New York Times London bureau chief Mark Landler, in an analysis published yesterday under the title “With Afghan Retreat, Biden Bucks Foreign Policy Elite,” writes that President Joe Biden, when he was vice president under Barack Obama, was the most persistent opponent of the use of military force. Now, as commander-in-chief, Biden, by pressing to conclude the war in Afghanistan, “has put himself at odds with much of the foreign policy establishment, on the right and left, in Washington and across Europe.”
“But it is precisely the longstanding, deep-rooted nature of the beliefs that Mr. Biden is challenging, analysts said, that has made the backlash against him so ferocious,” Landler continues. “Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the doctrine of an aggressive, expeditionary foreign policy — in which all options, including military force, are invariably on the table — has become a bipartisan article of faith in Washington. The news media, which covered those wars, played a significant role in amplifying these ideas.” This is as close as the Times gets to admitting that, number one, the entire foreign policy establishment has gone neo-con, and, number two, the news media “amplified” those ideas with lying war propaganda.
“You have a president who is willing to stand up to the Washington foreign policy establishment in a way that Trump or Obama or George W. Bush were not,” said Vali R. Nasr, a former Obama administration official who teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “To me, that does require introspection on the part of the foreign policy establishment.”
The “danger” is that Biden’s standing up to the foreign policy establishment risks the very alliances that partisans of the war party proclaim as the West’s greatest “strength” against China and Russia. Biden, Nasr stated, has also shown a willingness to disregard the views of European allies, a factor that helps account for the frustration in London, Berlin, and other capitals, where Biden’s election had been celebrated after Trump’s browbeating. The NATO campaign in Afghanistan was a credit to the solidarity of the alliance, which made Biden’s lack of consultation all the more stinging. “There is serious loss of trust, and that will require a significant reassurance effort by Washington,” said Wolfgang Ischinger, chair of the Munich Security Conference.
