Indications are not lacking in American foreign policy (FP) that the man who took Oval Office in January on an anti-pandemic agenda is bereft of fresh innovative ideas to create world peace and regain American economic strength to lead the world. Where is Biden’s world leadership heading for, if it only withers in engendering wars, confronting Russia and China wherever[Read More…]

Is President Biden afflicted with the political equivalent of a split personality?  His first several months in office suggest just that possibility.  On the home front, the president’s inclination is clearly to Go Big.  When it comes to America’s role in the world, however, Biden largely hews to pre-Trumpian precedent.  So far at least, the administration’s overarching foreign-policy theme is[Read More…]

  On the climate problem as on any other, the Biden administration follows a time-honored U.S. tradition: addressing problems only so long as solutions are profit opportunities for powerful U.S. corporations.   *** President Biden may have returned the U.S. to the Paris Agreement but this alleged renewal of multilateralism goes hand in hand with much harsher pursuit of Trump’s[Read More…]

What Joe Biden has done right We should praise Joe Biden for the good decisions that he had made during his first few months in office. He has filled positions in his cabinet with and administration with an ethnically diverse and gender balanced group of people. For example, we can think of his new Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland,[Read More…]

You may have noticed: the Blob is back. Beneath a veneer of gender and racial diversity, the Biden national security team consists of seasoned operatives who earned their spurs in Washington long before Donald Trump showed up to spoil the party. So, if you’re looking for fresh faces at the departments of state or defense, the National Security Council or[Read More…]

DURING his first week in office, US President Joe Biden signed at least 44 executive actions, orders, proclamations and memorandums. He rejoined the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Paris climate agreement, and repealed the Trump administration’s ban on travellers from Muslim-majority and African countries, including Libya, Somalia, Eritrea, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania. Biden extended relief on federal student loan[Read More…]

Few could have been slack-jawed at the first significant foreign policy speech of US President Joe Biden.  It can easily be filed under the “America is back” label.  Back as well, as if the previous administration had been incapable of it, was a promise for that practice unflatteringly called jaw-jaw.  “Diplomacy,” the President states from the outset, “is back at[Read More…]

The heavy burden of so-called Trumpism has been removed from the shoulders of the USA. Donald Trump could not perpetuate his reign adopting the policy of Joseph Goebbels. But the bad legacy and its consequential effects are not over yet. The new administration led by Joe Biden faces an upheaval task to overcome the challenges. The so-called all-powerful USA is[Read More…]

The nightmare is over. The vanquished beast has crawled back to Mar-a-Lago to lick his wounds. The heroes are hard at work repairing the damage. As America returns to the international stage, the world heaves a collective sigh of relief. That, at least, is the story the incoming Biden administration is telling. “America is back, multilateralism is back, diplomacy is[Read More…]

According to media reports, the US President Joe Biden has picked as many as 20 Indian-Americans for senior positions in his government, and the common thread running through them is that none of them had anything to do with the RSS or the BJP even remotely. What a curious yardstick to apply — avoid like plague India’s high-flying cultural organisation[Read More…]

When it comes to war, if personnel is policy, America is yet again in deep trouble. As retired Army Major Danny Sjursen recently pointed out at TomDispatch, when it comes to foreign policy, President Joe Biden’s new cabinet and advisers are well stocked with retired generals, reconstituted neocons, unapologetic hawks, and similar war enthusiasts. Biden himself has taken to asking God to protect the troops whenever he[Read More…]

President Biden has inherited a terribly flawed US foreign policy. For the past few decades, the pro-corporate US foreign policy has been a catastrophic failure, especially in the Middle East. Our criminal military interventions there have resulted in the devastation of much of that area, impoverished millions, created millions of refugees, and injured or killed millions more. Moreover, this criminal[Read More…]

Biden is in and Trump is out. Despite all the drama, America’s flawed democracy has managed to make the will of its people prevail. Americans have got their President, Mr. Biden that they voted for. Mr. Biden was officially sworn in on 20th January 2021 as the 46th President of the United States of America and sadly, due to COVID[Read More…]

With Joe Biden’s assumption of office as 46th President of the United States, there are expectations of a ‘liberal internationalist’ foreign policy set to emerge from Washington. However, the new team in the White House knew from the first day in office that this would not have been possible without constant recalibration. Many would have little dispute that Donald Trump[Read More…]

In his first media interview, the incoming US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has given a preview of Joe Biden administration’s foreign policy directions in regard of Russia, Iran and China. Major shifts can be expected in the policies toward both China and Iran while selective engagement of Russia is on cards. First, Russia. Sullivan noted that it was “most[Read More…]

Perfumed and tailored for a certain brand of folksy, identity politics, Pete Buttigieg hoped to blast his way to the White House having run a community of 102,000 constituents in South Bend, Indiana.  Mayor Pete was hoping for the best, though his effort did not so much stall as fall over early on before the somnambulist who eventually won both[Read More…]

Now that Joe Biden will be America’s next president, it might be worthwhile to take a closer look at some of the choices for his cabinet, White House staff, and national security positions. There are some real crazies here, as we shall see. As we dig deeper and deeper, what emerges is a network of people whose views can quite[Read More…]

Those who supported Biden did so primarily to see America free of the Fascist-style president and Republican Party determined to bring the country as close to the Third Reich as possible. To be sure, there were many who backed Biden-Harris because they espouse the platform of the establishment Democratic Party. However, the demographics have changed, and the middle class has[Read More…]

In his first words as President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for Secretary of State, Antony  Blinken said, “we have to proceed with equal measures of humility and confidence.” Many around the world will welcome this promise of humility from the new administration, and Americans should too. Biden’s foreign policy team will also need a special kind of confidence to confront the most serious challenge they face. That will[Read More…]

With President Donald Trump all but conceding to the transition team that will take over after January next year, interest now shifts to President-elect Joe Biden’s choices for cabinet.  On the national security front, the imperial-military lobby will have reasons to be satisfied.  If Trump promised to rein in, if not put the brakes on the US imperium, Biden promises[Read More…]

It has been the most keenly followed election in U.S. history. The entire world had been on tenterhooks anxiously waiting for the outcome in the early week of November. According to some foreign policy experts, the last four years had witnessed a remarkable change in U.S. policies with the outside world under the garb of “America First,” which has, in[Read More…]

A new term has imposed itself on the conversation regarding the impending presidency of US President-elect, Joe Biden: “The Total Reset”. Many headlines have already promised that the Biden Presidency is ready to ‘reset’ US foreign policy across the globe, as if the matter is dependent solely on an American desire and decision. While a ‘total reset’ is, perhaps, possible[Read More…]

Co-Written by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J S Davies Donald Trump loves executive orders as a tool of dictatorial power, avoiding the need to work through Congress. But that works both ways, making it relatively easy for President Biden to reverse many of Trump’s most disastrous decisions. Here are ten things Biden can do as soon as he takes office.[Read More…]

Co-Written by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies Obama and Biden meet Gorbachev – did Biden learn anything? Credit: Wikimedia Commons Congratulations to Joe Biden on his election as America’s next president! People all over this pandemic-infested, war-torn and poverty-stricken world were shocked by the brutality and racism of the Trump administration, and are anxiously wondering whether Biden’s presidency[Read More…]