President Biden recently met with China’s Xi Jinping in Indonesia. As Gordon Chang reported for the Gatestone Institute, Biden’s goals for the meeting was to “lay out” each power’s “red lines” and “critical national interests,” and determine “whether or not they conflict with one another. And if they do, how to resolve it and how to work it out.” As usual with such diplomatic theater, nothing of substance was discussed, and tired bromides about “working together” and “candid exchange of views” were exchanged.
The assumptions behind Biden’s statement of the goals themselves reveal the dangerous flaws and delusional thinking that define the fetish of “diplomatic engagement,” which for a century has been the heart of the “new world order.” Ancient common sense and the sorry record of failed diplomacy should have long ago disabused us of this feckless idealism and reliance on “parchment barriers,” negotiated written agreements that almost always lack a robust, credible threat of force to punish violators.
Many of the problems that vitiate the recent talk with China have troubled diplomatic engagement for a century. In the case of China, Chang writes, for decades “of fruitless conversations with China, American presidents regularly postpone taking needed action.” Thus, like other talks with rivals and malignant enemies like North Korea and Iran, such talks produce “horrible results,” and allow our enemies “to buy time and often run out the clock”––just as North Korea did to create nuclear weapons, and Iran is currently doing to achieve the same end.
Moreover, such talks with the world’s most consequential power inflate China’s already arrogant sense of superiority, as well as our own weakness. Such a dynamic only encourages more aggression. Finally, these agreements, which usually lack a serious enforcement mechanism for punishing violations, are what Thomas Hobbes nearly four centuries ago called a “covenant without the sword,” mere “words of no strength to secure a man at all.”
Yet Biden has gone beyond just talking without acting. His recently promulgated 2022 Nuclear Posture Review, the Wall Street Journal writes, says that “the Biden Team will cancel the nuclear sea-launched cruise missile, known as SLCM-N, which is a planned smaller ‘tactical’ nuke that could be launched from U.S. Navy ships or submarines.”
This decision is being made in spite of Iran’s expansion of its missile arsenal, and China’s and Russia’s build-up of tactical nuclear weapon stockpiles that threaten our security and that of our allies. As a result, as Admiral Charles Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, puts it, “The current situation in Ukraine and China’s nuclear trajectory convinces me a deterrence and assurance gap exists.” Indeed, “By the 2030s,” the Posture Review notes, “the United States will, for the first time in its history, face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries.”
In other words, we are not just failing to act, but taking actions that increase our enemies’ ability to threaten our security and interests. Why? Often, we do so because we lose our nerve and do not want to pay the price in lives and resources to stop an aggressor before he becomes capable of carrying out his designs. Not wanting to face the risks of using force, we then indulge in the theater of “diplomatic engagement,” creating the illusion of action to hide our unwillingness to act.
The dangerous fallacy of diplomacy and agreements has been recognized ever since Homer’s Iliad 2700 years ago. In Book 20, Hector stands before the walls of Troy, awaiting Achilles, who has slaughtered and routed Troy’s army. Knowing that he is fated to die at the hands of Achilles, Hector still hopes that maybe he could negotiate with the rampaging killing-machine. He considers disarming himself and negotiating with Achilles, promising to return Helen and pay a huge indemnity.
But common sense wakes him up: “Why thrash things out? I must not go and implore him. He’ll show me no mercy, nor respect for me, my rights––he’ll cut me down straight off––stripped of my defenses like a woman once I have loosed the armor of my body.” Yet despite this moment of clarity about the inhuman ferocity of Achilles, he still tries to bargain with him over the treatment of his body should he be killed, asking that his corpse be returned to his family.
Achilles responds with the eternal truth that no negotiations with an enemy committed to the destruction of his foe can succeed: “Don’t talk to me of pacts. There are no binding oaths between men and lions––wolves and lambs can enjoy no meeting of the minds––they are all bent on hating each other to the death. So with you and me. No love between us. No truce till one or the other falls and gluts with blood Ares,” the god of war.
We moderns, of course, consider such brutal realism to be typical of an ancient savagery and ignorance that we have progressed beyond. War for us is an anomaly to be done away with by a “rule-based international order” that settles conflicts between states with negotiation and covenants.
But think about the horrors of the 20th Century’s two world wars, when the world’s most civilized peoples slaughtered each other in the millions with artillery shells weighing half a ton, machine guns and tanks, poison gas, aerial bombardment of cities with high explosives and incendiary bombs, and ultimately nuclear weapons. In those two conflicts the combatants behaved just as Achilles describes all sworn enemies do. Only when the aggressors and their cities had been obliterated and “glutted Ares with blood,” could peace and reconciliation be possible.
It’s not just the common sense and realism of the sort we find in Homer that teaches us that negotiating and signing pacts with inveterate enemies who hate us will put us in danger. History also provides empirical evidence for that truth. The September, 1939, meeting in Munich between Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler is the poster-boy for feckless appeasement. But “diplomatic engagement” is the father of appeasement, the desperate recourse of leaders and their peoples who have no stomach for war.
The misjudgment of Hitler and Nazism also paved the way for Chamberlain’s doomed effort. Hitler’s public proclamations of his revanchist intentions during the party rallies in Nuremburg and in his manifesto Mein Kampf were no secret. Neither was the anti-Semitic race-laws and the occupation of Austria. Nor did the British heed the analyses from Sir Horace Rumbold, England’s ambassador to Germany when Hitler came to power, who reported to the government the enthusiasm with which the German people received Hitler’s scorn for pacifism, paeans to “Will and determination” which are “of the highest worth,” and his belief that “only brute force can ensure the survival of the race.”
Yet Chamberlain, like many British still traumatized by the slaughter of the Great War, clung to his faith in his powers of persuasion, and the desire of the Germans to seek peace. He seemingly paid no attention to Winston Churchill’s BBC broadcast four years earlier that warned of the existential threat of Germans “who are being taught from childhood to think of war and conquest as a glorious exercise and death in battle as the noblest fate of man,” a nation “in the grip of a group of ruthless men preaching a gospel of intolerance and pride,” who are “rearming with the utmost speed, and ready to their hands this new lamentable weapon of the air” imperiling civilians of all ages.
In other words, Chamberlain missed what Churchill understood: that Nazi Germany was as different from liberal democracies as a lion is from a man, or a wolf from a sheep. There could be no negotiated covenants with such a regime, no “meeting of the minds” upon which agreements and pacts must be based. In the end, brutal force destroyed the Nazi regime at the cost of at least 75 million people, including 40 million civilians.
Yet despite this lesson of history, we have continued for decades to use diplomacy to turn lions into men by entering into “covenants without swords.” As a result, we now face an Iran, China, and Russia armed with the latest drones and missiles, including China’s 1250 hypersonic weapons that can reach our military bases and Carrier Battle Groups anywhere in the world.
Continuing to indulge the illusion of “diplomatic engagement” is the highest form of political malfeasance, for keeping citizens safe is the most important duty of the federal government. No matter how loudly the dogs of diplomacy barked in Indonesia, the Chinese caravans of aggression will relentlessly move on.
Joe Biden in his meetings with the Communist President of Red China, Xi Jinping, will always results in agreed to policies that will be very favorable to China and to the lowering of the United States as a world power.
For Xi Jinping knows that Biden is very weak and feeble-minded and he even likes Socialism and will be very easily manipulated to be the “useful idiot’ and” lap dog” of XI Jinping will able to use Biden to have do anything to wants him to do. In other words, Biden is his stooge and tool because he malleable, for old Joe very cognitively challenged since is an empty-headed mindless idiot.
For example, Joe Biden in a speech he declared Bogus “President” “Imagine had the tobacco industry been immune to prostitute being sued, come on.”
Is diplomacy merely a stalling tactic for both sides. China’s vision and direction are clear. Can we say the say for that of the USA?
No, but President Trump would have set Xi straight.
All reports are scary for America
Who trusts him?
The ancient Greek Philosopher, Plato, did have a good valid point when he had written, “The measure of a man is what he does with power.”
When applying that wise statement to Joe Biden, his “measure” is more than lacking, it’s outright terrible.
For Biden is the obedient “lap dog” of the Communist President of China, Xi Jinping. Likewise, Biden is also the faithful supporting servant the close ally of Red China .Which is that anti-America “mullah regime” of Iran. That hates the United States that it sets up billboards in Tehran that read “Death to America” and calls the US “The great Satan.”
Surely, the “measure” of Joe Biden is so very horrendously evil that he is an affront to the Office of the Presidency of the United States and a disgrace to the US Constitution as well as a calamity for America and a disaster for the American people.
Bogus “president” Joe Biden completely refuses to do anything many terrible things that Red China engages in. Biden absolutely will nothing even if he is able to.
For a number of sinister reasons, such as he admires the socialism / Communist ideology of mainland China.
Biden must also like the tyrannical oppressor of Communist China against its citizens since he absolutely is copying Red China’s imprisonment system of that regime’s tyrant Xi Jinping who has political prisoners who are held in cruel cells and treated terrible and denied their basis human rights.
For that Joe Biden has political prisoners from January 6, 2021, who are held in cruel cells and treated terrible and denied their basic human rights.
T Roosevelt- speak softly but Carry a big stick . Philosophy followed by Reagan and Trump. See the results. Soviets collapsed, ISS AND Sulemani dead , Abraham accords . North Korea quiet, Russia didn’t advance.
Biden is an embarrassment his people more so as they don’t have the excuse of dementia and old age !
100% correct! We better pray President Trump is back in the White House very soon. The US is doomed to failure on all fronts without him.
Not only is the idea that persuasion works in the international arena damaging to our external security but disastrous in domestic affairs too. It is why the left beats moderate Republicans. The root causes are narcissisism and a naive belief that people are basically good.
Bull’s Eye!
The people who killed each other by the millions in the world wars were actually much more “civilized” than we — better educated and better knowledge of history. They knew the tendency of human nature towards corruption. In our stupefying hubris, we actually believe ourselves wiser and more civilized –BETTER than they! A terrible lesson is ahead for us unless we begin to deal in reality.
And Bruce Thornton shows plainly the danger of cloaking evil in ignorance. The recent request for Covid amnesty relied on this propensity: Forgive us because WE DID NOT KNOW. Bulls__t.
Did this ship-of-fools administration really think displaying a walking corpes to the CCP would do anything other than encourage them???
Xi was already stunned at *Biden’s surreal abandonment of Afghanistan (the Taliban are now armed better than before 9/11).
Walking-Dead Joe’s handlers already knew the value of hiding him until after the election.
But, instead of keeping the fool concealed, his handlers put him face-to-face before Xi where Sleepy could only confirm his stupidity & weakness.
Well, I’m sure Biden insisted on the face-to-face. He has a completely unjustified high regard for his abilities of persuasion and intimidation..
Yeah, characteristic of Dementia.
And insecure narcissism.
The prick fantasizes of more agrandizing stories of himself than even AL Gore.
Characteristic of a political HACK, with 40 years of dullness as wit and cunning.
And Kruger-Dunning syndrome.
The Obama/Biden ship-of-fools administrations that have, for many years now, wanted to humble America, if not to bring it down totally.
This also, unfortunately, applies to the growing divide within the U.S., between those who hold to the Constitution and limited government and those who would centralize power and put us into a fascist tyranny. Despite the Conservative’s best intentions, I fear that the Progressive Democrat power grab will not be stopped except with blood.
I wonder if Kurt Schlichter is even more pessimistic now than he is in his “We’ll Be Back” book.
Thanks Bruce! I remember J.F.C. Fuller called them “talking shops” in the 1930s or so.
Great analysis, as usual. I think you meant to state that the Munich meeting was September, 1938 rather than 1939.
“There is none so blind as those who will not see.” Attributed to several philosophers, this is an apt description of American diplomacy.
Specifically, Communist China is an enemy and not a competitor. Xi has clarified that the end game is to replace the United States and rules-based order. The CCP is Marxist-Leninist and believes we are selling them the rope they will use to hang us.
Agreements negotiated with the CCP or Iran are meaningless since they do not have any attention to adhering to them.
The Iranian government does not need a new law to allow it to protestors. They just do it.
Or, more precisely, they get the Arab mercenaries they hire to do it for them.
“Joe Biden has been wrong on nearly every Foreign Policy & National Security issue over the past 40 years” !
-Robert Gates, Obama’s Secretary of Defense
“Never underestimate Joe’s ability to fugk things up” !
-Barack Obama
Biden is too busy at war against half the US population and his political enemies. He is a front for the Neo-American-Communists in our midst.
Think about how bold the left has become since Trump won. They are afraid the jig is up, so they are going for broke.
If Republicans ever get enough power back we are going to have a lot of socialist policies and influence in our government, big business, big tech, and the rest of western civilization to get rid of. Maybe by ANY means necessary.
China used big tech when they invited them in – and their technology – to supress and oppress the Chinese people. Big tech are now using it on us, and the willing EU. China new they would. US and/or global digital currency will be our death null – if we allow it to come to pass. Mark my words. These people are freaking evil!
I believe that the record of diplomatic engagement with totalitarian regimes is pretty consistent. North Korea is the gold standard of lies and broken promises but Iran is #2. It is so sad that Obama, Kerry, and Biden and their fellow travelers are so naive and just wrong on Iran. The Israelis are not fooled. That alone should inform the American people. China is even more important. Their record of violating agreements and international law could not be clearer. We know that Biden may consciously or subconsciously be compromised due to Hunter’s enmeshment with China. This malfeasance must be fleshed out in the upcoming Congress. It is not about smearing Hunter but defending the USA against China,
The Israelis aren’t fooled because they understand that they can’t afford to make even one mistake. The incompetent tyrants currently running the U.S. somehow think they are immune to history and can make an infinite number of them.
Actually , I don’t hate Joe Biden, he isn’t man enough to hate. The only emotion that I have for Biden is a strong feeling of contempt.
I think China already practised the art of diplomacy better than Biden ever could because they understand what diplomacy is.
Biden or really the Democratic party has only a lifelong commitment to understanding it in terms of what they’d like to imagine about themselves. Very similar to NASA which really abandoned space faring for loftier and earthier ambitions long ago. And that’s why I have little time for NASA. You had one job. If your job is obsolete so are you.
NASA still does spacefaring but primarily they are a PR exercise for “science”/attitude adjustment at tax payer expense.
Weren’t they tasked by the Obama administration to showcase the contributions that the Arabs allegedly made to our technological civilization? And they couldn’t even do that one ridiculous bit of fantasy properly.
Biden has now replaced Carter as Americas #1 worst President Biden the Bungler Carter should thank his lucky star is no longer the worst
Has anything changed since Homer’s day? Or since the Bible was given and the history of Israel and its neighbors was written down half a millennium earlier? People do not change.
Remember the Maine!