Key picks for Biden cabinet have long record advancing Washington’s wars
https://themilitant.com/2020/12/05/key-picks-for-biden-cabinet-have-long-record-advancing-washingtons-wars/
BY TERRY EVANS
Vol. 84/No. 49
December 14, 2020
Joe Biden, left, with Barack Obama and other officials, including
Secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken, back right, in White House
war room during 2011 U.S.-organized assassination of Osama bin Laden.
OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO BY PETE SOUZA
Joe Biden, left, with Barack Obama and other officials, including
Secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken, back right, in White House
war room during 2011 U.S.-organized assassination of Osama bin Laden.
Drawing on nominees with long records advancing U.S. military
interventions, Joe Biden appointed officials to his cabinet to defend
the interests of the ruling capitalist families abroad.
Biden — who chaired the Foreign Relations Committee when he was in the
Senate — championed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2002. He helped win
passage of the resolution that allowed President George Bush to organize
the bloody invasion and overturn the government. This has led to years
of war, disorder and crisis in the region.
Like President Donald Trump, Biden confronts the challenge of shoring up
the authority of the world’s dominant capitalist ruling class against
its rivals, as competition for markets and turf sharpen amid an economic
crisis for working people.
Biden named long-time aide Antony Blinken, a former Obama administration
official, as secretary of state. Blinken had backed Biden’s support for
the U.S. rulers’ occupation of Iraq, denounced Obama for not intervening
more aggressively in Syria’s civil war, and championed Washington’s
airstrikes on Libya.
Biden named former Obama officials Avril Haines, Jake Sullivan and Linda
Thomas-Greenfield as director of national intelligence, national
security adviser, and ambassador to the United Nations respectively.
Haines was the architect of Washington’s use of drone strikes under
Obama, strikes that killed thousands in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
“Biden brings back the establishment,” cheered a headline in the
Washington Post. Biden says his administration represents “the return of
American exceptionalism,” as the Financial Times puts it. That is, they
will fight to keep the U.S. rulers’ place as top dog in the imperialist
world.
During the campaign Biden castigated Trump as a threat to the liberal
world order for damaging alliances he says are key to upholding the U.S.
rulers’ dominant position. “Multilateralism is back,” Thomas-Greenfield
gloated on her appointment.
But under the impact of declining profit rates and mounting capitalist
competition, “multilateral” institutions meant to regulate the
imperialist world order — like the European Union, NATO and the World
Trade Organization — are increasingly coming apart.
Trump’s administration relied instead on unilateral sanctions to inflict
damage on governments that got in Washington’s way. Those who bore the
brunt of the punishing measures were working people in Cuba, Iran,
Venezuela and elsewhere.
Liberals always claim Republicans are the party of war and tools of the
“military-industrial complex.” But it was Democrat Harry Truman who
prosecuted the U.S. rulers’ war against the working people of North
Korea; and John F. Kennedy who organized the defeated Bay of Pigs
invasion of Cuba and, along with his successor Lyndon Johnson, massively
escalated Washington’s murderous war in Vietnam.
It was Barack Obama who said the Afghanistan war was the “right war” and
sent tens of thousands more troops there as cannon fodder in a conflict
that still rages today.
Also in front of the Biden team is the same intractable challenge faced
by successive previous administrations — how to counter the rising power
of Beijing. Blinken claims the new Biden team will be more effective in
pushing back the Chinese rulers’ growing economic and military clout.
One example of the bellicose rhetoric employed by Democrats was a
statement by Michele Flourney, one of the front runners to be Biden’s
secretary of defense. To be able to deter Beijing, she wrote in June,
Washington has to be able to “threaten to sink all of China’s military
vessels, submarines and merchant ships in the South China Sea within 72
hours.”
Recognition of Israel, a Palestinian state
Despite their hatred and contempt for Trump and his policies, some
liberal commentators are urging Biden not to reverse the initiatives
Trump has taken that led to the mutual recognition of Israel by the
governments of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, nor upend the
prospects of Saudi Arabia and other Arab governments doing the same.
The rulers in Bahrain, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, as well as in the U.S. and
Israel, share a common interest in pushing back the Iranian rulers’
growing use of their military forces to intervene in the region and its
continuing wars.
These pacts create better conditions for talks between the government of
Israel and Palestinian organizations that could lead to the mutual
recognition of Israel and of a Palestinian state. Steps in this
direction would be good for working people, breaking the cycle of bloody
conflicts and opening space for common struggle by workers and farmers
in Israel, Palestine and beyond.
Tehran reacted to the assassination of top Iranian nuclear scientist
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in Absard, Iran, Nov. 27, with anger, but no military
retaliation. Hoping the incoming Biden team might be pressured to reduce
sanctions in exchange for a renewed nuclear pact, the Iranian rulers
said they would wait before giving any response. The regime accused the
Israeli government of organizing a hit squad to carry out the attack.
Former Obama foreign policy aide Ben Rhodes called the attack “an
outrageous action aimed at undermining diplomacy between an incoming
U.S. administration and Iran.” He wasn’t outraged that an Iranian
scientist was murdered on the soil of his native country, but that it
might mess with Biden’s ability to scuttle Trump’s policies.
“Iranian leaders would be wise to wait for the return of responsible
American leadership on the global stage,” former CIA director and Biden
supporter John Brennan said.
Consistent with the CIA’s record over decades, Brennan’s “responsible
leadership” included targeting people, including U.S. citizens, for
assassination in drone strikes and managing the agency’s “enhanced
interrogation” programs, a code-word for torture.
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Carl Sagan
“Why do we put up with it? Do we like to be criticized? No, no scientist enjoys
it. Every scientist feels a proprietary affection for his or her ideas and
findings. Even so, you don’t reply to critics, Wait a minute; this is a really
good idea; I’m very fond of it; it’s done you no harm; please leave it alone.
Instead, the hard but just rule is that if the ideas don’t work, you must throw
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― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
