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In his years in power, Joe Biden and his top foreign policy officials have come up with a distinctly more aggressive and militarized approach to a rising China and, in particular, its claims to areas of the South China Sea or the island of Taiwan. As an old Cold Warrior who lived through the era of "containing" Soviet power, the president has taken a strikingly similar approach toward China, even if he's repeatedly denied that it's a policy of "containment."
Typically, American Green Berets have recently been stationed on the Taiwanese island of Kinmen, just a few miles off the coast of the People's Republic (though the head of the United States Indo-Pacific Command insists that it's not a permanent change). Four new military posts are also being established in the Philippines, all of them strategically closer to China than the other U.S. bases there. Meanwhile, last year the U.S. Marines opened their first new base in 70 years on the Pacific island of Guam as a "strategic hub" for the region, even as the American military command in Japan was also being strengthened.
(Imagine for a moment, how this country would react if China were challenging America's "aggressive" behavior by establishing military bases throughout, say, the Caribbean or off the Mexican coast. Truly beyond belief, right?)
And then, of course, there's Australia, where the U.S. is now stockpiling military supplies (and conducting joint war games) for a possible future conflict with China over Taiwan and, as TomDispatch regular Michael Klare makes strikingly clear today, that's just the beginning when it comes to future military connections with that country. (Think nuclear submarines!)
And all of this is happening, as Klare points out, while American power globally is actually on the wane and its crucial alliances (in a world where the Global South is finally rising), increasingly" well, let's not say "white" but, as Klare makes clear today, distinctly Anglo-Saxonified. Tom
Trusting the "Five Eyes" Only
The Anglo-Saxonization of American Foreign Policy and Its Perverse Consequences
Wherever he travels globally, President Biden has sought to project the United States as the rejuvenated leader of a broad coalition of democratic nations seeking to defend the "rules-based international order" against encroachments by hostile autocratic powers, especially China, Russia, and North Korea. "We established NATO, the greatest military alliance in the history of the world," he told veterans of D-Day while at Normandy, France on June 6th. "Today" NATO is more united than ever and even more prepared to keep the peace, deter aggression, defend freedom all around the world."
In other venues, Biden has repeatedly highlighted Washington's efforts to incorporate the "Global South" -- the developing nations of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East -- into just such a broad-based U.S.-led coalition. At the recent G7 summit of leading Western powers in southern Italy, for example, he backed measures supposedly designed to engage those countries "in a spirit of equitable and strategic partnership."
But all of his soaring rhetoric on the subject scarcely conceals an inescapable reality: the United States is more isolated internationally than at any time since the Cold War ended in 1991. It has also increasingly come to rely on a tight-knit group of allies, all of whom are primarily English-speaking and are part of the Anglo-Saxon colonial diaspora. Rarely mentioned in the Western media, the Anglo-Saxonization of American foreign and military policy has become a distinctive -- and provocative -- feature of the Biden presidency.
America's Growing Isolation
To get some appreciation for Washington's isolation in international affairs, just consider the wider world's reaction to the administration's stance on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Joe Biden sought to portray the conflict there as a heroic struggle between the forces of democracy and the brutal fist of autocracy. But while he was generally successful in rallying the NATO powers behind Kyiv -- persuading them to provide arms and training to the beleaguered Ukrainian forces, while reducing their economic links with Russia -- he largely failed to win over the Global South or enlist its support in boycotting Russian oil and natural gas.
Despite what should have been a foreboding lesson, Biden returned to the same universalist rhetoric in 2023 (and this year as well) to rally global support for Israel in its drive to extinguish Hamas after that group's devastating October 7th rampage. But for most non-European leaders, his attempt to portray support for Israel as a noble response proved wholly untenable once that country launched its full-scale invasion of Gaza and the slaughter of Palestinian civilians commenced. For many of them, Biden's words seemed like sheer hypocrisy given Israel's history of violating U.N. resolutions concerning the legal rights of Palestinians in the West Bank and its indiscriminate destruction of homes, hospitals, mosques, schools, and aid centers in Gaza. In response to Washington's continued support for Israel, many leaders of the Global South have voted against the United States on Gaza-related measures at the U.N. or, in the case of South Africa, have brought suit against Israel at the World Court for perceived violations of the 1948 Genocide Convention.
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