieutenants don’t know what to do about China.
Biden’s administration has wasted more money than any in history, but none of that loot has gone to a larger military presence in the Pacific. He has kept most Trump-era tariffs on China, but not proceeded with an expansion planned when Beijing surprised almost no one by welshing on its promises in a 2020 trade deal. Biden refuses even to press China to come clean about giving the world COVID-19 and beginning the necessary discussion about making China pay scores of trillions of dollars in global reparations for this inexcusable offense.
Biden’s joke of a trade play for the Pacific is also Seinfeldian in nature. The administration’s proposed Indo-Pacific Economic Framework is declared by administration officials to be “high ambition,” but is short on actual substance and long on inclusion and climate change wokery. Japan even encouraged an expedited launch of the framework, christening it with the inevitable bureaucratic acronym “IPEF.” Why not? It creates the make-believe product (a “deliverable” in bureaucratese) necessary for a meeting of leaders and requires no changes to Japanese trade practices that leave it with a perpetual surplus with the USA. Meanwhile Tokyo is quietly doing two useful things Biden will not do: increasing its military capabilities in the region and speaking clearly about the dangers posed by a prospective Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Lacking any plan or direction, Biden’s trip will be long on verbiage and short on action. I would suggest a drinking game in which we take a sip every time the word “ironclad” is used to describe U.S. alliances in the region, but then we would be remaking The Lost Weekend as the trip lurches through Sunday.
What is really at stake in the Pacific? Our foreign policy mediocrities like to talk about preserving an “international community,” a “rules-based international order,” and other things that don’t really exist. What is actually at stake is the American power we need to keep China at bay and the freedom won at great expense in World War II and subsequent political and military struggles. General Douglas MacArthur forecast this world in a radio address to the American people shortly after the formal end of the war in Tokyo Bay, which is always worth a listen as we head toward Memorial Day:
The entire world lies quietly at peace. The holy mission has been completed. And in reporting this to you, the people, I speak for the thousands of silent lips, forever stilled among the jungles and the beaches and in the deep waters of the Pacific which marked the way… We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war…
To the Pacific basin has come the vista of a new emancipated world. Today, freedom is on the offensive; democracy is on the march. Today, in Asia as well as in Europe, unshackled peoples are tasting the full sweetness of liberty, the relief from fear.
In the Philippines, America has evolved a model for this new free world of Asia. In the Philippines, America has demonstrated that peoples of the East and peoples of the West may walk side by side in mutual respect and with mutual benefit. The history of our sovereignty there has now the full confidence of the East.
And so, my fellow countrymen, today I report to you that your sons and daughters have served you well and faithfully with the calm, deliberate, determined fighting spirit of the American soldier and sailor, based upon a tradition of historical truth as against the fanaticism of an enemy supported only by mythological fiction.
Their spiritual strength and power has brought us through to victory. They are homeward bound. Take care of them.
Unlike in Europe, American power is needed in the Pacific to defend our actual national security—not just the vague nothingness of “American interests” the foreign policy elite uses to justify meddling and intervention anywhere. Europe can afford to defend Europe, especially against a Russian military that appears to be ineffective. In Asia on the other hand, we are in the struggle of the century against a country with more than three times our population and a large economy. We need not only for our military to be stronger, but the help of allies, and a network of capitalist economies, all working to contain and ultimately undermine China’s government.
Unfortunately Biden will seek none of this. Beijing will see the trip for what it is: An afterthought visit by a dotard president whose loser son is already on China’s payroll, who was one of the chief authors of the trade giveaways to China over the past two decades, and who will do nothing serious to deter China or hold it accountable for its transgressions.
Deep State Instructs Biden To Go To War In Somalia
If you thought U.S. failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria would dampen the deep state’s love of playing Cowboys and Indians (poorly) in backwaters, then you thought wrong. Donald Trump exuded strength against our foreign adversaries, but declined to start new wars abroad. He was less successful in drawing down costly and distracting U.S. foreign commitments (e.g., defending wealthy Europe) but did put an end to a long and pointless U.S. military operation in Somalia.
The deep state has now reversed this one setback to its imperium. The White House just announced that Joe Biden has decided to send U.S. combat troops back to Somalia, the most disastrous and poorly governed part of Africa, which is saying a lot.
Biden’s officials of course didn’t call it a new war, but consistent with the maximum duplicity and misdirection of our time, said there will again be a new “persistent presence” in Somalia. As usual, it will consist only of “special operators,” which for some reason is supposed to make selling new wars easier. According to a White House official, the mission will be not only to bolster Somalia’s ability to resist local jihadists who run part of the country, but to create an “inclusive economic environment.” Some wokeness is sure to cure what ails Somalia. Maybe the professors who taught gender studies in Afghanistan can be installed by the U.S. military in Somalia.
One wonders if bolstering local capabilities has ever been tried before in this country. As it turns out, four administrations have tried it since the first President Bush sent U.S. troops there in 1992. Thirty years later and would you believe the place somehow does not resemble Beverly Hills?
If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. We ought to focus on deterring and containing China and Iran, and ditch the nation building and permawar in places where it has an unblemished record of failure.