I'm still digesting what is Joe Biden's most important speech, marking a new direction for US foreign policy.
His most crucial words: "This decision about Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan, it’s about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries."
His most crucial words: "This decision about Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan, it’s about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries."
Two decades, so many lives, & $2 trillion later, it is essential that we rethink US foreign policy & end the delusion of nation building.
https://twitter.com/HawaiiDelilah/status/1432842474427326466?s=20
The people who brought us "nation building" are the same people who led us into the Iraq disaster, which now stands as the fulcrum for ISIS. And they are the same people responsible for the mission creep counter-insurgency that cost us 20 years in the graveyard of empires.
But the Biden Doctrine outlined in this speech does not resort to isolationism or populist/nationalism. He comprehends that terrorism is still a threat-but that it has metastasized & dispersed across the world well beyond Afghanistan-to the Sahel & Somalia in Africa, C Asia etc.
The Biden Doctrine is a more agile & dynamic approach to defending & protecting America, not, as he says, "against threats of 2001, but against the threats of 2021 & tomorrow." It is a forward-looking approach to nation security & frankly, I've been waiting decades to hear this.
Biden asserts "we must stay clearly focused on the fundamental national security interests of the United States of America." In this way, there remains an internationalist orientation of the Biden Doctrine, with regard to threats AND diplomacy, humanitarian aid & competitiveness.
For yrs, I waited for an American president to dispense with trickle down/supplyside economics. Biden did that. I also waited for a US president to signal a departure from failed foreign policy. Biden did that today. The Biden Doctrine is a new way of engaging with the world.
And frankly, after 20 years in Afghanistan, we need a new way of engaging in the world. Moreover, after Jan 6, it seems ludicrous that we try to export nation building and Jeffersonian democracy abroad, when our own democracy at home seems so fragile. /end
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