Biden Pushes Global Engagement. Do His Competitors Agree?

[question everything]

By Gerald F. Seib - political columnist of the WSJ

In the Democratic party’s primary-season dialogue, punctuated as it is with talk of impeachment and Medicare-for-all, something is missing. It’s the rest of the world.

In speeches by 13 presidential contenders to thousands of cheering Democratic activists at a big party event here over the weekend, there were precious few mentions of the role America should play on the global stage. That’s unfortunate, for the U.S. is at a crossroads; down one path lies continued engagement on global economic and security affairs, and down the other lies disengagement. As those Democrats spoke, the American military was involved in hostilities in at least three countries abroad: Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. President Trump basically wants out of all three places, arguing that America is stuck in “endless wars,” and he is moving the Republican party away from its traditional view of internationalism and free trade. Most of his supporters, and some on the progressive left, agree.

So where will the Democratic party land?

In a Wall Street Journal interview here over the weekend, former Vice President Joe Biden staked out a firm argument for the virtues of continued American engagement abroad. “We don’t have to have 100,000 troops stationed anywhere,” he said. “But we do need to be engaged and organize, and organize our allies, and organize our friends.” Referring to Mr. Trump, he added: “And when we leave a vacuum, like he’s leaving it, it creates significant opportunities for difficulty, including what you see right now in the Middle East. If we don’t organize the world, who does? Not the good guys.”

Mr. Biden said Mr. Trump made “a rash decision” to pull back American forces in Syria, opening the way for a Turkish assault on America’s Kurdish allies. A small American force should remain in Syria, he said, though he declined to say how large. He argued against Mr. Trump’s declaration that the small contingent of troops he is willing to leave behind should be there to secure Syria’s oil fields. That approach, Mr. Biden argued, amounts to a “giant, 300-foot recruiting poster for ISIS,” because the Islamic State organization will point to it as proof of their long-time contention that American interests in the Islamic world lie simply in taking away its oil. Retreat from Syria, Mr. Biden said, has strengthened the hands of not just Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, but also his friends in Russia and Iran. Because of Iran’s enhanced position in Syria, Tehran “now has a pathway all the way to Syria and even Lebanon. If I’m the Israelis, I’m not going to be very happy about that.”

(snip)

On the controversial issue of Ukraine, now at the center of an impeachment inquiry, Mr. Biden insisted that the Obama administration declined to provide lethal military equipment to Ukraine because it feared that step would just “up the ante” in Russia’s meddling there—not, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo implied last week, because of the involvement of Mr. Biden’s son with a Ukrainian energy company. “I don’t understand how that could even be connected,” Mr. Biden said. “That wasn’t any part of the decision. Zero.”

More..

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-pushes-global-engagement-do-his-competitors-agree-11572877131 (paid subscription)

[boomer_wv]

1. Isolationism

Has never and will never be a good foreign policy.