Biden’s national security and foreign policy team

Biden's national security and foreign policy team.

PEJOURNAL – Biden says “America is back” and “ready to lead the world.” The former vice president’s comments are an apparent reflection of what the world community should expect under his foreign policy mandate, because his team reflects the fact that America is once again ready to mess with the world for all the wrong reasons.

Under the circumstances, expect Biden to not retreat from America’s endless wars. It will also sit once again at the head of the United Nations Security Council table releasing sanctions resolutions to confront sovereign nations with much needed help from Western allies, ready to stand up for the bogus war on terror et al.

To this end, he has picked Anthony Blinken, a former Obama administration official and long-time Biden aide, who has a history of pushing for US wars and military interventions in places like Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya. The idea is to rebuild trust in the War State and bogus alliances.

He has also picked Avril Haines to be his director of national intelligence, who served as both the deputy director of the CIA and the deputy national security advisor under Obama. Haines has a racist history of running cover for CIA torture programs and served under former CIA chief John Brennan when the Obama administration criminally increased drone strikes in places like Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and North Africa. He also helped crush anti-racism protests at home.

No wonder human rights groups and peace activists have sounded the alarm over Biden’s picks. These are the same criminals that launched endless wars against dozens of Muslim states in the Middle East and played key roles in drone strike policy during Barack Obama’s presidency. These are also the same goons who covered up torture perpetrated by members of the George W. Bush administration. Biden says preparations for more of the same are expected to follow.

The Biden-Harris administration is building an experienced criminal team by nominating for some top policy posts as well, including secretary of state; secretary of homeland security; national security advisor; and US ambassador to the United Nations, among others. This will surely help extend America’s interventionist policies in Muslim heartlands through diplomatic channels. This is not about looking to enter a new era of US foreign policy, but rather trying to step back into the pre-Trump world.

This is while America’s endless war is pretty much universally recognised as the worst foreign policy blunder in its 21st century history, yet now Biden wants to reward them for it. He says no retreat from the Clinton, Bush and Obama years here.

All this and more are bad news not only for the war-stricken people of the Middle East but Palestine and elsewhere. The Biden administration will definitely move to suppress Palestinian rights as well, even the BDS campaign, a peaceful protest movement protected by the UN Charter. He won’t change course from Trump’s State Department policies in this respect. Quite the opposite, the ex-Obama administration staffers will target and suppress support of Palestinian human rights everywhere, even at the UN.

It is going to be pretty much business as usual for other nations as well, meaning huge war spending, a heavy US footprint in the world, and this outdated notion that the US should be at the head of the table when it comes to human rights and international humanitarian law. The ex-Obama administration staffers will create legal justification for Biden’s drone wars and support for further blockades on Yemen, Syria and Gaza. At the same time, leading human rights groups and the UN Human Rights Watch will speak out fervently against these criminal policies but to no avail. 

There’s a saying in Washington that “personnel is policy”. As things stand, the ex-Obama administration staffers or Biden’s group of national security picks are all war criminals and should be held to account at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The world will not sleep easier until they are brought to justice. They are not picked to end America’s endless wars and certainly this is unfortunate news for many war-stricken countries in the Middle East.

They are in no way picked to undo Trump’s damage or Obama’s damage, and certainly they cannot build a more compassionate and common-sense foreign policy agenda for the United States. Put simply, they are excellent choices to help extend the destructive reach of the Empire of Chaos on this planet of ours.

What else do you expect from a former vice president that backed the illegal wars on Iraq and Syria and drone-bombing campaigns in countries like Pakistan and Yemen. This is also the same politician that in the 1990s co-sponsored a bill with John McCain to send troops into Yugoslavia and later advocated a troop surge in Afghanistan and aerial warfare in Syria and Yemen. He is now telling us that the US must take the same devastating lead in policing the world – the strategy of global military domination – with help from his scandalous circles.