One of the fundamental responsibilities of the President of the United States is to define foreign policy. This involves, among other areas, acting as Commander in Chief of the armed forces, advocating for the United States by forming (and possibly dissolving) relationships with other nations and organizations, and enacting the nation’s high-level strategy on the world stage.
On the subject of foreign policy, President Donald Trump and Joe Biden are polar opposites. Trump is a proven success. Biden is a proven failure.
President Trump
While the Democrats and the mainstream media are working overtime to inform prospective voters of Trump’s apparent failure in the eyes of our so-called “global neighbors,” reality is increasingly difficult to deny.
To the dismay of his critics, Trump’s condemnation of the failure of NATO members to meet their financial obligations has not dragged Europe into World War III. To the contrary, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg even praised Trump in 2018, saying “Let me thank you for the leadership you show on the issue of defense spending because it is very important that we all contribute more to our shared security, and it is really having an impact because, as you said, allies are now spending more on defense.”
Throughout his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly warned against the growing threat posed by China, and he has continued to focus on the Communist dictatorship during his presidency. With China acting as the catalyst for the COVID-19 pandemic, which has dragged the world economy to its knees as they continue to commit outrageous human rights violations with impunity, it is impossible to argue that Trump’s history of criticism for China is unfounded. Reacting to China’s responsibility for the outbreak and spread of COVID-19, Trump again showed a determination to achieve value for the American tax payer when he worked to withdraw from the World Health Organization, a group that has repeatedly covered for China’s actions and lies.
Then there is the obvious and undeniable impact the Trump administration has had on the Middle East. The United States withdrew from the disastrous Iran Nuclear Deal, which was built on the Left’s naive belief that terrorists will stop being terrorists if you’re nice to them. In the war against terrorism, the United States military obliterated ISIS, and two of the world’s leading terrorists, Qasem Soleimani and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, are now dead. Most horrifyingly of all for the Left, after years of quiet negotiations, the Trump administration successfully brokered a historic agreement for the normalization of mutual relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, with additional Arab states likely to follow suit.
To summarize, Trump’s foreign policy has achieved financial, ideological, and moral victories across the world. Focus has been placed on the world’s real enemies of peace, including China and Iran, we have withdrawn from ineffective agreements and counter-productive organizations, and for the first time in centuries, the idea of peace in the Middle East is no longer an unobtainable dream.
Joe Biden
Conversely, as former Defense Secretary Robert Gates put it, Joe Biden has been wrong about “nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
Biden opposed Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, which is credited for aiding the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, and Biden was one of the first legislators to support the bombing of Serbia in the 1990s and advocate for the Bosnian Muslims to be armed, with disastrous results.
Biden voted against the Gulf War in 1991, which “the United States and a broad multinational coalition quickly achieved their goals.” Then, in 2002, he voted in support of the war against Iraq, and in 2003 said “I voted to go into Iraq, and I’d vote to do it again.” Now he claims that he opposed President George W. Bush’s actions “from the very moment” they began. Such flip-flops are common for Biden, who also claims that he supported the famous raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden, despite saying at the time “Mr. President, my suggestion is, don’t go.”
The infamous drone war, which involved hundreds of strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and other countries, was bolstered by Biden, who “advocated for a strategy he dubbed “counterterrorism-plus”: a combination of drone strikes and raids by special operations forces.”
To understand Obama’s foreign policy, all you need to know is that Barack Obama selected Biden as his running mate in order to bolster his foreign policy and national security experience. This may explain why, under the combined foreign policy “experience” of Obama and Biden, we witnessed both the collapse of the Middle East and the establishment of Iran — one of the world’s leading sponsors of terrorism — as a regional power. When we consider non-military positions, such as Biden’s laughably inconsistent views on China, there is not a single part of Biden’s foreign policy resumé which would justify the cost of the ink required to print it.
Biden has a demonstrated history of sowing disaster when it comes to foreign policy, and his return to the White House would simply trigger the same monumental failures of the Obama administration.
Ian Haworth is host of The Ian Haworth Show and The Truth in 60 Seconds. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.