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Dispatches

1) Robert Clark, “The West can no longer rely on the global South; Institutions like the G20 are increasingly coming under Russian and Chinese influence. We must be willing to act unilaterally, ” The Telegraph, September 11, 2023 1:20 pm);

Analysis

Robert Clark reminds us in The Telegrap of a huge factor affecring tge course of the Ukraine War and in perticular tge effectives of tge danctions regimes adopted by tge U.S. tge E.U. and otger Western countries phibiting trade and economic transactions with Russia.

One would hope that the foreign policy of the United States were led by a small group of men and women of extraordinary intelligence, broad experience in international affairs and running government institutions, and the intellectual background and breath to grasp the big picture of what is going on in the world, and to take that large vision into account in making decisions in a specific area, such as how to respond to the Russion invasion of Uktaiine on February 24, 2022.

Unfortunately, President Joe Biden and his foreign policy team do not have those qualifications. The foreign policy team is led by two former staffers,
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Both owe tbeir entire careers to having loyally served Joe Biden.

Neither has significant foreign policy experience serving in a post abroad, To be sure.

Blinken has degrees from Harvard and Columbia Law School He served as Deputy National Security Adviser and as Deputy Secretary of State under President Barack Obama. These roles required Blinken to execute the foreign policy of Barack Obama.

He was the Democratic staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2002-2008, where according to Wikipedia he was an advocate for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In 2008 he was a foreign policy adviser to the Biden presidential campaign. From 2009-2013 he served as deputy assistant to the president and National Security Adviser to Vice-President Joe Biden.

Sullivan, who has increasingly assumed the role of President Biden’s primary foreign policy adviser, has a brilliant academic background, with degrees from Yale, Yale Law School, and Orford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

He wax a foreign policy adviser to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primary campaign, and became Deputy Secretary of State and head of olicy planning when she became secretary of State. After she resigned in January 2021, he became deputy assistant to President Obama and National Security Adviser to Vice-President Joe Biden.

Sullivan defended Biden’ decision to withdraw from Afghanistan and its execution, blaming the collapse of the government on the Afghan forces’ unwillingness to fight (Wikipedia). (According to Wikipedia, “Brett Bruen, director of global engagement in the Obama White House called for his dismissal over his role in the affair). [35][36]

Biden is awed by Sullivan’s intellectual brilliance. He once referred to him as a once in a generation intelligence.

This is Biden’s foreign policy team.

Biographical details on Sullivan and Blinken are drawn from Wikipedia.

Among the principal failures of Biden and his foreign policy team has been its failure to earnestly press the nations of “The Global South” to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine and to join the international sanctions regimes prohibiting trade with Russia.

As Robert Clark points out Russia and China have made increasing inroads in turning nations of the Global South away from support for Ukraine. The recent meeting of the G-20 in New Delhi and its watered down final communique and the recent BRICS meeting in South Africa are only two of the latest signs of this development.

The Trenchant Observer

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