Why did Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia not achieve anything for America?
The “Joe Biden” government has not been able to fulfill its promises in many domestic fields. The intensification of opposition criticism, the inability to control inflation, the unemployment situation, and the decline in economic growth were all factors that led the President of the United States to exploit the field of foreign policy to compensate for failures and achieve minimal success before the mid-term congressional elections.
From a few weeks ago, Washington tried to highlight an achievement for the White House by highlighting the trip to the Middle East. A series of analyzes from this trip were expressed that the issue of the energy market and requests from the Arab countries to increase production, laying the groundwork for improving the relations between the Zionist regime and Saudi Arabia, the issue of Iran and the nuclear agreement were among the most important issues, but only a few Western analysts mentioned it. They were discussing spending the White House from the field of foreign policy for the President, who has a long history and experience in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Analysts believe that the White House pays for the president, who has a long history and experience in the foreign relations committee of the Senate, from the field of foreign policy.
During the “Barack Obama” era, the foreign policy of looking to the East and containing China was prominent in the White House’s strategy; During the “Donald Trump” period, the reduction of America’s international obligations, the maximum defense of the Zionist regime and the focus on domestic fields were visible. In Biden’s government, however, a series of scattered and uncertain actions have taken place in a way that has convinced many observers that he has not defined a specific macro strategy for America’s global position, and his few successes have come from the mistakes or help of others.
Therefore, some analysts believe that the foreign policy of the world’s biggest power has gone off track and now needs a new architecture.
Foreign policy is the last playing card of the Biden administration
The height of inconsistency in American foreign policy was Biden’s trip to the Middle East, which was carried out at the height of the White House’s distress, and from the point of view of many analysts, it has achieved almost nothing.
“THE FEDERALIST” magazine website In the context of the failure of Biden’s foreign policy strategy, Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia failed spectacularly to achieve the goal of providing more oil. The media supporting the president ignores the reputation of the United States, human rights, etc., and on the other hand, they only cover the failed diplomatic efforts of the United States.
The real purpose of Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia was to solve the problem of fuel prices in the United States, which has hurt his popularity. The highlight of the trip, however, was Biden begging for oil from a government and its leader he vilified in campaign ads.
Biden is playing the last card, foreign policy. Having failed in everything, he had no choice but to embrace Bin Salman in the hope that he, in turn, would do Biden a favor.
“Fox News” news channel, citing a senior foreign policy expert, believes that Biden succeeded in making the United States look weak to the world during his foreign trip.
James J. Carafano, vice president of the Heritage Foundation, called this trip a “nothingburger” due to the lack of tangible achievements for the United States by the leaders of several Middle Eastern countries. From the point of view of this analyst, the unfavorable point is that all these issues happened while Russia in the region seeks to strengthen relations and increase arms trade with Iran.
The New Republic website Also, he considered Biden’s trip to the Middle East to be more than a disaster and said that the president, who was desperate to maintain and implement programs inside, did something to compensate for the shortcomings, which also damaged its foreign policy.
According to this analysis, “Richard Nixon”, “Bill Clinton” and “Donald Trump” all used foreign policy to fill gaps at the beginning of the presidential term to gain cohesion in the government. For Biden, who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for years, foreign policy must have been a relief. He, who has become extremely unpopular in the polls in recent months, tried to spend money on foreign policy so that he might be able to solve the energy issue in this way in addition to his successes in the framework of NATO in the Ukraine crisis.
US President Biden, contrary to his promises, sat down with the man who ordered the murder of a Washington Post columnist and is still overseeing the brutal war in Yemen. In order to achieve his goals, instead of fighting, he embraced a dictator. However, OPEC, as an oil cartel dominated by Saudi Arabia, has shown little sign of willingness to do what Biden likes.
According to the analysis of this research center, “At a glance, Biden’s trip was a game with the last card, which is foreign policy. Having failed in everything, he had no choice but to embrace Bin Salman in the hope that he would in turn do Biden a favor.”
America and the persistence of cold war era stubbornness
The most accurate analysis of the current state of the Biden administration Stephen M. Walt” distinguished professor of international relations at Harvard University He stated that in an article in Belfer think tank He emphasized: It is worrying that Biden and his advisers cannot complete the task of designing foreign policy and grand strategy for the 21st century. The obvious danger is that they resort to various Cold War-era voices and policies, and so far they have failed.
Before the election, the Biden administration promised to restore US alliances and unite the democratic world against the rising tide of authoritarianism. America was supposed to focus on China and win the competition with it. Climate change was supposed to be the top priority, the US rejoining the Iran nuclear deal, ending Mohammed bin Salman’s war on Yemen, and bringing Americans a pro-middle-class foreign (economic) policy. Foreign Minister Anthony Blinken promised to make human rights the centerpiece of the government’s foreign policy.
From the point of view of this university professor, Washington’s most successful policy occurred in Ukraine, which showed the organization of the transatlantic response to the Russian invasion, which took place using the united European response and the useful cooperation of countries such as Germany and Zelensky’s public diplomacy. These actions have undoubtedly been a shock to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Stephen Walt: America’s predicament stems from mistakes that began under Bill Clinton and continue to this day.
According to this theorist, in general, there is not much indication that the Biden administration has a clear, convincing and successful strategy to advance the program. If we look at the initiatives and actions of the past year and a half, no significant achievement can be seen.
He emphasizes: Americans should not ignore the unfavorable management of the United States and a series of mistakes that started from the time of Bill Clinton and continued until now. The architects of these missteps still go to great lengths to deny the catastrophic flaws in their policy.
Walt emphasizes that it is hard not to consider Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as a classic preventive war; This was an illegal invasion, which was carried out in opposition to the US effort to arm Ukraine and bring it into the orbit of the West. The government’s repeated refusal to end NATO’s “open door policy” led to the war as Putin readied his military and made it clear he would attack if his concerns were not met. The non-acceptance of Russia’s concerns by the West was a strategic miscalculation in terms of predicting Moscow’s reaction. There will be no way to turn the Ukraine case into a major foreign policy success for Biden, despite tough sanctions. However, the Ukraine crisis has brought the United States back to old Cold War habits.
America needs a foreign policy architect
According to this theoretician, Biden could not achieve any results in the field of China. In the Middle East, the Biden administration came into office promising to restore the nuclear deal with Iran, take a tough stance on Saudi Arabia’s recalcitrant leaders, and pay attention to human rights, but in practice, Biden and Blinken were as deal-breakers as Trump. In fact, the government’s approach to the Middle East region has been “Trump Lite” (a modified version of Trump).
In the final part of this analysis, Walt made the most important point of why the United States should expect other countries to accept its “democratic values”, but the United States itself is highly divided and moving towards the permanent rule of a minority. The central issue is whether there is an intelligent and experienced group of foreign policy experts for such cases. Biden has assembled a group of people who see the world as he does and deal with all the boring details of US foreign policy. Phrases like “global leadership,” “shared values,” “rules-based order,” and “free world” are not substitutes for foreign policy strategy.
Phrases like “global leadership,” “shared values,” “rules-based order,” and “free world” are not substitutes for foreign policy strategy.
Biden and his team are like experienced Ford or Chevrolet mechanics trying to service a Tesla. They know how to operate the foreign policy machine, but the domestic and international institutions they use are not suitable for their purpose. Not surprisingly, the policy responses they generate do not produce the desired results.
According to the above analysis, what Biden needs is not a mechanic, but an architect: people with the imagination and vision to create new arrangements and approaches that are better suited to today’s challenges. Unfortunately, because the current system places a high priority on conformity and staying in a consensus, creative people do not rise to positions of power.
In such a situation, counting on the mistakes of Moscow or Beijing cannot be promising for Washington’s success. Adopting wise policies and implementing them effectively – instead of giving heart to the sabotage of others – is the only way to a successful future.