With the Biden administration finding itself in yet another foreign policy crisis as Putin's troops fight to take Ukraine, more information is coming to light about what President Biden and his aides did in its attempts to stave off an invasion. Predictably, the news isn't good.
According to a Friday report in The New York Times, the Biden administration was leaning heavily on China — that other bad actor currently engaged in a genocide against its own people and openly hostile toward the free world — to try and talk Putin out of rolling Ukraine. Of course, though, President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party was not receptive to doing the bidding of the United States, and China "rebuffed" Biden's pleas for help.
The Biden administration's decision to abandon attempts to leverage U.S. power to check Putin's ambitions and try to have China talk to its authoritarian thug friends in Russia wasn't a last-ditch effort, either. As The Times reports, the decision to seek China's help took place "over three months" during which "senior Biden administration officials held half a dozen urgent meetings with top Chinese officials in which the Americans presented intelligence showing Russia’s troop buildup around Ukraine and beseeched the Chinese to tell Russia not to invade."
While it's unclear exactly how Biden thought begging an evil empire to help slow the roll of another evil empire might go, it didn't go well. China told Biden to buzz off and unsurprisingly ran to tell Moscow about the Biden administration's plan that did little more than allow China and Russia to strengthen ties with each other — and that's more bad news for the United States.
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“After one diplomatic exchange in December, US officials got intelligence showing Beijing had shared the information with Moscow, telling the Russians that the US was trying to sow discord—and that China would not try to impede Russian plans and actions” https://t.co/aoTPdzypzL
— Gady Epstein (@gadyepstein) February 25, 2022
As The Times' report highlights, "ties between China and Russia appear stronger than at any time since the Cold War," a time where an existential and ideological battle of freedom versus tyranny threatened to bring mutually assured destruction to the globe. Today, Russia and China "present themselves as an ideological front against the United States and its European and Asian allies, even as Mr. Putin carries out the invasion of Ukraine, whose sovereignty China has recognized for decades," The Times' report adds.
The result is China taking Russia's side, repeating Putin propaganda that sought to characterize the United States as an aggressor against Russia, and a stronger alliance between two of the world's evil empires.
The Biden administration continues to act as though it has a handle on the situation, with State Department Spokesman Ned Price saying Thursday evening that the United States is working to "bring Russia back to the diplomatic table in good faith" based on the belief that "diplomacy is the way to bring this conflict to an end and save lives." Does the Biden administration think its plan for diplomacy, that failed to stop Putin from invading, will now halt Russia's advances in Ukraine? Does their idea of diplomacy mean begging China for help again?
In any case, the Biden administration has again left people who don't wish to be trampled over by tyrants to fend for themselves. Ukraine's president said in an address Friday that "this morning, we are defending our country alone. Just like yesterday, the most powerful country in the world looked on from a distance."
Ukraine can see America's rightful role in the world and the importance of using strength to secure peace — it's a shame the Biden administration isn't willing to do the same. Instead of leveraging the power of the United States, Biden spent months trying to have one of America's foes talk another foe out of doing what it's always wanted to do. Rather than working, Biden's plan allowed China to play him and resulted in a stronger alliance between two nations whose ambitions are antithetical to a world at peace.
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