Joe Biden Gets a big Fat F For His Foreign Policy

Complicit in the Israeli Genocide in Gaza, Biden Sowed Misery and Death in Russia and Ukraine, Expanded an Already Ridiculously High Military Budget and Put the World at Risk of Nuclear War

In the June issue of The Nation magazine, editor D.D. Guttenplan claimed that Joe Biden was the most progressive U.S. president since Lyndon B. Johnson.^[1]

This claim is obscene as neither of these two leaders was progressive in any way.

Lyndon Johnson may have ushered in the Great Society and civil rights legislation, but he also orchestrated the calamitous war in Vietnam, invaded the Dominican Republic, backed the Indonesian genocide of 1965, armed Israel to the hilt during the Six-Day War, triggered the USS Liberty incident and put the world close to the brink of nuclear war.

Joe Biden for his part has done very little to arrest the widening economic inequality patterns gripping the United States in this era of a second Gilded Age and has adopted a foreign policy that is horrifyingly comparable to LBJ in certain respects.

Like Johnson, Biden triggered wide-scale campus revolts, in his case because of his administration’s complicity in Israeli military operations in Gaza involving Vietnam-style atrocities.

According to Brown University’s Cost of War Project, U.S. spending on Israel’s military operations and related U.S operations in the Middle East totaled at least $22.76 billion as of September 30. In just the first six weeks of the war, the Biden administration sent more than 15,000 bombs and 50,000 artillery shells.^[2]

Since that time, the weapons the U.S. has provided include thousands of precision-guided munitions, Hellfire missiles, artillery ammunition, shoulder-fired rockets, glide bombs armed with cluster munitions, and bunker-buster, and 2,000-pound bombs.

Speaking to The Washington Post, former Biden administration official Jeremy Konyndyk said that the “extraordinary number of sales over the course of a pretty short amount of time” suggests that Israel would not be able to maintain its operation against Hamas in Gaza “without this level of U.S. support.”

As Israel escalated its killing spree into Lebanon, the Biden administration deployed 100 U.S. troops to Israel directly to operate a sophisticated missile system it financed and escalated bombing of Houthi targets in Yemen who retaliated against Israel–in violation of the U.S. War Powers Act of 1973, which requires Congressional approval for carrying out military strikes.^[3]

Ukraine

Biden’s complicity in Israel’s war crimes is matched by his complicity with war crimes committed by his administration’s other key ally: Ukraine.

Since war with Russia broke out in February 2022, the Biden administration has provided more than $175 billion in aid to Ukraine, most of which has been military-related.

U.S. Special Forces time were directly assisted the Ukrainian military, with the CIA having set up a dozen bases in Ukraine after the February 2014 Maidan coup that provoked the war, which Biden championed.

Among the weapons systems the Biden administration provided to Ukraine were Javelin anti-tank missiles, high-mobility rocket systems, howitzers, weaponized drones, cluster bombs, and others that were used by the Ukrainian military to attack and kill civilians in eastern Ukraine and over the border in Russia.^[4]

Biden promoted his Ukraine policy as being advantageous to the U.S. economy, though it really enriched military contractors and the Wall Street hedge funds that owned them and donated generously to Biden’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

At the Rage Against the War Machine rally in February 2023, comedian Jimmy Dore gave a top ten list of how the $100+ billion spent on arming Ukraine could have been better spent, including:

• Ending homelessness in the U.S., reinstating it, and then ending it again
• Funding a new police force to police against the current ones
• Facilitating two FTX collapses
• Paying Hunter Biden’s monthly salary for the rest of his life; and giving Joe Biden a dog who knows where to lead him when his press conferences are over
• Funding 90 Alex Jones lawsuits
• Funding balloons to spy on China
• Curing cancer

One of the great lies advanced by Biden and his media and academic stenographers is that the U.S. was supporting Ukrainian democracy against Russian autocracy.

In fact, under Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine banned 12 opposition parties and deployed U.S.-trained commando units to hunt down dissidents, including inside Russia, where some were assassinated mafia-style.

Another great lie was that the U.S. was standing up to Russian aggression.

The Biden administration, in reality, had provoked a Russian invasion of Ukraine with the goal of bogging down Russia in a quagmire and ratcheting up sanctions to destroy its economy and fuel civil unrest that could lead to regime change.

Most dangerously, Biden authorized Ukraine to conduct strikes inside Russia while providing Ukraine and Germany with long-range missiles capable of striking there, directly threatening World War III.

The New York Times reported that “Mr. Biden’s decision appears to mark the first time that an American president has allowed…military responses on artillery, missile bases and command centers inside the borders of a nuclear-armed adversary.”

Biden further antagonized that adversary by, according to journalist Seymour Hersh, blowing up the Nord Stream II pipeline running from Russia through Germany.^[5]

The goal of this act of environmental terrorism was to sever Russia’s ties with Germany and the rest of Europe and undercut its oil and gas industry.

Russia found new markets in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, however, while Europeans had to pay much higher rates, having to purchase natural gas from U.S. energy suppliers, thereby causing an economic crisis that has led many Europeans to turn against the war and some against the U.S.

China and the Far East

The Biden administration has threatened war not only with Russia but also China by a) expanding the number of military drills carried out in or near the South China Sea; b) launching a new regional economic initiative building off the precedent of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) whose purpose was to isolate China; and c) sending naval vessels and spy planes on provocative missions into the Taiwan Strait, over which China claims jurisdiction under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.^[6]

Eli Friedman, Kevin Lin, Rose Liu and Ashley Smith wrote in China in Global Capitalism that the Biden administration “poured money into developing new high-tech weaponry, missiles, and new bases in Australia, the Philippines and elsewhere in the Pacific, all to assert U.S. hegemony in the region and against China. He increased deployment of the U.S. military in the Asia Pacific to press home the point that Washington intends to remain the dominant player in the region. He expanded the Quad alliance with Australia, India and Japan, and forged a trilateral security pact, AUKUS, with Britain and Australia against China.”

The authors continued: “Biden promised to expand Washington’s Five Eyes intelligence network, established after World War II, by the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, to include Germany, India, Japan and South Korea. He even has managed to get the latter two to put aside their historic antagonism, rooted in Tokyo’s occupation of Korea during World War II, to establish cordial relations and collaborate with the U.S. against China.”^[7]

A key facet of the Biden administration’s aggressive anti-China strategy was the attempt to transform Taiwan into a heavily armed porcupine bristling with armaments and other forms of U.S.-led support that makes it “appear too painful to attack.”

In April 2023, the Biden administration announced a $345 million military aid package to Taiwan that included provision of portable air defense systems, intelligence and surveillance equipment, firearms and missiles. In late September, Biden approved a $567 million package, and in December, yet another package worth $573.1 million.

After the announcement of a characteristic $440 million arms sale agreement, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that Taiwan had evolved into a “powder keg” by the infusion of U.S. weaponry, pushing the Taiwanese people into the “abyss of disaster.” 

Taiwan’s leader Tsai Ing-wen sold her people down the river in acquiescing to the U.S. strategy of transforming the country into a U.S. dependency. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) decoupled from China, and Taiwan was negotiating a free trade agreement with the U.S. that would benefit U.S. interests and further cut off Taiwan from China, its largest trading partner.

Besides Tsai Ing-wen, Biden was particularly close with South Korea President Yoon Suk Yeol, a neo-conservative branded by the RAND Corporation as “the perfect partner of Joe Biden” who declared martial law for the first time since the country was ruled by a military dictatorship.

During Yoon’s visit to Washington in May 2023, Biden announced a new U.S. commitment to deploy a nuclear-armed submarine in South Korea for the first time since the early 1980s.

This was part of a new set of steps designed to boost U.S.-South Korea cooperation on military training, information sharing and other forms of strategic collaboration, whose net effect was to further antagonize North Korea and destroy any prospects for resolution of the Korean conflict.^[8]

Preparing for a New Pacific War

The Biden administration was planning for a new Pacific War by establishing new military command centers in Hawaii, with piers, runways and barracks, while sending more planes over beaches and warships in and out of Pearl Harbor.

Biden’s 2024 defense budget provided $9 billion to the Pentagon for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI), which aimed to enhance American war-making capabilities in the Asia-Pacific. The budget earmarked a whopping $15.3 billion for the Indo-Pacific Command, higher than the other theater commands and a $4 billion increase from the previous year.

Some $464 million was being used for Pacific Pathways exercises conducted by U.S. Army Pacific to support military exercises with partner militaries, including Thailand and the Philippines.

A March 2024 issue of Air & Space Forces Magazine reported that the U.S. Air Force planned to spend $400 million to expand an airfield on the tiny island of Yap in Micronesia between Guam and Palau, some 1,000 miles southeast of China.

In May 2023, the Biden administration signed a deal with Micronesia to extend 20-year-old political and security ties, enabling the U.S. to locate military facilities there.

Similar deals were signed with Palau and the Marshall Islands, a collection of 29 coral atolls lying halfway between Hawaii and Australia, where Washington has promised to provide $2.3 billion in economic assistance over 20 years in exchange for access to 2.1 million square kilometers of land.

According to Air & Space Forces Magazine, the U.S. Air Force in 2024 sought $1.24 billion in appropriations in foreign infrastructure investment, a 93% increase over the prior year, and $872.5 million, a 44% jump, in new authorizations for military construction outside the U.S.

A key focus was to restore multiple airfields in the Pacific that were previously used by the U.S. during World War II to bomb Japan, including the infamous Tokyo firebombing that killed approximately 100,000 people in one night, and the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic attacks.

Among these is Andersen Air Force Base on Guam, for which the U.S. Air Force requested $411 million to fund a North Aircraft Parking Ramp, large enough to park up to 14 bombers. 

Some $78 million was budgeted for upgrades to a U.S. airfield on Tinian Island in the Marianas near Guam, which was used as a launch point for the atomic attack over Hiroshima by the Enola Gay bomber, and which the Air Force reclaimed in 2012 under Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” policy.

General Kenneth Wilsbach, Commander of the Pacific Air Forces, told Nikkei Asia in December 2023 that the Tinian base “will become an extensive” facility once work has been completed to reclaim it from the jungle that has grown over the base since the last U.S. Army Air Force units abandoned it in 1946.”

Expanding the Bloated Pentagon Budget

Biden’s Pentagon budget for 2023 was $838 billion and his Pentagon budget for 2024 was $886 billion, about 40 percent of global military spending.^[9]

The 2023 budget included $24.5 billion for the new U.S. Space Force and Space Development Agency, which is contributing to the dangerous militarization of Outer Space.^[10]

Biden’s 2022 Pentagon budget provisioned $100 million for training Ukrainian pilots; increased irregular warfare activities; extended the 31-year U.S. military attack on Iraq; and extended the disastrous Plan Colombia through 2024—a militarized drug war program promoted by Senator Biden in the 1990s—even though Colombia’s newly elected president, Gustavo Petro, has rejected the U.S. War on Drugs.

For 2025, Biden asked for $898 billion for the military. Of that total, $167.5 billion is to be devoted to buying new weapons and equipment and $49.2 billion to support the “nuclear enterprise,” including supporting production of the new B-21 Raider bomber, refurbishing Trident II D-5 submarine-launched missiles, developing the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, and funding construction of the new Columbia-class missile submarines.

The Biden administration was also investing in a new variant of the B61-13 nuclear gravity bomb, which is far more powerful than the two bombs used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Pacific War.

Real Life Dr. Strangelove

In March, President Biden issued a secret nuclear engagement order expanding an already underway program to add a so-called “super-fuse” which “drastically increases the `killing power’” of Trident II Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs) produced by Lockheed Martin carrying W-76 100 kt warheads, making it possible—on paper—to knock out all Russian and Chinese land-based nuclear silos simultaneously.

MIT scientist Theodore Postol, former science adviser to the Chief of Naval Operations, specified that the “super-fuse” achieves the warheads’ “fantastic increase in killing efficiency.” According to Postol, this is not some “slight modernization” of weapons components, “but a dramatic step towards the capability to fight and win nuclear wars with both China and Russia.” These are “preemptive strike technologies.” Russia and China both know that, and “will have no choice but to implement countermeasures,” he warns.

Extending the Failed War on Terror

Analysis by the Costs of War Project at Brown University reveals that, between 2021 and 2023, the U.S. government conducted “counterterrorism” operations in at least 78 countries, including ground combat in at least nine countries and air strikes in at least four countries during the first three years of the Biden administration. 

The report notes: “Though the total number of countries with U.S. counterterrorism operations has decreased slightly from 2018-2020—from 85 countries—the counterterrorism footprint remains remarkably similar to what it was under the Trump administration.”

In August 2022, Biden claimed to have scored a great victory by assassinating Ayman al-Zawahiri, formerly Osama bin Laden’s top deputy, in Kabul, though there was never any confirmation of al-Zawahiri’s body.

In Syria, the Biden administration maintained two thousand troops to fight ISIS (lying to the public about the totals), though their real purpose was to help unseat the secular nationalist, anti-Israel government of Bashar al-Assad.^[11]

The extension of Donald Trump’s draconian sanctions and theft by U.S. troops of Syria’s oil created a biblical-scale tragedy for the Syrian people caused largely by the U.S. The regime change operation that had began when Biden was Vice-President culminated in December with the triumph of Al Qaeda in Syria.^[12]

Somalia was one of the new frontiers of the War on Terror, where the Biden administration signed a deal for the construction of five new military bases to help in the fight against Al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda affiliate.

The bases were intended to bolster the Danab Brigade of the Somali army, a U.S.-sponsored Special Operations force that had been linked to repeated incidents of brutality.

In May 2022, Biden sent 500 U.S. troops into Somalia. His administration also announced an increase in aid to the Somalian army and greenlighted new drone strikes.

In 2024, the U.S. Africa Command conducted at least seven air strikes in Somalia targeting Al-Shabaab, which had become resurgent in correlation with the U.S. military escalation.

A Pentagon think tank concluded that America’s war in the Horn of Africa under Biden was plagued by a “failure to define the parameters of the conflict” and “an overemphasis on military measures without a clear definition of the optimal military strategy.”

Similar failings were evident in West Africa, which also saw a spike in terrorist attacks as a result of the growing U.S. military presence.

Journalist Nick Turse pointed out that, in 2002 and 2003, before the creation of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM, which was established in 2007), the State Department counted nine terrorist attacks in all of Africa compared with 2,737 in 2022 in Burkina Faso, Mali and western Niger, and a total of 6,756 on the African continent, a 75,000% increase.^[13]

Widening Network of U.S. Military Bases

One purpose of the Somalian bases was to provide a launching point for U.S. military operations in the Middle East, including against the Houthis in Yemen who were disrupting commercial ships in protest of the Israeli assault on Gaza.

In August 2024, two months before the Tribe of Nova music festival massacre, the Pentagon awarded a $35.8 million contract to build U.S. troop facilities for a secret base it maintains deep within Israel’s Negev Desert, just 20 miles from Gaza, code-named “Site-512.”

The Biden administration sustained around 40,000 troops in at least 60 military bases across the Middle East^[14] and made efforts to establish new drone bases in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Benin after a coup in Niger jeopardized a $110 million drone base.

AFRICOM was expanding its footprint throughout Africa, including in Zambia whose right-wing government enabled corporate exploitation of the country’s copper mines and carried out a campaign of repression against socialists who wanted to nationalize the mines.

A major investor in Zambia’s copper mines was the Wall Street firm, BlackRock, whose deep ties to the Biden administration were evident in Biden’s appointment of former BlackRock executives to important positions in his administration.

The U.S. military expanded its footprint also throughout Southeast Asia under Biden.

In February 2023, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced on a visit to the Philippines that the U.S. would provide $100 million to refurbish at least nine Philippines military bases to which the U.S. now has access.

Four new naval bases were set to be established close to contested waters in the South China Sea—three of them north of Luzon Island directly facing Taiwan.

Growing Political Weakness

Growing military might cannot make up for political weakness and a loss of “hearts and minds” around the world.”

Between October 7, 2023 and June 2024, U.S. and allied forces were attacked more than 170 times, including over 70 times in Syria and 100 times in Iraq as well as once in Jordan.^[15]

Biden’s attempt to create a rail, ship, pipeline and digital cable corridor connecting Europe, the Middle East and India to counter China’s Belt and Road, meanwhile, failed, in part because Saudi Arabia would not normalize relations with Israel unless it stopped its genocide and recognized a Palestinian state.

The Biden administration faced setbacks in Africa when Niger’s government removed a major U.S. drone base, and where other West African countries followed suit by removing U.S. military bases or threatening to do so.^[16]

Even more significantly, Biden’s sanctions policy and war on Russia was prompting Russian alliance with China and Iran, in an anti-American axis that is moving the world towards multi-polarity.

Delegates to the 2024 BRICS summit in Kazan, where BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, CHina, South Africa) added twelve new members, endorsed the use of local currencies in financial transactions between BRICS countries and their trading partners as a means of reducing dependence on the U.S. dollar and undercutting American global hegemony, which appeared to be on the wane.

Unleashing the CIA

As CovertAction Magazine has previously detailed, Biden has a long record of supporting the CIA, including by helping to cover up its crimes while serving on the Senate Intelligence Committee and supporting legislation that would criminalize disclosures of it.

President Biden continued to champion the CIA’s interests by withholding 5,000 critical documents on the JFK assassination.

He further helped to unleash the CIA in Ukraine, where it has played a central role in the proxy war with Russia, including by training specialized commando units that compiled blacklists of opponents of the Zelensky government and hunted them down.^[17]

Under the direction of William F. Burns, the CIA expanded its operations in mainland China in an effort to destabilize the People’s Republic of China. The CIA created a new mission center focused on spying on China, including by flying spy planes off its coast. ^[18]

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a CIA offshoot specializing in regime-change propaganda and the sponsorship of color revolutions that are designed to bring down anti-U.S. governments. It has been very active in the Biden years advancing propaganda against U.S. adversaries like Russia, China and Venezuela, supporting dissidents in those countries even if they are terrorists, and plotting subversive operations in countries like Belarus, Nicaragua, Iran and North Korea among others that the U.S. wants to bring into its orbit.

Support for Dictators

While purporting to be leading a worldwide crusade against authoritarianism, a report in The Intercept revealed that the Biden administration sold weapons in 2022 to 57% of the world’s authoritarian regimes.

The foreign dictators that Biden cozied up to included Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to whom Biden gave a fist bump when he visited Saudi Arabia in July 2022.

Biden had earlier vowed to treat Saudi Arabia as a “pariah,” due to a long string of human rights abuses, including the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi—a killing in a Saudi operation that U.S. intelligence assessed had been approved by Crown Prince bin Salman.

However, realpolitik dictates led Biden to cozy up to bin Salman who agreed to continue to sell Saudi Arabian oil in U.S. petro dollars and boost oil production to lower prices in exchange for billion-dollar arms supplies, including a $5 billion missile defense system, along with provision of spare parts and maintenance for coalition warplanes that bombed the Yemeni population.^[19]

In his first year alone, Biden approved more than $1 billion in assistance—including $170 million in military aid—to Egypt, ruled by Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, a man Donald Trump lovingly referred to as his “favorite dictator.”

Human Rights Watch documented a pattern of extrajudicial killings by El-Sisi’s security forces covered up as “shootouts,” and extensive unlawful home demolitions in northern Sinai that led to the eviction of over a quarter of its population. 

When Biden hosted an Africa Leaders Summit in December 2022—where deals were cut to enable U.S. exploitation of Africa’s natural resources—Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame was one of the invitees given the red-carpet treatment.

Kagame had been in power since 1994 and admitted that his opponents tend to “die.” He won August elections with 99% of the vote after his main opponents were excluded.

In 2023, the Biden administration provided Rwanda with more than $175 million in foreign aid, which helped sustain Kagame’s rule.

Kagame was being rewarded for helping to safeguard control over the rich mineral resources of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Uganda was also rewarded for helping to open up the DRC. In 2023, the Biden administration provided it with more than $530 million in foreign aid, and in 2022, $790,252,008.

Since 1986, Uganda has been ruled by Yoweri Museveni with an iron fist. Abandoning a youthful Marxism, Museveni has favored U.S. corporations and allowed the U.S. to establish military bases directly in Uganda while invading the DRC repeatedly with Rwanda.^[20]

In late July, Museveni cracked down brutally on anti-government protests, turning the opposition National Unity Platform (NUP) party into a “military barracks,” according to the BBC, and violently arresting party officials.^[21]

The response was reminiscent of neighboring Kenya, where another close U.S. ally, William Ruto, ordered a police crackdown on youth protesting an IMF dictated finance bill that was poised to raise costs on basic goods and impose more austerity measures. At least 60 people were reportedly killed in the crackdown, 600+ were injured, and police were accused of engaging in abductions and torture.^[22]

Secretary of State Antony Blinken commended Ruto afterwards “for his commitment to direct police to refrain from using violence of any kind against protesters,” which was patently false.

Mere weeks before the protests Ruto had been granted a formal state dinner in Washington, the first by an African leader in 16 years.

Biden named Kenya as a major non-NATO ally of the U.S., because it had had a) kept a force of 3,500 troops in Somalia which worked with the Somali army to hunt down Al-Shabab, b) signed a deal allowing for U.S. military advisors into Kenya, and c) provided troops for a Western-backed African peacekeeping force in Eastern Congo whose purpose was to stabilize the region so Western corporations could plunder its mineral wealth.

The Biden administration wanted to make Kenya into a manufacturing hub for U.S. companies looking to relocate out of China and to sustain control over Kenya’s ports, which could be used to strangle Chinese trade.^[23]

Kenya was valued furthermore for hosting Camp Simba base in Manda Bay, a hub for U.S. drones and surveillance to project its control across the Indian Ocean, the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea, particularly over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a chokepoint critical to securing global energy.

The above strategic considerations trumped any commitment to upholding democracy or human rights, which was used by the Biden administration, like its predecessors, as a rhetorical device that was devoid of real meaning or substance.

More Hypocrisy

The Biden administration hypocrisy with regards to human rights was evident in his advancing “defense ties” with India, China’s traditional rival, designed to make India one of the largest recipients of U.S. military aid behind only Israel and Egypt.

India was ruled by Hindu nationalist, Narendra Modi, who has long supported the brutal oppression of Muslims in Indian-occupied Kashmir and ruled autocratically.

In neighboring Pakistan, Donald Lu, the Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs^[24], told the Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., Asad Majeed Khan, that Imran Khan—considered too independent and close to China—had to be removed as Prime Minister in a parliamentary vote of no confidence, otherwise there would be consequences for Pakistan.

Khan’s replacement, former Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, was a right-wing businessman from a corrupt, oligarchic family who promised a “paradise for investors” and reversed Khan’s opposition to the war in Ukraine.

With Khan gone, the Biden administration was also able to broker a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after Pakistan came to an agreement to purchase arms for use by the Ukrainian military in its war with Russia.

In August 2024, Indian journalist M.K. Bhadrakumar accused Lu of being “the hatchet man” of “Bangladesh’s color revolution,” which ousted the independent-minded Sheikh Hasina. She was replaced by Muhammed Yunus, a neoliberal darling of the global financial elite whose Grameen Bank had promoted microfinance schemes that plunged poor peasants into debt.^[25]

M.K. Bhadrakumar wrote in The Deccan Herald that “Hasina’s stubborn refusal to join [the] Quad [anti-China alliance including India, Japan, U.S. and Australia] was probably the clincher [in her removal]. With the failure of the color revolution in Thailand, the stalemate in the insurrection in Myanmar, and Chinese consolidation in Sri Lanka and the Maldives—Bangladesh’s importance to the Western strategy in the region is second to none.”^[26]

A Sleeper Monroe Doctrine

Historian Greg Grandin wrote after the Biden administration’s first year that it was pursuing “something like a sleeper Monroe Doctrine in Latin America, carrying forward many of Trump’s worst policies.”

Characteristically, Biden increased funding for the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which maintained dozens of bases across the continent, and targeted leftist regimes for regime change.

The sanctions that Biden imposed on socialist Venezuela were much harsher than what Trump imposed (the latter resulting in a 72% decline in living standard and 31% increase in mortality rates).^[27]

Along with Venezuela, the Biden administration extended sanctions on Nicaragua in an attempt to weaken the left-leaning regime of Daniel Ortega, whom the U.S. could never forgive for leading Nicaragua’s 1979 revolution against U.S.-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza.

The sanctions targeted Nicaragua’s gold industry, Nicaragua’s top export, and made it more difficult for Nicaragua to obtain international loans.

In another relic from the past, Biden extended the six-decade long U.S. blockade on Cuba, whose aim is to weaken Cuba’s economy by restricting trading opportunities and barring imports onto the island.

Biden had long courted the vote of the Cuban-American lobby and, as a U.S. senator in 1996, supported tightening the embargo through the Helms-Burton Act, which Fidel Castro called a “shameful” bill paving the way for “economic genocide.”

When anti-government protests broke out against the Cuban government in July 2021, they received support from the Biden administration. That year, the NED provided $5,538,193 in grants to opposition media and political groups in Cuba seeking regime change and in support of efforts to privatize Cuba’s largely state-run economy.

Biden’s double standard when it comes to human rights was apparent in his embrace of Honduras’s narco-dictator Juan Orlando Hernández, who has now been sentenced to 45 years in a U.S. prison on narcotics trafficking charges.

When Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) sponsored a bill in February 2021 imposing sanctions on Hernández for corruption and human rights abuses and advocating the suspension of U.S. security assistance to Honduras and export licenses for coveted defense articles and munitions items sold to the Honduran police and military, Biden administration officials failed to support the bill—which lacked the numbers to pass—and refused to condemn the human rights violations carried out by U.S.-subsidized security forces in Honduras.^[28]

In Peru, the Biden administration generated rare dissent from within his own party by extending military assistance to the right-wing coup regime of Dina Boularte, which is facing a genocide inquiry for ordering the suppression of anti-government protests, leaving over 70 people dead.

Rep Susan Wild (D-PA) wrote in a letter to Biden signed by 19 other House Democrats that Peruvian security forces had indiscriminately responded to the outbreak of protests with “almost no regard for protestors’ human rights, classifying the protesters as ‘terrorists’ and limiting citizens’ right of movement.”^[29]

In October, The Intercept ran an article on Boularte that referred to her as the “world’s least popular president,” noting that she had a mere 5 percent approval rating. Joe Burt, an associate professor at George Mason’s Schar School of Public Policy was quoted in the article stating that “the political system [in Peru] has been captured by a bunch of thieves and they’re running the country into the ground.”^[30] With the backing of the Biden administration.

In El Salvador, the Biden administration expanded foreign assistance and provided police aid and military equipment to the government headed by Nayib Bukele, a right-wing authoritarian whom human-rights groups accused of carrying out arbitrary detentions, forced disappearances, and torture. Bukele locked up thousands of innocent people in an overzealous war on gangs reminiscent of that of Rodrigo Duterte in the Phillipines.^[31]

More skulduggery was deployed in Bolivia, where the socialist government led by Luis Arce accused the Biden administration of waging a “hybrid war” against it that was designed to restore the power of Bolivia’s far-right.

At stake was the world’s largest reserves of lithium a critical mineral considered one of the strategic priorities of the Pentagon, serving the interests of the main global investment funds pouring heavy support to the Biden administration: BlackRock, Vanguard, Fidelity and State Street in its geopolitical and geo-economic war for markets and natural resources against China.^[32]

In Haiti, the Biden administration ousted the Prime Minister it had helped impose on the Haitian people, and provided armored vehicles driven by Kenyan soldiers who were subcontracted to help uphold the new U.S. backed regime of Gary Conille.

The pretext for military intervention was the menace posed by “armed gangs,” some of which were led by revolutionary figures^[33] seeking to transform the corrupt ruling order and liberate Haiti from the scourge of neo-colonialism.

The U.S. had helped precipitate the growth of the gangs by enforcing years of neo-liberal austerity on Haiti, and by allowing for the pillage of the country’s resources by multinational corporations.

An Iconic Figure of America’s Second Gilded Age

Following Biden’s defeat of Donald Trump in November 2020, I wrote an article entitled “Beware of the Hawk,” warning about what a new Biden administration would portend.

In that article I reminded readers that, for the past half-century, Biden had been at the forefront of the U.S. warfare state supporting wars of aggression, often under the guise of humanitarian intervention.

After Biden announced his withdrawal from the 2024 election cycle, The New York Times, predictably, ran columns suggesting that Biden was some kind of hero. Even on the left, many displayed a soft spot for Biden by praising his domestic record.

However, Biden’s atrocious foreign policy cannot be separated from his domestic policy record.

For one thing, the nearly trillion-dollar military budget prevented his administration from enacting adequate social programs to address the major ills gripping the U.S., including skyrocketing health care and education costs, anemic public transportation, rampant homelessness and drug addiction, and massive public debt. ^[34]

Additionally, the authoritarian methods used to advance imperial power abroad have increasingly come home as the U.S. evolves ever more into an authoritarian police state.

Journalist Caitlin Johnson wrote that “propaganda, censorship, the war on the press, banning TikTok, consolidating the collaboration of Silicon Valley with U.S. government agencies, police crackdowns on campus demonstrators, and quashing political dissent are all outward manifestations of the [Biden administration’s] agenda to manipulate the way the public thinks about what’s happening in the world.” 

Some of the new measures to bolster police powers and crackdown on civil liberties were adopted in the name of fighting Domestic Violence Extremism (DVE).^[35]

While right-wing extremism is a genuine problem in the U.S., there is evidence that the Biden administration has deliberately inflated this threat using deceitful tactics reminiscent of the ways U.S. leaders have deliberately inflated the threat of international terrorism to justify the expansion of the military-police industrial complex.

Biden ultimately will go down in history as an iconic political figure who embodies the deep-rooted corruption of America’s second Gilded Age with people like Dick Cheney, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Donald J. Trump.

Supported from the beginning of his career by large corporations like DuPont and the MBNA bank and credit card company, Biden will be remembered as an unprincipled war hawk who perpetrated destructive foreign policies that portend an end of the American Century.

Biden’s mid-term foreign policy report card—in which he also received an “F”—can be found here. An assessment of Biden’s first year can be read here.

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1. 
   

   D.D. Guttenplan, “Keeping It Real,” The Nation, June 2024, 4. ↑

   
   
2. 
   

   Dan Steinbock, The Fall of Israel: The Degradation of Israel’s Politics, Economy and Military (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2024), 232. During the first five months of the war, the Biden administration approved over 100 military sales to Israel yet publicly disclosed only two. Since most of those arms were purchased with U.S. taxpayer money through the U.S. Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program, American citizens effectively funded most of the carnage in Gaza. The financial flows that made possible the destruction compromised $3.8 billion U.S. annual military aid, plus over $1.4 billion to buy more weapons. ↑

   
   
3. 
   

   Natasha Bertrand, “US to Deploy about 100 troops to operated advanced anti-missile system in Israel amid heightened tensions,” CNN, October 13, 2024; Nausica Renner, “Biden’s Strikes in Yemen Are Unconstitutional, Bipartisan Members of Congress Say,” The Intercept, January 11, 2024. ↑

   
   
4. 
   

   A U.S. spy company, Palantir, was contracted to provide battlefield intelligence to the Ukrainian military. To carry out the war in Ukraine, the Biden administration announced the establishment of a permanent military base in Poland, whose right-wing, anti-Semitic government received massive amounts of U.S. weaponry and was a key conduit for arms shipments to Ukraine. ↑

   
   
5. 
   

   In mid August, Germany issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian, identified as Volodymyr Z. in the bombing of the Nord Stream II pipeline. Initially, the Biden administration had blamed the Russians for bombing their own pipeline. ↑

   
   
6. 
   

   Biden’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, see here. The 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed by Biden authorizes $15.5 billion for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, a military buildup in the Pacific aimed at countering China.↑

   
   
7. 
   

   Eli Friedman, Kevin Lin, Rosa Liu and Ashley Smith, China in Global Capitalism: Building International Solidarity Against Imperialist Rivalry (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2024), 114, 115. ↑

   
   
8. 
   

   Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova said that the nuclearization of the U.S.-South Korea military alliance “will do nothing but escalate tensions, whip up crises in the security sphere and provoke an arms race.” Dr. Simone Chun of CodePink noted during a Massachusetts Peace Action webinar that 80% of South Koreans oppose the degree to which President Yoon—who won elections last year by a razor-thin margin and enjoys only a 19% popularity rating—has capitulated to Washington’s imposition of an anti-China policy on South Korea. Donald Trump had adopted a better policy than Biden toward the Koreas, suspending regular U.S.-South Korea military drills, holding talks with Kim Jong Un and drawing down military cooperation with South Korea as a sign of goodwill toward Pyongyang. ↑

   
   
9. 
   

   China in Global Capitalism, ed. Friedman et al., 114. ↑

   
   
10. 
    

    By 2024, the budget of the Space Force reached $30.3 billion, a 15% increase over 2023 and a doubling of the budget from 2020. Ukraine has served as a vital testing ground for space-based satellites and sensors that have been used by the Ukrainians to track Russian troop movements and assist in navigation, mapping and electronic warfare, and positioning systems that guide precision weapons and drones. ↑

    
    
11. 
    

    In February and June 2021, the Biden administration—illegally and without congressional authorization—bombed targets in Syria near the Iraqi border allegedly targeting pro-Iranian militias. Syria’s Foreign Ministry told the official SANA news agency that the air raids—which killed a child on the Iraqi side of the border—demonstrated “the recklessness of U.S. policies and the need for Washington to withdraw its aggressor forces” from the region. ↑

    
    
12. 
    

    According to UNICEF, close to 13,000 children were killed or injured in the Syrian conflict. More than 609,000 children under the age of five had their growth stunted by chronic under-nutrition; 12 million Syrians did not have enough food to meet daily dietary needs; 6.9 million people were internally displaced; and 90% of Syrians were estimated to be living in poverty. The sanctions, it should be noted, were based on fraudulent pretexts, having been imposed after a government defector, Caesar, leaked thousands of photographs alleging torture of civilians by Assad’s security forces. Nearly half the leaked photos actually showed government soldiers who had been killed and victims of car bombs and other war-related violence, and many others showed soldiers who had died in combat—not government torture centers. Caesar’s identity was also unclear and he was suspected of being in the employ of the CIA. ↑

    
    
13. 
    

    In April 2022, the Biden administration offered AH-1Z attack helicopters for $997 million to Nigeria. Political analyst William Hartung concluded that “U.S. arms and training [in Nigeria] had not only failed to contribute to a significant reduction in terrorism, but have also helped create the conditions for terrorism to persist, and in some cases even thrive.”  ↑

    
    
14. 
    

    Journalist Nick Turse estimated as of June 1, 2024, that the U.S. had 3,800 troops in Jordan, 2,300 in Saudi Arabia, 900 in Syria and 75 in Lebanon. Turse reported that at least 14 of the U.S. military bases in the Middle East were attacked. He writes, “since October 17, 2023, alone, a mix of one-way attack drones, rockets, mortars, and close-range ballistic missiles have led to at least 145 U.S. casualties—troops and contractors—at regional outposts including three service members killed in a January drone attack on Tower 22, a facility in Jordan.” ↑

    
    
15. 
    

    Steinbock, The Fall of Israel, 359. ↑

    
    
16. 
    

    Niger was valued strategically because it is rich in uranium and because its location on planned pipelines intended to bring oil from neighboring Nigeria to Europe. AFter a military coup toppled the French aligned government in Niger crowd in Niger waved Russian flags, carried placards celebrating freedom from French rule and chanted support for the Wagner Group (Russian mercenaries) whose founder, Evgeny Prigozhin praised the “struggle of the people of Niger against the colonialists [France and the U.S.]” A.B. Abrams, China and America’s Spheres of Influence: Tipping Points to Decide a New Cold War (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Company, 2024), 216. ↑

    
    
17. 
    

    U.S. intelligence directly assisted in the assassinations of Russian generals. ↑

    
    
18. 
    

    From 2021 to 2024, the funds that the CIA devoted to China tripled, coming to amount to 20% of the agency’s budget. ↑

    
    
19. 
    

    In 2024, the Biden administration lifted a ban on the U.S. selling offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, authorizing the sale of air-to-ground munitions to the Kingdom. ↑

    
    
20. 
    

    Museveni has earned the disgust of many people around the world for supporting discriminatory laws against gays. Voter fraud in the January 2021 election had prompted the State Department to announce visa restrictions on Ugandan government officials. For more details on Museveni’s reign of terror in Uganda, see Helen Epstein, Another Fine Mess: America, Uganda, and the War on Terror (New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2017). ↑

    
    
21. 
    

    Edwin Mugisha, who works in Kampala, told Reuters that Kampala resembled a “war zone,” in the face of Museveni’s crackdown, which the Biden administration was silent about. Museveni’s designated successor and son, Muhoozi Museveni, was trained at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, “the intellectual center” of the U.S. Army. Earlier in 2024, he held a meeting with the U.S. Defense Attaché to Uganda, Lt. Col. Chris Noumba to discuss “strengthening the traditional strong relationship between the UPDF and US military.” ↑

    
    
22. 
    

    Prior to the protests, a Maoist politician Harris Ochieng, was shot dead and 37 of its members were detained. Ruto started his career as a thug employed by the Western-backed dictator Daniel Arap Moi to terrorize the opposition. He was more recently charged by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for his involvement in Kenya’s 2007-2008 post-election violence, playing a crucial role in planning and organizing violence that that left over 1,200 dead and over 600,000 internally displaced. ↑

    
    
23. 
    

    $700 billion in trade passes annually through Mombasa and other Kenyan ports. U.S. ambassador to Kenya Meg Whitman, former CEO of Hewlett Packard and EBay, is particularly close to Ruto and envisions Kenya being transformed into an African Silicon Valley. ↑

    
    
24. 
    

    Known as a regime change specialist, Lu was a protégé of Frank Wisner Jr., son of the legendary CIA operative by the same name. After an assignment in India in the 1990s, Lu went on to Kyrgyzstan (2003-2006) where he supported the 2005 “Tulip revolution,” which resulted in the downfall of President Askar Akayev, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to Bhadrakumar, Lu subsequently helped mastermind color revolutions, which led to regime changes in Albania, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and, of course, Pakistan. ↑

    
    
25. 
    

    Preparing the groundwork for the color revolution, in 2021, the NED—a CIA offshoot specializing in propaganda and political subversion—provided grants worth $3,910,413 to Bangladeshis. Much of the funding went to civil society pro-democracy groups to help them build opposition to the Hasina regime by spotlighting its human rights abuses and alleged corruption and by mobilizing opposition to the government, including through social media. Netra News is a Swedish-based news agency financed by the NED, which supported the opposition Bangladeshi Nationalist Party (BNP) and served as a cheerleader for the protest movement and Yunus’ ascension to power while calling for Hasina’s resignation. ↑

    
    
26. 
    

    The Biden administration covertly armed rebel forces in Myanmar seeking to destabilize the country and undermine the pro-Chinese military rulers. ↑

    
    
27. 
    

    See Anya Parampil, Corporate Coup: Venezuela and the End of U.S. Empire (New York: OR Books, 2024).

    
    

    The aim of Venezuela’s socialists was to restore Venezuela’s economic sovereignty and combat poverty by using oil revenues from nationalized industry to institute social programs. In October 2021, the U.S. extradited one of Maduro’s close advisers, Alex Saab, from Cape Verde on charges of money laundering and links to Hezbollah in what Maduro considered an act of international kidnapping. [NOTE: Should it mention that Saab was finally released in December 2023?] ↑

    
    
28. 
    

    Biden deepened intelligence sharing with the Honduran military and police under Hernández. Biden also forged warm relations with Colombia’s right-wing President Iván Duque, with whom he pledged greater security cooperation. Duque’s regime brutally suppressed a national strike that broke out in April 2021 after taxes were increased on working-class people but not large corporations. ↑

    
    
29. 
    

    Particular outrage was expressed over the Peruvian security forces’ invasion of student dormitories in San Marcos, where they hurled racist insults at indigenous students and forced female students to strip naked. Over 200 students were arrested. Boularte’s coup ousted leftist Pedro Castillo who was accused of trying to dissolve Peru’s Congress. The Biden administration praised Boularte’s efforts in allegedly restoring calm and seeking a political solution in the face of unrest. U.S. Ambassador Lisa Kenna sent a message of support by announcing an additional $8 million in U.S. support for coca eradication efforts in the remote Upper Huallaga valley in the midst of the unrest, and met with the defense minister and other Cabinet members. ↑

    
    
30. 
    

    The author of the article, Noah Hurowitz, wrote that Boularte “made some of the most disliked world leaders—South Korea’s Yoon Suk-yeol, with 16 percent approval, or France’s Emmanuel Macron, with 18 percent—look like prom kings.” ↑

    
    
31. 
    

    Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern (D) said that there was no equivalent in Latin America to the levels of abuses taking place under Bukele’s war on crime, “not even during the worst years of military dictatorship.” According to Human Rights Watch, between March and November 2022, El Salvador’s prison population increased from 30,000 to 90,000 detainees.Mass incarceration under Bukele has aggravated historically poor conditions in detention, including extreme overcrowding, violence, and poor access to goods and services essential to rights, such as food, drinking water, and health care. Some of the few people who were released from detention reported inhumane conditions and, in some cases, torture and other forms of ill-treatment. According to Salvadoran authorities, 90 people died in custody during the state of emergency. Authorities have failed to meaningfully investigate these deaths. In some cases, detainees who died in prison did not receive access to the medication they needed, family members said. Human rights Watch wrote that “widespread human rights violations were enabled by President Bukele’s swift dismantling of democratic institutions since taking office in 2019, which has left virtually no independent government bodies that can serve as a check on the executive branch or ensure redress for victims of abuse.” ↑

    
    
32. 
    

    Arce has maintained national sovereignty in lithium production and made agreements with russian and Chinese companies which displeased the U.S. In March 2023, during a conference of the U.S. House of Representatives, the head of the U.S. Southern Command, Laura Richardson, said that the lithium triangle, formed by Argentina, Chile and Bolivia, is treated as a matter of “national security over the our back yard.” ↑

    
    
33. 
    

    Jimmy Chérizier is viewed by many as a key such figure. ↑

    
    
34. 
    

    Stefan Moore in “The Real Joe Biden,” Consortium News, August 5, 2024 details the negative consequences of Biden’s conservative economic policies. He emphasizes that Biden a) abandoned child tax credits that promised to reduce child poverty, causing child poverty to double between 2021 and 2024; b) failed to renew federal benefits for families to afford food, housing and other needs; c) refused to pursue a single-payer health care system; d) refused to try and support a $15 minimum wage; e) only minimally invested in public infrastructure despite boasts to the contrary. Moore documents obscene poverty levels in Biden’s America, which can be attributed in part to the prioritization of military spending over social welfare programs. According to the World Socialist Website, a central plank of Biden’s domestic economic policy was “curbing wage growth through higher interest rates, austerity measures and working with union bureaucracy to block or limit strikes.” Biden at the same time refused to impose any tax increases on the wealthy, with the average billionaire paying just 8.2% in taxes in his corporate friendly administration. This while the broad mass of the population was crushed by inflation. ↑

    
    
35. 
    

    Throughout his career, Biden had an atrocious record on civil liberties, having bragged about writing the USA Patriot Act and writing sweeping crime bills that led to the scourge of mass incarceration. Biden was also a key father of the War on Drugs and author of the 1995 the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act,following the Oklahoma City bombing that set the groundwork for the USA Patriot Act. It provided a $500 million windfall for the FBI and curtailed habeas corpus rights by giving the feds more access to private bank accounts and empowered the Secretary of State with the ability to establish a list of foreign terrorist organizations. First proposed by CIA agent Theodore Shackley, the legislation allowed “no knock” searches, expanded use of wiretaps, and made it easier for illegally seized evidence to be used in court and for the military to intervene in domestic situations deemed a national security threat. ↑

    
    

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