The US Secretary of State Tony Blinken got 10 minutes with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov last week, sidelines of the G-20. The first meeting since Russia invaded Ukraine, Blinken raised Ukraine, Russia rejoining the New START Nuclear Arms Treaty – which they just quit, and Russia holding a US Marine. What did Blinken get? Nothing. Why? The Biden team is negotiating from weakness.
Ronald Reagan, who brought the Soviet Union down, stood by “Peace through Strength.” By this he meant you do not beg, borrow, overpromise, underdeliver, cower, or courtesy to an adversary. You do not beg for meetings as Blinken did in China, Biden did with Saudis, and now Blinken did with Lavrov.
The formula is clear, simple, effective. As Reagan said in 1986: “We know that peace is the condition under which mankind was meant to flourish. Yet peace does not exist of its own will. It depends on us, on our courage to build it and guard it and pass it on to future generations. George Washington’s words may seem hard and cold today, but history has proven him right again and again. ‘To be prepared for war,’ he said, ‘is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.’”
Not only has the Biden team disparaged US defense, homeland security, and law enforcement budgets, morale, readiness, recruiting, retention, ship building, carrier aircraft replenishment, and strategic planning, they have signaled a lack of political will, awareness of real threats.
Specifically, while they push money at Ukraine – for which there is no oversight – they signal no intent to bring Russia to terms by demanding of China they back off support for Russia. As China dumps direct and indirect aid on Russia, including drones, Biden does nothing. Russia sees that.
Instead, Biden increases trade with China, increases US dependence on the country, refusing to demand accountability for what even his own FBI and Energy Departments admit was COVID’s “likely” China origins, blithely excusing China.
Biden failed to punish China for supporting Russia’s war Ukraine, including at the UN. But that is just the latest. Biden has been China’s doormat, excusing egregious human rights violations as cultural differences, allowing trade distortions, currency manipulation, intellectual property theft, illegal militarization of shipping lanes and space, military operations to intimidate Taiwan (and our regional allies), and last week nearly downing a US surveillance plane in international waters.
In short, Biden – and Blinken – have offered little or no genuine pushback against China for supporting Russia, or for offending countless international law provisions, from release, inaction, deception, and suppression of critical information tied to spread of the Wuhan virus, and China’s “likely” responsibility for continuing global devastation via COVID-19, to military violations.
So, when Blinken “asks” Lavrov to please – with a cherry – consider negotiating peace with Ukraine, rejoining the dead New Start treaty – which is useless as a limitation on ICBMs if China does not also join it, which is why Trump pushed the three-way option and refused to extend it – and return of a US Marine held by Russia – Lavrov gave him nothing.
In the end, geopolitics and diplomacy are just human nature, human interactions taken to another level. If your leaders say what they mean and mean what they say, they are heard. If they are true word, insist you be the same, and deliver consequences for bad acts, including hammering your allies for supporting your bad acts, things start to change.
The principle is elementary – but apparently too much for Biden’s team to process, accept, or act upon with conviction: Negotiation from strength wins, from weakness fails, period. If we want action from Russia, we need to bring China around with consequences.
Truthfully, chances of this are narrow since the other shoe has fallen. Biden negotiates from weakness with China about China, not just about supporting Russia. The other Reagan principle is this: Stand for something, or you stand for nothing.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
Just as in the business world, negotiating from a position of strength usually achieves far better results for the person or company with the stronger position and means. You have better leverage to exact the terms and conditions you want in any given business deal or interaction with the other party. When you are negotiating from a position of weakness, you rarely end up with what you want and frequently have to settle for whatever the other side is willing to give you. If the other side decides they even want to give you anything at all. The weaker your position, the less favorable the terms are that you will receive on any given deal or interaction. Negotiating from a position of weakness is essentially begging for scraps, instead of a mutually beneficial arrangement.
Diplomacy, from my perspective, is nothing more than governments doing the same dance as businesses do every single day in the private sector, except the stakes are usually broader and impact whole nations. If not the entire world in the case of the United States and those it interacts with. All the same principles apply, just over a different set of potential negotiating points and stakes.
The Biden team, the entire Cabinet, not just Blinken is incredibly or intentionally incompetent to begin with. People selected to serve in their respective positions within the administration for their allegiance to both the Party’s socialist / Marxist ideology and whatever check boxes they happen to tick off in terms of identity politics. None were selected based on merit or competency, as evidenced by the consistently bad or severely substandard results achieved across the board.
Every negotiation starts with the United States willing to give up something for nothing in return. Every meeting, from the diplomacy perspective, seems to be about essentially begging the other side to toss us a few scraps in exchange for us handing them whatever they want plus several billion or a few hundred billion dollars to boot. Case in point, the Team Biden attempt to date to get back into the horrible Iran Nuclear Deal that Blinken was a part of under Obama. That’s not negotiating to achieve a mutually beneficial agreement. That is groveling for whatever the other side is willing to hand us in exchange for what is usually outrageous terms and conditions, while we also hand them a whole lot of taxpayer dollars and they chant “Death to America”. Every diplomatic negotiation we seem to have with every other nation over the last 2 years seems to echo the same basic game plan. We start by begging and positioning ourselves as weak and open to almost anything the other side may want. Then we go downhill from there.
So, it is NOT any surprise the Russians gave so little time and no real prospect for any future movement to Blinken in his last meeting. Why should they? If Team Biden holds true to form, Blinken will go crawling back to Lavrov with an offer to give them something for nothing in return from them. Maybe it will be sanctions relief. Maybe it will be something else. The Russians know they are dealing with incompetent fools that will ultimately offer to hand them almost anything they want in exchange for a “foreign policy win” ahead of the 2024 elections. It’s just a matter of letting Team Biden sweat over the next several months, until Blinken comes crawling back on his knees begging for something, anything that can be spun into that “foreign policy win” that Biden and the Democrats can claim going into 2024.
Biden is guilty of doing the same things that China is doing. Why then would he punish China? He’s guilty of the same inaction, deception and suppression of information regarding the origins of covid. I predict that ultimately it will be proven that covid was an intentional biological attack by the CCP.
Abyss Echo Chamber; Like an airplane hanger without any airplanes, railroads without viable transportation, press conferences without any answers. Biden & Company is just a trademark; without any trade. In effect, its lost in the Stargate Of A Black Hole In Uranus. God Bless & Bring Back The United States of America!
Been so since Day 1
This administration is a disgrace to this country, How the hell Biden got elected is beyond me, but I know I had the COMMON SENSE to vote for Donald Trump.
Biden and Obama before him set the stage for embarrassing and disparaging our own country to all others. Our adversaries, especially, must be laughing out loud and more importantly deciding next steps THEY can take against us. Blinken is a sap, Biden, a total failure at everything he’s done in his lifelong career (except he has back slapping and glad-handing down pat, the only reason he wasn’t kicked to the curb ages ago) and he’s perfected grifting with his Biden Family Syndicate — though one must recognize that he never was the brains of that operation.
Brandon stands four destroying America. Period. No joke.
How sad, we have Winken (Harris), Blinken (Sec of State and Nod (Biden) as the top three people in government. ????????
As long as the govt. feeds these Minaorites they will be in Dems. pockets. Kyle L.
That’s a “team?” Can hardly wait to cleanse the barn.
DICTATOR Beijing biden’s team is the MOST PATHETIC and COWARDLY in U.S. History.
It’s DISGUSTING.
People of the United States surrender now to China or suffer more.
Oh yeah Biden & his buddies have already surrendered us, they know all our military secrets & our nuke codes.
I’m really afraid America will not be able to survive another 20 months under this administration. The damage done in the in the last 26 months is unbelievable. Biden goes WOKE and America goes broke.
We should demand the federal government should replace all poll workers every election. to break
up the click. an demand an equal number of races be represnted
bidens’ are unsuccessful in every life endeavor except destroying America.
the day after the “2020 rig” C-span was taking caller reaction. a woman from Arizona called and said she voted for biden because fighting for our republic was stressing her out and needed a break. she went on to assert that socialism can’t happen overnight; it takes decades. i’ve often wondered since brandon’s inauguration if she remembers what she said on that call because people like her are responsible for the destruction of America since. people say they want our republic to continue but are unwilling wimps to fight like our founders did in order to keep it. we are losing our freedom every minute since 01/20/2021. welcome to the real world. the marxist-socialists haven’t taken a break yet. enjoy your socialism.
Everyone on the puppets team is weak. Name one that has accomplished one thing. Garland and Maroki with their open borders haha All jokes
BIDEN HAS DONE WHAT ALL CAREER POLITICANS DO THE BEST. THEY TEAR EVERYTHING APART AND THEN AS ELECTIONS GET CLOSER THEY START THROWING US A BONE. HE IS AT THAT STAGE NOW WHERE HE POINTS OUT ALL THESE ISSUES AND SAYS HE DOESNT KNOW HOW WE GOT INTO A DEPRESSION, BUT HE WILL FIX IT!!!
Dear God! Let us survive these idiots. None of Biden’s team has the sense God gave a goose. They are INSANE! He just gave the international women’s day award to a MAN!
They have an agenda to destroy the country the world economic forum Klaus Schwab is the Puppet Master. Biden wants to turn our sovereignty over to the United Nations. The country is in the worst shape I’ve seen it in in my 63 years of life. Biden and the Democrat Party must go or there won’t be America anymore it will be something completely different that none of us recognize not the country we grew up in and the country that we hope to leave for our children and grandchildren.
AMAC – explains why we are at the threshold of War-as opposed to the position we would be in today if Trump were leading our Country—PEACE thru POWER and STRENGTH
Disgusting!
It doesn’t take a genius to know what is wrong with America. Just take one look at Joe and Kamala and all the demo/socialist appointees to positions in government. Brains, skill, or experience are the last things to consider. You have to click the right buttons. Are you black, gay, trans-sexual, or any other kind of LGBT pervert?
What I don’t understand about the American people is there willingness to extend billions to Ukraine when we are nearly insolvent. Why they welcome people across our southern border that will be taking the food out of American babies mouths. I’m talking about the American mothers who have protected their little babies by not letting them play football, or join the military, working a job, ect. because they might have to actually do something with their lives and be productive, When food gets short, all these migrants we have let in will be getting food from the Biden administration, and stealing and looting from you mom’s that won’t be able to protect your babies. They can’t put their cell phones down long enough to secure food for themselves. When China takes over and puts your kids in work camps how are you going to feel then? This nation can not even fathom the reduced standard of living we are headed for because of the idiots that think they are trying to save the planet. Our imaginations can’t even comprehend how bad life will be when the U.S. falls. There won’t be one country come to our aid as we have done for so many others. These are the circumstances we are leaving our children, so,so, sad. But at least the democrats will be in charge when we go down. That is all that matters to them. They want to be in charge, no matter what the price.