Yeah, It's So Wacky, It Had To Come From Joe Himself

Following up on yesterday's post, I've found a few more data points that make me think Joe is actually driving key parts of foreign and military policy himself, although it's in the context of Robert Gates's assessment, "I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

On Ukraine, Seymour Hersh remarks on Substack,

President Biden’s foreign policy problems in the Middle East and Ukraine are daunting, especially in an election year, but the war between Russia and Ukraine could be nearing a military endgame, and not via negotiations. Vladimir Putin’s military is more entrenched inside Ukraine than ever, and the undermanned and under-equipped Ukraine military is facing a stalemate at best and the permanent loss of four oblasts. In essence, it is a defeat.

. . . Even amid a difficult and costly war that he initiated, Putin remains firmly in control of Russia, despite a series of Western sanctions and wishful thinking in Washington that its military expertise, weapons, and enthusiasm for the war would loosen his grip on power. Blindfolded by ideology, Biden wants the candy of regime change, but Putin has proven to be an iron-clad piñata.

It's difficult to parse out what Biden's strategic goala are here, except that there doesn't seem to have been any policy recalibration since early 2023, when the retired generals were still predicting Ukraine would retake Crimea by the end of the year. By November, with no progress on the battlefield, Zelensky canceled elections. At this point, although we hear of Joe shouting and cussing out his staff over the polls, we see no similar impatience over Ukraine.

Maybe he's just happy with things as they are. We still don't have a clear idea of who paid him for what in 2015 -- except that he seemed to work very closely with Victoria Nuland and several Ukrainian oligarchs, who seem to have worked to put us where we are now.

Then there's Gaza:

President Joe Biden’s plan for the U.S. military to construct an artificial port to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza puts U.S. troops at risk for political reasons, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

. . . However, key aspects of the plan remain undeveloped, including how the administration will ensure the safety of at least 1,000 U.S. troops involved in the mission, calling into question how deeply the administration thought through the plan before announcing it, experts told the DCNF.

“I think the administration is looking for a way to look like they’re increasing aid to Gaza, in some sense to placate their own domestic constituencies,” Michael DiMino, a fellow at the Defense Priorities think tank and former intelligence officer, told the DCNF. “It’s a terrible idea.”

. . . Experts said the plan appears rushed, leaving questions that should be answered already regarding security for U.S. and NGO personnel and the logistics of aid distribution without putting American boots on the ground.

As I noted yesterday, the plan seems so muddled that Prime Minister Netanyahu seems to think the only reasonable use for the port will be to evacuate Palestinians from Gaza, something he would likely appreciate, but the only foreseeable destination for the evacuees would have to be the US. Otherwise, the question remains open how US military and civilian personnel at the port would be protected in a war zone, and precisely what they are expected to accomplish, other than evacuate Palestinians.

Meanwhile, although historically the US has intervened to resolve crises in Haiti, nothing seems to be in the works this time around:

But if the arrival of a multinational security mission seems far off, any hopes for an American intervention appear to be the stuff of history books; US operations in Haiti have so far focused on evacuation flights for American citizens, an undertaking that only started Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the air above Port-au-Prince buzzes constantly with private flights for diplomats and the well-connected.

"Multinational security missions" have always been a euphemism for US intervention:

Headlines have reported that Haiti has requested intervention. This is inaccurate. It’s Haiti’s premier, Ariel Henry, who has requested it. Henry more or less appointed himself prime minister following last July’s assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. He has never had any sort of constitutional authority and indeed, is implicated in Moïse’s assassination. The people he claims to speak for revile him. His only constituency is outside the country. Over the past 15 months, the US has insisted that the opposition, a remarkably broad-based coalition of civil society leaders, activists and popular organizations, negotiate with him.

The last big intervention also began with a “request” by an unelected official. This led to a UN peacekeeping force called Minustah, brought in to “stabilize” Haiti after the US-backed removal of president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. It stayed for 13 years.

The one thing we can be sure of is that under Joe, there won't be any new ideas.