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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Beware of the Hawk: What to Expect from the Biden Administration on Foreign Policy<br></h1>
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<div class="gmail-td-post-author-name"> <a href="https://covertactionmagazine.com/author/jeremykuzmarov/">Jeremy Kuzmarov - <span class="gmail-td-post-date">November 8, 2020</span></a><br></div></div></div>
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<img src="https://i2.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Picture1-1.png?resize=696%2C465&ssl=1" alt="" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="392" height="262">[Source: <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/read-president-elect-joe-biden-s-full-victory-speech-n1247012">NBC News</a>]
<p>Millions of people around the world breathed a sigh of relief with
the defeat of Donald Trump in the 2020 U.S. election and victory of the
Biden-Harris ticket.</p>
<p>Joe Biden’s victory speech exuded a feeling of optimism in its call for a new era of bipartisanship and decency in politics.</p>
<p>However, it is unlikely that decency will prevail in the realm of foreign policy.</p>
<p>According to a profile in <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/08/biden-doctrine/496841/">The Atlantic Magazine</a>,
Biden prides himself on his close interpersonal relations with world
leaders, which enables the advancement of mutual foreign policy goals.</p>
<p>However, if the leader is unsavory, then these interpersonal relations become problematic.</p>
<h2>Empirical Recalibration</h2>
<p>As Vice-President under Barack Obama, Biden cultivated a close
relationship with Iraqi leader Nouri al-Maliki who was known as the
“Shia Saddam” for his sectarian policies that led to the growth of the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).</p>
<p>Biden was also very close with Ukrainian President Petro Porosehnko,
who was installed in a U.S. backed coup in 2014 and initiated a civil
war in Eastern Ukraine that left over 13,000 people dead.<a>[1]</a></p>
<p>In some circles, Biden is lauded for being a cautionary voice in the Obama administration on issues of war and peace.</p>
<p>In fact, he championed drone strikes and Special Forces operations as
an alternative to the heavy deployment of ground troops, which is the
CIAs preferred strategy.</p>
<p>Following the U.S. NATO bombing of Libya, Biden bragged that “we
didn’t lose a single life” and that the war “served as a prescription
for how to deal with the world as we go forward.”<a>[2]</a></p>
<img src="https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Picture2-1.png?resize=696%2C468&ssl=1" alt="" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="392" height="264">Image of destruction in Libya. Should this be the prescription for how we deal with the world going forward? [Source: <a href="http://archive.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/11/libya_post-khadafy.html">Boston.com]</a>
<p>This statement is deeply disturbing in light of the fact that
hundreds of Libyans were killed in U.S. air strikes and the country was
left in ruins after its leader, Muammar Qaddafi was overthrown and
lynched.</p>
<blockquote><p>If this is the prescription for dealing with the world as we go forward, we are all in trouble.</p></blockquote>
<h2><strong>From Dove to Hawk</strong></h2>
<p>When he first campaigned for Senate in 1972, young Biden <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/10/joe-biden-protector-of-the-deep-state/">positioned himself as a dove who opposed the Vietnam War</a> and, in 1974, supported a bill that called for banning all covert operations.</p>
<p>Sensing which way the political winds were blowing, however, Biden
told a Senate Committee in 1976 that he had “no illusions about Soviet
intentions and capabilities in the world” and expressed agreement with
neoconservative Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) that “<a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/10/joe-biden-protector-of-the-deep-state/">isolationism was a dangerous and naïve foundation upon which to rest our foreign policy</a> or the intelligence community which must serve that policy.”</p>
<p>After Jimmy Carter tried to cut the CIA’s staff by one-third, Biden
supported increases in intelligence and counterintelligence funding, and
in 1980, he voted to approve as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/10/joe-biden-protector-of-the-deep-state/">William Casey</a>,
a staunch anticommunist who ramped up covert arms supplies to the
Afghan mujahidin, Nicaraguan Contras, and Jonas Savimbi’s brutal UNITA
forces in Angola.</p>
<p>As the 1980s progressed, Biden became a staunch proponent of the War
on Drugs—even though he reviewed DEA reports on the illicit drug trade
which would have pointed to the corruption of CIA allies.</p>
<img src="https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Picture3-1.png?resize=696%2C353&ssl=1" alt="" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="392" height="199"> [Source: <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4775720/user-clip-biden-1989-war-drugs">C-Span</a>]
<p>In 1999, Biden played a key role lobbying in the Senate for Plan
Colombia, a $1.3 billion dollar program, which contributed to the
Colombian army’s war on the leftist Fuerzas Armada Revolucionario de
Colombia (FARC), who were branded as narco-guerrillas.</p>
<p>Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN), had promoted an alternative to Plan
Colombia that would have switched $225 million from military aid to drug
treatment programs at home. He argued that “we’ve been down this road
forever, forever,” and that “more soldiers and more guns have not and
will not defeat the source of illegal narcotics.”</p>
<p>Biden rose immediately to Plan Colombia’s defense in the Senate,
stating that Congress would “wreak a whirlwind” if it “failed to strike
back at the drug traffickers.”<a>[3]</a>
A decade later, Colombia remained the “world leader in coca
production,” and was wracked by violence that had resulted as much from
the War on Drugs and war against FARC as from the traffickers
themselves.<a>[4]</a></p>
<p>During the 1990s, besides the anti-drug crusade, Biden took up the
cause of NATO expansion in Eastern Europe, which needlessly antagonized
Russia and helped to ensure the Cold War’s revival.</p>
<p>Biden also championed the bombing of Kosovo, whose aim was to
undermine the socialist government of Serbia’s Slobodan Milosovic and
establish a U.S. military base, Camp Bondsteel.</p>
<p>In 2011, Biden characterized Hashim Thaci as the <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/02/biden-compared-indicted-war-criminal-to-george-washington/">“George Washington” of Kosovo</a>,
though Thaci had to cancel a trip to Washington in 2020 because he had
been indicted for war crimes that included criminal responsibility for
over one hundred murders.</p>
<img src="https://i2.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Picture4-1.png?resize=696%2C465&ssl=1" alt="" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="392" height="262">Biden embraces Kosovo’s first Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci, who was later indicted for war crimes. [Source: <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-20/u.s.-vice-president-joe-biden-(l)-is-welcomed-by-kosovos-prime/8197328?nw=0">abc.net</a>]
<p>Biden’s evolution from a dove to a hawk reached its tragic denouement with his <a href="https://www.worththeprice.org/">sponsorship of hearings in the Senate that brought together anti-Saddam dissidents</a>
who wanted regime change. Biden through these hearings helped secure
support for the invasion of Iraq which resulted in over a million
deaths. The young idealist who had rode the wave of the 1960s protest
movements into office had evolved by this time into a seasoned and
unscrupulous political operator who had sold his soul for power.</p>
<img src="https://i1.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Picture5-1.png?resize=696%2C465&ssl=1" alt="" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="392" height="262">President
George W. Bush signing a resolution authorizing the use of force
against Iraq at the White House on Oct. 16, 2002. Joseph R. Biden Jr.,
then a senator, is seen at right. [Source: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/12/us/politics/joe-biden-iraq-war.html">The New York Times</a>]
<h2><strong>Obama’s Veep</strong></h2>
<p>Biden’s lack of principle becomes apparent when we scrutinize his
conduct in Ukraine. He served there as the Obama administration’s top
point man in its effort to shore up the regime of Petro Poroshenko, a
corrupt oligarch who was installed in the February 2014 coup d’état
(known as the “Maidan coup”) that ousted the pro-Russian president
Viktor Yanukovych.</p>
<p>After the coup, Biden made multiple visits to Kiev and helped to forge a <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-10-05/bidens-visits-to-ukraine-under-scrutiny">coalition between Poroshenko and Arseniy Yatsenyuk, a neoliberal favored by the State Department</a>.</p>
<img src="https://i1.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Picture6-1.png?resize=696%2C463&ssl=1" alt="" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="392" height="261">Biden embraces Petro Poroshenko. [Source: <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/05/10/rumors-joe-biden-scandal-ukraine-absolute-nonsense-reformer-says/">The Intercept</a>]
<p>Biden’s wayward son, Hunter, was all-the-while put on the board of an
energy company, Burisma, whose executives were being investigated for
tax evasion. Biden aided his son by having the Prosecutor General who
was investigating Burisma, Viktor Shokin, removed by threatening to <a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2020/05/24/biden-should-be-named-in-criminal-probe-in-ukraine-judge-rules/">withhold a $1 billion IMF loan.</a></p>
<p>The Obama administration at the time was supplying non-lethal
military equipment to the Ukraine for use in its war on the Eastern
provinces. The human cost did not concern the future president-elect nor
the fact that the Ukrainian government was supported by neo-Nazi
elements who worshiped Stephen Bandera, a Nazi collaborator in World War
II.<a>[5]</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/breaking-maliki-biden">White house logs</a>
showed that Biden made the most phone calls during his Vice-Presidency
to Iraq. On the receiving end was Nouri al-Maliki, who fit the State
Department’s need for a “shia strongman” who could advance American
interests. When Arab-Spring style protests erupted against al-Maliki,
Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry quietly worked to help install
Haidar al-Abadi who was committed to privatizing Iraq’s economy in line
with the original goals of the 2003 military invasion.<a>[6]</a></p>
<p>During the Democratic Party primaries, Biden touted his role in developing the <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/28/biden-privatization-plan-colombia-honduras-migration/">Alliance for Prosperity</a>
in Central America, which promoted large scale infrastructure projects
and privatization programs that entailed a selling of off national
resources to U.S. based multi-national corporations.</p>
<p>The showpiece for the Alliance, or “Biden Plan,” was Honduras, where
the Obama administration had supported another coup d’état which helped
fuel the migration crisis to the U.S.<a>[7]</a></p>
<img src="https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Picture7-1.png?resize=696%2C392&ssl=1" alt="" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="392" height="221">Biden
meets with Honduras’ post-coup President Porfirio Lobo who presided
over a regime of gross human rights abuses and corruption. [Source: <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2012/03/06/world/americas/honduras-biden/index.html">CNN]</a>
<blockquote><p>These cases all illuminate the shameful foreign policy
record that Biden compiled as Vice-President—a record that provides a
good barometer for what we can expect during his presidency.</p></blockquote>
<h2><strong>Right-Wing Attacks on Trump and Russophobia</strong></h2>
<p>During the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden characteristically attacked Donald Trump on foreign policy from the right.</p>
<p>During the second debate, Biden criticized Trump for meeting with
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. When Trump said: “We have a different
kind of relationship. We have a very good relationship [with Kim], and
there’s no war,” Biden shot back: “<a href="https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/10/22/trump-biden-trade-barbs-over-north-koreas-nukes/">We had a good relationship with Hitler before he, in fact, invaded the rest of Europe.”</a></p>
<p>During the same debate, Biden asked Trump why he <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/10/22/trump-biden-trade-barbs-over-north-koreas-nukes/">hadn’t confronted Russia</a>
when Trump had sold Ukraine Javelin anti-tank weapons, and supported a
military buildup on its doorstep while pulling out of arms control
treaties.</p>
<p>Biden’s Russophobia was apparent in a <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2017-12-05/how-stand-kremlin">January-February 2018 essay in Foreign Affairs</a><em>, </em>where
he claimed that Russia had refused cooperation with the West at the end
of the Cold War and was now “brazenly assaulting the foundations of
Western democracy around the world” including by invading neighboring
countries such as Georgia and Ukraine.</p>
<p>However, it was the United States which failed to abide by a promise
made by the George H. W. Bush administration that it would not expand
NATO into Eastern Europe, and an EU investigation blamed then-Georgian
leader Mikheil Saakashvili for instigating the 2008 Russia-Georgia war
after trying to seize South Ossetia. The United States furthermore had
supported the coup in Ukraine that triggered the civil war which drew in
Russia.</p>
<h2><strong>What Can We Expect</strong></h2>
<p>While likely to restore support for the Paris climate accord, Iran
nuclear deal and Obama’s opening towards Cuba, defense contractors are
confident that there will be <a href="https://www.stripes.com/news/us/biden-says-us-must-maintain-small-force-in-middle-east-has-no-plans-for-major-defense-cuts-1.644631">no major cuts in military spending under Biden</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>The new president-elect has said that he cannot promise a
complete troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and has
talked about the need for bolstering cyberwarfare and the U.S. arsenal
of drones. </p><p>Biden will also most surely escalate (1) the new Cold
War with Russia, (2) sustain the African military command, AFRICOM,
which Trump was threatening to cut back on, and (3) adopt a so-called
“light footprint” approach to war, which he favored as Vice-President.</p></blockquote>
<p>In an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Biden
called for greater sanctions and emphasized that he was among the first
to recognize the right-wing renegade leader <a href="https://www.cfr.org/article/presidential-candidates-venezuela">Juan Guaido as the legitimate leader of Venezuela</a>, while pushing for the removal of socialist president Nicholas Maduro whom he called a tyrant.</p>
<p>The CFR has also highlighted Biden’s hostility towards China and desire to “<a href="https://www.cfr.org/election2020/candidate-tracker">reinvigorate the United States as a Pacific power</a>
by increasing the U.S. naval presence in the Asia-Pacific and deepening
ties with countries including Australia, Indonesia, Japan, and South
Korea to make it clear to Beijing that Washington ‘won’t back down.’”</p>
<p>The main beneficiaries of this policy will be the weapons makers who according to <em>The Nation Magazine</em> gave $2.4 million to Biden during the 2020 election campaign compared to $1.6 million to Trump.</p>
<blockquote><p>One of Biden’s top campaign donors, <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/world/defense-contractors-election/">Palmora Partners</a>,
a multi-billion dollar hedge fund, has more than 260,000 shares in
Raytheon, a preeminent weapons manufacturer and supplier of weapons to
Saudi Arabia. </p><p>Another of Biden’s top donors, Jim Simons, who gave
over $7 million, founded Renaissance Capital, which owns 1.2 million
shares in Raytheon worth <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/world/defense-contractors-election/">over $75 million</a>, and 130,000 shares in <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/world/defense-contractors-election/">Lockheed Martin worth $50 million</a>.</p></blockquote>
<img src="https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Picture8-1.png?resize=696%2C420&ssl=1" alt="" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="392" height="237">Hedge fund billionaire and war profiteer James Simons was one of Biden’s top campaign donors. [Source: <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/hedge-fund-taxes-superpacs-election-renaissance/">Mother Jones</a>]
<p>Joe Biden conveys an image of decency compared to Donald Trump and
brings at least some rationality to the White House. However, on foreign
policy issues, Biden’s priorities are very clear and should make us
uneasy.</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://covertactionmagazine.com/author/jeremykuzmarov/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jeremy Kuzmarov</a> is Managing editor of <em>CovertAction Magazine</em> and author of four books on U.S. foreign policy including: <a href="https://www.claritypress.com/product/obamas-unending-wars-fronting-the-foreign-policy-of-the-permanent-warfare-state/"><em>Obama’s Unending Wars: Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State</em></a> (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2019).</p>
<hr>
<p><a>[1]</a> Jeremy Kuzmarov, <em>Obama’s Unending Wars: Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State</em> (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2019),</p>
<p><a>[2]</a> Quoted in Kuzmarov, <em>Obama’s Unending Wars</em>, 128.</p>
<p><a>[3]</a> David Rogers, “Antidrug Plan Passes a Test in the Senate,” <em>The Wall Street Journal</em>, June 22, 2000, A6.</p>
<p><a>[4]</a> Winifred Tate, “No Peace for Colombia,” <em>North American Congress on Latin America</em>, February 24, 2016, <a href="https://nacla.org/news/2016/02/24/no-peace-colombia">https://nacla.org/news/2016/02/24/no-peace-colombia</a>.</p>
<p><a>[5]</a> See Richard Sakwa, <em>Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands</em> (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015); Oliver Boyd-Barrett, <em>Western Mainstream Media and the Ukraine crisis: A Study in Conflict Propaganda</em> (New York: Routeledge, 2017).</p>
<p><a>[6]</a> Kuzmarov, <em>Obama’s Unending Wars</em>, 179.</p>
<p><a>[7]</a> Kuzmarov, <em>Obama’s Unending Wars</em>, ch. 10.</p><hr><br><p id="gmail-block-ba75ceca-1810-4c4c-b2ed-1e90e170967c"><strong>Disclaimer:</strong> The
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