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| The Biden administration is determined to keep the US ensnared in the conflicts and rivalries of the Middle East, and "great power competition" has become the latest excuse for our governments continued intervention and meddling in the affairs of the region. During his recent trip to Saudi Arabia, Biden said, "We will not walk away and leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia or Iran." It is doubtful that any of these other states would or could fill the "vacuum" if the US reduced or ended its military presence in the region, but "preventing" this is an absurd reason for the US to continue to accept the costs and burdens of military involvement and meddling in this part of the world. Both the US and the countries of the region would be better off if our government no longer obsessed over the Middle East and its problems, since it is clear from the record that the US has usually made any problems that it focused on worse than it was before. Stoking fear of a Russian, Chinese, or Iranian takeover of the region is just a desperate ploy to justify a terrible set of policies that keep the US closely linked to some of the most abusive governments in the world. There is no compelling reason for the US to be so committed to its reckless Middle Eastern clients. That is why Biden has to hide behind "great power competition" and standard anti-Iranian hostility to maintain the bankrupt status quo. |
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| On Monday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he delivered a letter to President Biden last week where he pleaded for the US not to prosecute Julian Assange and renewed an offer to grant asylum to the WikiLeaks founder. Lopez Obrador said he explained in the letter that Assange "did not cause anyone's death, did not violate any human rights and that he exercised his freedom, and that arresting him would mean a permanent affront to freedom of expression." The Mexican leader said that he previously offered asylum to Assange in a letter to President Trump at the end of his term and again at the beginning of the Biden administration. Last month, Lopez Obrador called Assange "the best journalist of our time." |
| At the NATO summit in Madrid, Finland was invited to join the alliance. What does this mean for Finland? If Russian President Vladimir Putin breaches the 830-mile Finnish border, the United States will rise to Helsinki's defense and fight Russia on Finlands side. What does Finland's membership in NATO mean for America? If Putin makes a military move into Finland, the U.S. will go to war against the world's largest nation with an arsenal of between 4,500 and 6,000 battlefield and strategic nuclear weapons. No Cold War president would have dreamed of making such a commitment - to risk the survival of our nation to defend territory of a country thousands of miles away that has never been a US vital interest. |
| | President Biden told reporters Wednesday that the US military thinks its "not a good idea" for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to visit Taiwan. Media reports on Tuesday said that Pelosi plans to make the trip to Taiwan next month, prompting China to warn it will "take strong and resolute measures" in response. When asked if he thinks the trip is a good idea, Biden said, "The military thinks it's not a good idea right now, but I don't know what the status of it is." It's not clear from Biden's comments if his administration expressed to Pelosi that the trip wasn't a good idea or if she still plans on going through with it. If she makes the trip, it will be the first time a sitting House speaker visits the island in 25 years. |
| "We've laid out for the leadership of Iran what were willing to accept in order to get back into the JCPOA," President Joe Biden said at a press conference in Jerusalem on July 14. "We're waiting for their response. When that will come, I'm not certain, but we're not going to wait forever." That's an odd way of putting things, seeing as how it's Joe Biden who's spent the last year hemming, hawing, and finding new excuses to avoid "getting back into" the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, aka the "Iran nuclear deal," while the Iranians have continually indicated that they'll gladly "get back into" the deal any time the US does. |
| Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov on Tuesday openly offered Ukraine as a venue to test NATO weapons against Russia in an online conversation with the director of the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center. Reznikov said that Ukraine "is essentially a testing ground" for the advanced weaponry the US and its allies are pouring into the country. "Many weapons are now getting tested in the field in the real conditions of the battle against the Russian Army, which has plenty of modern systems of its own," he said. The Ukrainian military chief made the offer in a fresh pitch for more Western arms. "We are interested in testing modern systems in the fight against the enemy and we are inviting arms manufacturers to test the new products here," he said. |
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