By Joseph A. Klein, CFP United Nations Columnist ——
U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken delivered virtual remarks on May 7th at the United Nations Security Council Open Debate on Multilateralism. The meeting was chaired by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on behalf of China, which is this month’s president of the Security Council. Blinken spewed forth the same old same old Biden administration rhetoric about the critical importance of an international “rules-based order” and the administration’s commitment to multilateralism.
Blinken criticized nations that he said violate the human rights of their own people and commit other transgressions against sovereign nations. Without naming Russia, China, or Iran specifically, Blinken said that the U.S. under Biden would push back against nations that break the international “rules-based order.” So far, the Biden administration has shown only fecklessness in its desire to be a full-fledged member of the globalist UN community.
“Biden-Harris” administration’s notion of engagement in multilateral institutions and agreements is to appease or concede
Blinken delivered an apology of sorts in what was an obvious slap at the Trump administration and its America First policies. “I know that some of our actions in recent years have undermined the rules-based order and led others to question whether we are still committed to it,” he said. And then Blinken tried to show how different things will be with Joe Biden in the White House. That’s the problem.
“Under the Biden-Harris administration, the United States has already re-engaged vigorously in multilateral institutions,” Blinken boasted to the Security Council. “We have rejoined the Paris climate accord, recommitted to the World Health Organization, and we’re seeking to rejoin the Human Rights Council. We’re engaged in diplomacy to return to mutual compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and to strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation regime.”
The “Biden-Harris” administration’s notion of engagement in multilateral institutions and agreements is to appease or concede first and then try to negotiate.
Take Iran, for example. Former President Donald Trump had the Iranian regime on the ropes with his maximum pressure policy of increasing economic sanctions until the regime blinked. But when Biden came into office, he blinked first.
Biden is extremely anxious to reenter the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The Biden administration sent signals that it was willing to negotiate the lifting of some economic sanctions in concert with Iran’s steps to reverse course and reduce its uranium enrichment to levels in compliance with the JCPOA. Biden all but begged for the U.S. to be indirectly involved in negotiations between Iran and the other remaining JCPOA participants – China, Russia, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. Iran’s delegation was meeting with representatives from these five countries in the same room, while messages were sent back and forth with U.S. representatives sitting separately at a different location.
Iran’s thugs thumbed their noses at the Biden administration
Iran’s thugs thumbed their noses at the Biden administration after the talks had begun by announcing that the regime was going to increase its uranium enrichment level to its highest ever, at 60 percent. That is
a stone’s throw from the 90 percent purity level needed to produce a nuclear bomb. The Iranian regime dramatically changed the dynamics of the negotiation process in its favor by giving itself more leverage.
Biden should have pulled the U.S. out of these phony talks immediately. He also should have responded forcefully to Iran’s provocative move by slapping the Iranian regime and its leaders with more burdensome sanctions. Instead, Biden pathetically expressed displeasure with Iran’s enrichment of uranium to 60 percent purity while saying that he was pleased with the JCPOA talks.
“We do not support and do not think it’s at all helpful that Iran is saying it’s going to move to enrich to 60 percent,” Biden said during a joint news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. “We are, though, nonetheless pleased that Iran has continued to agree to engage in discussions – indirect discussions – with us and with our partners on how we move forward and what is needed to allow us to move back into the (nuclear deal) … without us making concessions that we are just not willing to make.”
Biden has already made a major concession by allowing the Iranian regime to increase its negotiating leverage dramatically in leaping ahead to the 60 percent purity level without suffering any consequences. This means that just to get Iran to return to the level of uranium enrichment purity prior to its increase to 60 percent, Biden would have to agree to roll back sanctions already in place.
At the May 7th Security Council meeting, Blinken extolled the fact that the “Biden-Harris” administration has rejoined the Paris climate accord from which Trump had withdrawn the United States. In fact, on his first day in office, Biden made a point of announcing this decision. In doing so, Biden is willing to take at face value the stated willingness of China, the world’s number one emitter of greenhouse gasses, to cooperate with the United States on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Biden is getting played.
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Biden pledged that the United States would cut greenhouse gas emissions further by 52 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2030
China’s original commitment under the Paris climate accord, negotiated by the Obama-Biden administration, was to just start leveling off its emission of greenhouse gases by 2030. That has not changed.
Even Biden’s climate czar John Kerry admitted back when Biden announced the U.S. would be rejoining the Paris climate accord that reducing U.S. emissions to zero would make little difference in combating climate change. “Not when almost 90 percent of all of the planet’s global emissions come from outside of US borders. We could go to zero tomorrow and the problem isn’t solved,” Kerry said.
China’s President Xi Jinping participated in the virtual summit of world leaders that Biden hosted beginning on Earth Day (April 22nd). Xi made a meaningless gesture of cooperation in the fight against climate change, while offering no new ambitious commitments to begin cutting greenhouse gas emissions immediately, or even at least to stop increasing them. Not only will China’s emission of greenhouse gases continue to increase during this decade. Its consumption of coal – the dirtiest of fossil fuels – will continue to increase at least through 2025.
Biden, on the other hand, put the United States out on a limb with an outlandish pledge that will place tremendous burdens on the U.S. economy and on the average American, while not receiving anything remotely comparable in return. On top of the cuts in emissions that the United States has already made during the last several years, Biden pledged that the United States would cut greenhouse gas emissions further by 52 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2030.
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John Kerry’s words of a pitiful supplicant
Meanwhile, China will keep laughing all the way to the bank as it continues to increase its greenhouse gas emissions for the next several years, generate more than half the world’s coal-fired power with the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel, and open even more coal plants.
While Kerry admitted that China was not doing enough in the battle against climate change, he appeared willing to let them off the hook for now. “They have a massive coal dependency,” Kerry said last month. “We have to try to get them to move further and we have to also ask China not to be funding the building of new coal-fired power plants in other parts of the world.” These are not the words of a hard-nosed negotiator. These are the words of a pitiful supplicant.
At the May 7th Security Council meeting on multilateralism, Secretary of State Blinken turned on his own country by declaring that the Biden administration is “taking steps, with great humility, to address the inequities and injustices in our own democracy. We do so openly and transparently for people around the world to see, even when it’s ugly, even when it’s painful.” (Emphasis added)
Blinken said much the same thing during his face-to-face meeting with Chinese Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs Yang Jiechi and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi last March in Alaska. It was a stupid thing for Blinken to say then. And it was even a stupider thing to say at an open Security Council meeting, with China and Russia all too eager to score propaganda points at America’s expense.
Chinese Director Yang Jiechi bluntly told Blinken that the United States should keep its nose out of China’s business
Last March, at the face-to-face meeting in Alaska, Chinese Director Yang Jiechi bluntly told Blinken that the United States should keep its nose out of China’s business. “The United States itself does not represent international public opinion, and neither does the Western world,” Director Yang said. “On human rights, we hope that the United States will do better on human rights,” he added. “China has made steady progress in human rights, and the fact is that there are many problems within the United States regarding human rights, which is admitted by the U.S. itself as well.”
At the May 7th UN Security Council meeting, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was somewhat more polite. Unlike Blinken, however, Wang Yi was not about to admit any faults on the part of his own country. And he sought to portray China as the exemplar of commitment to UN-centered multilateralism. “China will remain a builder of world peace, a contributor to global development, a defender of international order and a provider of public goods,” he said with a straight face. Wang Yi warned that “splitting the world along ideological lines conflicts with the spirit of multilateralism and is a regression of history,” and said that “there should be no room for exceptionalism or double standards.” Wang couldn’t help himself from taking one swipe at the United States when he declared with a hint of sarcasm, “I’m sure all countries would like to see the United States changing course and make a real contribution to practicing multilateralism.”
America’s adversaries are having a field day as they show increased contempt for the United States, while the Biden administration continues to humiliate the United States and knuckle under to its adversaries’ demands.
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