Advice For Biden If he Beats Trump. Foreign Affairs Journal

 

Biden's dilemma: Can he change course if he defeats Trump?

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
HEO/GED
6-23-24

I used to subscribe to Foreign Affairs, an important theoretical journal of the US ruling class oriented primarily to international relations. It’s an important journal for workers, socialists and other anti-capitalist forces who are politically active as it gives us an insight in to what our class enemies are thinking about the society they govern and its relation to the rest of the world.

 

I came across this article in it as I follow Arnaud Bertrand on Twitter @RnaudBertrand and he made some comments about it here. I have considerable respect for Mr. Bertrand’s writings particularly his stuff on China and he makes some very interesting observations about Rhodes’ article that are important as they reveal concerns among the ruling class about US foreign policy, that are important for us to know; but Rhodes is more realist than radical.

 

Rhodes confirms the Chinese view in particular that there is a new world order, a multi-polar world rather than a unipolar one that existed for a brief period after the collapse of Stalinism in the Soviet Union in 1989 and US imperialism became the sole global superpower. He points out that the misnamed War on Terror, ” emboldened autocrats, misallocated resources, fueled a global migration crisis, and contributed to an arc of instability from South Asia through North Africa.” China, Russia, particularly the larger economies of the global south like Brazil, India and other non-aligned, also hold this unipolar view to one degree or another.

Rhodes says that U.S. unconditional support for the Zionists assault on Gaza-----he refers to it as the, “Israeli military campaign”-----rather than a genocidal war, has led to a situation where, “American rhetoric about the rules-based international order has been seen around the world on a split screen of hypocrisy, as Washington has supplied the Israeli government with weapons used to bombard Palestinian civilians with impunity.”

 

What these comments and the general direction of the article point to is Rhodes’ recognition of objective reality, that the present trajectory of US foreign policy is heading toward the abyss.

 

Instead, Rhodes suggests that if Biden wins a second term he should pivot away from the, “Western-centric view that have caused his administration to make some of the same mistakes as its predecessors.”

 

“Americans are tired of wars…”, Rhodes adds, and this is undoubtedly true. I would argue with confidence that were it not the case that a small percentage of US families bear the brunt of the many predatory military excursions that are very profitable for the misnamed US defence industry, there would be a much more significant anti-war movement than we are witnessing today in response to the US backed horror in Gaza.

 

There will no doubt be a collective gasp among more hawkish, and I would say overconfident, sections of the US Bourgeoise at Rhodes’ suggestion that the Biden Administration, if he defeats Trump, “…should abandon the pursuit of primacy while embracing an agenda that can resonate with more of the world’s governments and people.”, and that, “…the most important thing that America can do in the world is detoxify its own democracy”

Millions of Americans would give a collective sigh of relief at Rhodes’ plans for another four years of Biden and the Democrats as we are all too familiar with the toxic nature of politics. The level of disgust at the US political system and its domination by the two big business parties results in fewer and fewer Americans bothering to vote at all. In the 2016 race, close to 100 million opted out of the game altogether.

 

Rhodes comments are evidence that there are more astute and reasonable voices in the US body politic that is also heavily populated with neo-fascists, Christian Nationalists, Zionists most of them, and racist demagogues longing for a return of the glorious South.

As the era of the domination of the two established capitalist parties that have dominated US society for over a century comes to an end, there are new forces entering the void and the forces on the right appear to be winning that race at this point. The force that has a huge potential to transform the situation, organized labor with some 14 million members, is held back by its leadership who are wedded to the Team Concept, an unholy marriage with capital in the economic and political arenas as the Democrats are the party of the trade union bureaucracy.

 

While Rhodes’ comments reflect a real concern about the future and a “new” period globally, even if he genuinely believes that the big powers, capitalist nation states, can co-exist in healthy competition, he’s living in a dream world.  He finishes by affirming that, “…  all human life matters equally…”  that all people no matter where we are, “….are entitled to live with dignity….” and that America “….must commit to in word and deed..” It’s not realistic.

 

Biden has supported the Genocide in Gaza because US capitalism has no other choice. The Zionist regime, atop a European colonial settler state, is the only friend the US has in the Middle East. And Biden has refused to rescind the sanctions the sexual predator Trump imposed on Cuba and Venezuela because the US ruling class sees Latin America as its back yard and its alone to exploit. The US will not abandoned primacy willingly, no hegemon does.

 

Capitalism is a system of war. They are driven to it by the rules of this system; it is a war to the death for the control ownership and distribution of our global society’s wealth and cannot be reformed; cannot be made human friendly.

 

Rhodes’ comments are important as they reveal a recognition among sections of the ruling class in the world’s most powerful economy, the hegemon as we say that produces almost half the world’s weapons of mass destruction, that things cannot continue in the old way and may genuinely want a nicer capitalism, a friendlier face. But we must recognize Rhodes’ view for the future is without doubt utopian.

 

The stakes are high Rhodes says. Whoever is president in the coming years will have to avoid global war. That is true, and there is a good chance that might work for a brief moment in time after great sacrifices are made.  But it will take great world events to change this tragic course capitalism has laid out that includes environmental catastrophe.  Only a transformation of society from one that presently sets production in motion based on private profit, to one that produces for social need; a global federation of democratic socialist states, can open a road to a better future for humankind. This is not utopian. It is a matter of human survival and the class to which Rhodes belongs will as a whole stand against this, will be our bitter enemies in the war for emancipation of the human race and the natural world that nurtures us.

 

*From the article: Ben Rhodes is a co-host of the podcast Pod Save the World and the author of After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made. From 2009 to 2017, he served as U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting in the Obama administration.