TOKYO, Dec. 13, 2023—Joe Biden met China’s Xi Jingpin, Isrtael’s Benjamin Natanyahu, Ukraine’s Volodymyl Zelenskyy, India’s Narendra Modi, the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos, Mexico’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and dozens of leaders from other countries this year for solving problems that the United States alone has the capacity to resolve: ending wars, preempting potential conflicts, human and drug trafficking, human rights, and climate change mitigation, among them. Understandably, China is watching Biden closely, and something might have clicked to Beijing… It’s the reason behind China’s fresh hegemony.
The White House’s Nov. 15, 2023 readout after the Biden-Xi meeting in San Francisco said the two leaders agreed to cooperate in combatting illicit drug manufacturing and trafficking, including fentanyl, resume high-level military communication, affirmed the need to address the risks of AI, and maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea and East China Sea.ß
Over the past two months since the Israel-Hamas war erupted, Biden told Natanyahu to prtect civilians in phone calls and meetings.
In September, Biden visited India for a one-on-one with Modi. They ‘reemphasized that the shared value of freedom, democracy, human rights, inclusion, pluralism and equal opportunities for all citizens are critical,’ according to the White House readout from that meeting. Before that, in May, Biden welcomed Marcos to the While House, with both leaders agreeing to hold joint military exercises, and Marcos offered to allow U.S. military presence in the Philippines as a show of his country’s counterforce against China. Biden and the Mexican president discussed illicit drugs and migration entering the United States n November.
In the COP28 climate change negotiations having been in session over more than the past week in Dubai, Biden did not show up, thus empowering the powerful OPEC and OPECplus economies to overwhelm outcries of Tuvalu and many other low-lying countries to keep global temperature rise to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
And this week, Ukraine’s Zelenskyy’s plea for more U.S. aide sounded hollow inside the Beltway as Republicans muffled Biden’s pledge for additional funding.
It’s probably no coincidence that heavily-armed Chinese coast guard ships blasted Philippines fishing boats with water cannons near the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, the area that Manila had long occupied for fishing.
Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican House representative, said in his blogpost that what’s happening in Washington looks like a revisit to post-WWI Europe, when the U.S. attitude toward Hitler was that what the Nazi’s were doing was remilitarizing the Rhineland was in Deutscheland, not in other territory.
Obama deserves to be scorned for missing the opportunity ti staunch Russian expansion to Crimea, Kinzinger said, but ‘the very people who attacked him for weakness now advocate the same policy.’
The whole Biden White House ineptitude is being closed watched by…China as the U.S. weakness and the reason for Beijing to make a go at the Philippines fishing boats, and then other areas of the South and East China seas, possibly including Senkaku Islands claimed both by China and Japan as a precursor to China7s invasion of Taiwan.
All the more encouraging for the Chinese military brass, the Pentagon was forced to ground indefinitely the entire Osprey aircraft fleet following the crash accident near souther Japan in November. The Ospreys were positioned as a key defense fleet for the U.S. military wings.
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