There are a number of good reasons to prefer Donald Trump’s foreign policy, incoherent as it sometimes has been, to what’s coming in a prospective Biden administration. From Doug Bandow at antiwar.com:
The Trump presidency has been a wreck. An unqualified, unprepared narcissist with a nanosecond attention span and compulsion to tweet, while holding a multitude of ill-considered opinions, became the world’s most powerful and important person. It sounded like the script for a great movie. However, it played out as the most incredible reality show in human history.
Already I miss him as president. Or, more accurately, I am growing more despondent by the day thinking about Joe Biden replacing The Donald as president.
First is the absolute unanimity with which the “usual suspects” are celebrating Biden’s victory. There have been dozens (scores? hundreds?) of think tank webinars since November 3 assessing the impact of the election on (fill in the blank) topic. Every journalist. Every diplomat. Every think tank analyst. Every commenter. Every philanthropist. Every former diplomat. Every person, other than an occasional Republican legislator or apparatchik. Has expressed how relieved he or she is that U.S. democracy had been preserved, America’s reputation had been salvaged, and Western civilization had been saved. Only by a whisker was the fascist dictatorship intended by President Donald Trump, the Republican Party, Trump supporters, Trump voters, foreign authoritarians, and/or every other malign force on the planet avoided.
Second is the absolute unanimity with which the foreign “usual suspects” are celebrating Biden’s victory. While the president has a few fans, typically murdering autocrats, wannabe strongmen, governments with “third rail” domestic lobbies, and nations desperate for US military support, most foreign leaders are falling all over themselves trying to ingratiate themselves with Biden. Indeed, since he has been in government for a century or two – okay, “only” 47 years – most foreign officials claim to know him. So most of the Asian and European governments are counting on Washington’s renewed promise that it will make their defense and interests the highest priority for American taxpayers. What could be better for prosperous, populous allies which prefer to spend their money on social services rather than armed forces!
