{"id":232500,"date":"2023-04-03T12:01:15","date_gmt":"2023-04-03T11:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=232500"},"modified":"2023-04-02T06:17:21","modified_gmt":"2023-04-02T05:17:21","slug":"the-banality-of-bidens-exceptional-elite-advisers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/04\/the-banality-of-bidens-exceptional-elite-advisers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Banality of Biden\u2019s \u2018Exceptional\u2019 Elite Advisers"},"content":{"rendered":"

27 Mar 2023 – <\/em>Danger: President Joe Biden\u2019s sophomores running U.S. foreign policy today live in a dream world on the verge of becoming a nightmare. The nightmare \u2013 military confrontation with both Russia and China \u2013 now looms.<\/p>\n

It is scary enough that Biden seems to be out of it. Scarier still is the reality that his advisers appear to be oblivious to the tectonic-change implications of Russia-China entente. Blinded by the illusion of US\u201dexceptionalism,\u201d they may have to learn the hard way. The nightmare into which they are sleep-walking may be the last nightmare for pretty much all on this planet, except maybe the cockroaches.<\/p>\n

Okay: Antony Blinken is no longer a sophomore. But he was a sophomore 20 years ago when he helped his then-boss, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden lie about weapons of mass destruction to win congressional approval for war on Iraq. Neither of them were held accountable for that \u2013 one of the worst foreign policy disasters in U.S. history. Indeed, the only thing they seem to have learned from it is that they will never<\/i> be held accountable, not even if they wander, oops, into cataclysmic disaster.<\/p>\n

Blinken is his now-boss\u2019s, loose-cannon Secretary of State. Will Blinken, now an upperclassman, and the insider-sophomores like national security adviser Jacob Sullivan get us, willy-nilly, into war with Russia? How about war with both Russia and China? Do not put it past them.<\/p>\n

Oddly, they have the benighted notion they can \u201cmanage\u201d China; keep it from military-alliance-type support for Russia; or \u2013 if necessary \u2013 handle a two-front war with the two other major nuclear powers. Odder still, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, who should know better, seem cowed by Blinken and Sullivan \u2013 despite the fact that they have less military experience in the military than an ROTC cadet.<\/p>\n

No Renaissance Men (or Women)<\/b><\/p>\n

Bruce Fein, a Renaissance-man-type lawyer, pins the blame squarely on these benighted policy makers for trying to encircle and handcuff both China and Russia. Fein is not impressed by the fact that these specialists come from \u201cthe best schools.\u201d Here\u2019s Fein in a recent substack post<\/a>:<\/p>\n

US foreign policy is earmarked by chronic stupid stuff because we no longer produce Renaissance men or women who see things in their proper perspective and avoid magnifying fleas into elephants. Renaissance thinkers understand, like Lord Byron, that history, with all its volumes vast, hath but one page, that there is nothing new under the sun, and, that an Aristotelian mean is the presumptive optimal approach to any problem. Narrowly trained specialists cannot see the forest for the trees and routinely stumble.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Quick: Someone tell Blinken and Sullivan about Aristotle\u2019s Golden Mean; explaining that it does not mean \u201cgolden boys (and girls) can be extremely mean and get away with it. Rather, it can be rendered, in loose translation, as: \u201cStop doing extremely stupid stuff or you\u2019re going to get us extremely dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

China and Russia: Now Joined at the Hip<\/b><\/p>\n

If China\u2019s President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir Putin were out to prove one thing as they conferred in Moscow last week, it was that they would defend their own \u2013 and each other\u2019s \u2013 core interests regarding Ukraine and Taiwan. Sensible planners must assume they will.<\/p>\n

But Biden and Blinken don\u2019t seem to get it. Here\u2019s Biden on Friday trying to reassure us<\/a> that he does not take either China or Russia lightly. He then goes on to suggest that reports of rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing have been \u201cvastly exaggerated.\u201d Blinken is similarly out to lunch, dismissing deepening ties between China and Russia<\/a> as a \u201cmarriage of convenience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biden and Blinken have reiterated Washington\u2019s latest red herring to \u201cprove\u201d that the US can prevent Beijing from going the next step in supporting Russia. Both have noted that China had so far declined to provide weapons to Moscow for its war in Ukraine. \u201cWe have not seen them cross that line,\u201d Blinken said of China.<\/p>\n

Right! As things now stand, Russia is in no great need for weapons or ammunition from China. (It is NATO-supported Ukrainian forces that are running out of both.) And, in the unlikely event that Russia would come to need such support in the future, it is safe bet that China would oblige. After all, XI Jinping is well aware that China is next, behind Russia, on the list for the US\/NATO\/collective West.<\/p>\n

Putin on the New \u201cCrazies\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

Speaking on Oct. 27 at the Valdai International Discussion Club, Russian President Vladimir Putin questioned<\/a> the sanity of those who would \u201cspoil relations with China at the same time they are supplying billions-worth of weapons to Ukraine in a fight against Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n

In answer to a question on \u201cthe growing tensions between China and the United States over Taiwan,\u201d Putin labeled visits by top US officials to Taiwan a \u201cprovocation.\u201d Putin added:<\/p>\n

\u201cFrankly, I do not know why they are doing this. \u2026 Are they sane? It seems that this runs completely counter to common sense and logic \u2026 This is simply crazy.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cIt may seem that there is a subtle, profound plot behind this. But I think there is nothing there, no subtle thought. It is just nonsense and arrogance, nothing else. \u2026 Such irrational actions are rooted in arrogance and a sense of impunity.\u201d<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cCrazy\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

Needless to say, it is not healthy \u2013 to say the least \u2013 for adversaries to regard those with the power to obliterate them as irrational, crazy. I don\u2019t think Putin\u2019s observations betoken paranoia. Equally important, Russian military planners have to take this seriously. If Biden and crew are crazy enough to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline, what else might they be crazy enough to do?<\/p>\n

Glenn Greenwald made some instructive points<\/a> in describing the \u201cbanality of evil\u201d on the part of government functionaries. Hannah Arendt coined the term when she went to the Nuremberg trials:<\/p>\n

She watched Nazi war criminals, one after the next go on the stand. And she was shocked at how kind of mediocre they were. They didn\u2019t have any sense that they had done anything wrong, and they really didn\u2019t believe it. They were just basically like I just did my job. And my job was to count the number of Jewish citizens being transported on these trains. And I filled out that report. I don\u2019t have hate in my heart for anyone. I was just doing my job.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And so it goes.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Ray McGovern works with <\/em>Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. Ray was a CIA analyst for 27 years, during which he led the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and prepared \u201cThe President\u2019s Daily Brief\u201d for Nixon, Ford, and Reagan and conducted the early-morning briefings from 1981 to 1985. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – defenddemocracy.press<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

27 Mar 2023 – Sophomores running U.S. foreign policy live in a dream world on the verge of a war with both Russia and China. It is scary that Biden is out of it as his advisers are oblivious to the tectonic-change implications of Russia-China entente. Blinded by US \u201cexceptionalism,\u201d they have to learn the hard way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":165896,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[867,1161,1188,2197,244,2670,1301,112,2159,278,70,1594],"class_list":["post-232500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-anglo-america","tag-arms-industry","tag-arms-race","tag-biden","tag-china","tag-exceptionalism","tag-nuclear-war","tag-pentagon","tag-rogue-states","tag-russia","tag-usa","tag-war-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":232501,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232500\/revisions\/232501"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}