By Juibo @Adobe Stock
The Great Power Conflict: Losing Its Way
Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s new prime minister, is looking to increase Italy’s clout in the European Union. By all accounts, the Italian PM had a good showing at the Group of Seven meeting last week, as reported by (Walther Russell Mead in) the WSJ:”
Once stigmatized as a neofascist from the fringes of Europe’s hard right, Ms. Meloni has firmly entrenched herself at the center of European politics. She has become a role model for figures like Marine Le Pen in France, and the European Union seems to be moving in Ms. Meloni’s direction on issues like migration and climate change.
Biden Administration Fake?
President Joe Biden, also attending the summit, seemed to be struggling. Of course, the administration is denouncing what it called a “cropped and misleading” video of a “befuddled-looking president wandering across the lawn.” Even for anyone not particularly cynical, though, it’s not a stretch to view the video as aptly depicting “the state of an American foreign policy that has largely lost its way.”
The problem is not a lack of activity with the Biden Administration, reassures the WSJ:
If frequent-flyer miles could be redeemed for Nobel Peace Prizes, Team Biden would have a fistful of medals. But that isn’t where we are. In the Middle East, Europe and the Far East, the U.S. and its friends are less secure than they were in January 2021. Great-power conflict is closer today than at any time in decades.
A Conceptual Problem
Team Biden has been slow to grasp the connections between the challenges it faces, and slower still to draw the appropriate conclusions.
For too long it has ignored the steadily growing elements of common strategy and purpose among major revisionist powers like China, Russia and Iran and lesser powers like North Korea and Venezuela.
The merits of the American-led world system were so obvious to Team Biden that they assumed other countries mostly agreed with us about how the world should work. “Stability,” (the administration) believed stability is an interest almost everybody shares.
When a crisis erupts—in the shoals off the Philippines, in the Red Sea, on Israel’s northern border, on the ground in Ukraine—the Biden hands instinctively rushed to “stabilize the situation,” offering “off-ramps,” “de-escalating,” and generally trying to smooth things over.
Weakening American Power
China, Russia and Iran don’t have a common set of positive goals or values, but they have a common interest in undermining the U.S.-led world system. Rather than seeing crises as common problems demanding common action to restore stability, they see crises as opportunities to weaken American power.
- China: Hastening the Decline of American Power
China might have wanted America to succeed in its efforts to stabilize the Middle East and keep the Red Sea open. After all, the WSJ reminds readers, China likes low oil prices and doesn’t want shipping disrupted in sea lanes that matter for its trade. More important to China, is its interest in hastening the decline of American power in Middle East stability.
- Russia: Willing to Pay the Price
Some 15 years ago, the U.S. could count on our common strategic interest with Russia in avoiding a nuclear breakout in Iran and a nuclear buildup in North Korea. No more.
The Kremlin no doubt still views the Iranian leaders with deep suspicion and the North Koreans with contempt, but empowering North Korea and Iran is a price Russia is willing to pay if the result is to make life harder for the U.S.
- Iran: Racing toward Nuclear
Iran is not yet in possession of nuclear weapons. The county is overextended and the weakest of the major revisionist powers. Teaching Iran that supporting the Houthis, Hamas and Hezbollah is poor strategy would do more to stabilize the Middle East than 100 painfully negotiated Security Council resolutions about Gaza.
America: Burdened, Overstretched, Divided
What is uniting the revisionists is their sense that America – overstretched and internally divided – is ready to be rolled. The best way to “degrade and ultimately break America’s power is to create more instability and crisis in more places so that our resources and our will are overtaxed.” America is fumbling and stumbling as the tide of history turns against Her.
Conventional crisis management won’t solve this problem, cautions the WSJ:
American foreign policy must shift out of the managerial, reactive mode and become more proactive. The revisionist powers need to spend less time planning how to discomfit America and more time worrying about what the U.S. has planned for them.
One way to change momentum is through efforts in the Middle East to instill some healthy caution into the calculations of Moscow and Beijing, advises the WSJ:
Time is running short on other options:
Unless the administration changes its approach, the image of Mr. Biden wandering aimlessly, doctored or not, will define his presidency.
