Thirty-five years ago, the Cold War overshadowed U.S. foreign policy. It had only been four years since President Ronald Reagan declared the Soviet Union to be the “evil empire.” Then-Sen. Joe Biden was among the first Democrats to declare his candidacy to succeed Reagan, and he would soon become the first to drop out after a snowballing plagiarism scandal.
Today, an older Biden has achieved his ambition, but the past haunts. The Soviet Union may be gone in fact, but Russian President Vladimir Putin shows it is alive in spirit. While Biden’s words in his State of the Union address were his own, his intellectual dishonesty persisted. The Ukraine crisis overshadowed today’s gathering and dominated the first minutes of Biden’s speech. But, while Biden claimed success in rallying the free world, the reality is that he last night sought to appropriate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s heroism. It was plagiarism of credit rather than of words.
A year before Russia’s invasion, Zelensky warned about Russia’s growing menace. Biden ignored him and instead gave a green light to the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline, an energy project that empowered Russia at Europe’s expense. Then, as Russian forces massed on Ukraine’s borders, Biden’s team focused more on seeking Zelensky’s extraction than providing him the means to resist. The fact Zelensky refused to flee and picked up arms himself is what led Europeans and others to rally for freedom. Biden may declare Putin was wrong, but the reality is that behind the scenes, Biden’s team did everything possible to prove Putin right.
When Biden ended his first run for president, he acknowledged, “I’ve done some dumb things, and I’ll do dumb things again.” To Biden’s credit, he has kept that promise.
Consider the withdrawal from Afghanistan, a topic Biden ignored on Tuesday evening. True, nation-building in Afghanistan was expensive and unwise. Over the last five years, however, the Pentagon had finally found a formula by which a small number of U.S. troops deterred the worst outcomes at a cost not much more than the U.S. presence in Korea or Japan and with fewer U.S. deaths than from car crashes in Bethesda, Maryland.
Biden spoke about the danger of dictatorship and the importance of American resolve, but in Afghanistan, he failed the test. Had Biden stayed the course, the Taliban would neither be Kabul nor any provincial capital. The chaotic and humiliating withdrawal set dictators salivating from Pyongyang, North Korea, to Ankara, Turkey, and from Beijing to Moscow. It is almost certain the Taliban’s humiliation of the United States factored into Putin’s calculations today.
Two decades after President George W. Bush spoke of an “Axis of Evil,” Biden also ignored Iran. His only mention of Iranians was by mistake when he fumbled the word “Ukrainians.” Ignoring rogue regimes will not make their terror support disappear, nor will resourcing them with windfall sanctions relief and open investment.
The Ukrainian crisis also highlights the importance of energy security. And, yet, in the name of combating climate change, Biden has done more to undermine energy security than any recent president. If Biden follows the science, he must recognize climate change is overstated.
When models fail to predict accurately, politicians should not base policy upon them. Nevertheless, citing the justification of combating climate change, Biden has canceled support for both domestic energy production and that of U.S. allies such as Canada, Greece, Cyprus, and Israel. Even today, he seeks sanctions exceptions for Russian energy. Dampening prices by releasing gas from the strategic reserve is not synonymous with building true energy security. Evidently, in Biden’s logic, U.S. emissions cause climate change, but Russian emissions do not.
America is at its strongest when its foreign policy is bipartisan. Biden declared, “Freedom will always triumph over tyranny,” but freedom’s victory requires an end to White House equivocation and hindrance. The White House must stop subordinating freedom for Uyghur prisoners to win China’s support on climate change. Though it must be said Biden is right to pledge full defense of all NATO territory.
If there is a silver lining to the current crisis, it is that the specter of evil in the world has reminded Americans of what is at stake. University students in the U.S. should be ashamed to complain about the “violence” of microaggressions when their Ukrainian counterparts fight for life and liberty. Multipolarity will never bring peace — it means surrender of the liberal order.
Let us hope Biden has the wisdom to dispense with polarization, consult across the aisle, and seize the bipartisan moment.
Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
