All the rubbish at top about sanitizing the world with "America is back" is worth peanuts until ASSANGE is out of prison.

See:

From James ONeill

When Joe Biden was elected United States president in November 2020, he promised a different approach to the foreign affairs policies pursued by his predecessor Donald Trump. Those promises were generally welcomed, although seasoned political watchers urged caution. The new President had a long history of involvement of the United States in foreign wars, and some people were sceptical that the leopard had really changed its spots.

Now, after Biden has been in the office for barely a month, sceptics look like being proven right. The evidence that the new Biden was very much a rerun of the old Biden becomes more apparent by the day in his conduct of foreign affairs.

Before leaving office, Trump had promised the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan by May of this year. He was silent on the fate of the US forces that were not part of the formal military establishment, and their numbers have actually increased through 2020. Nonetheless, the announcement was seen as a genuine effort by Trump to reduce US involvement in foreign wars.

That promise has now been abandoned by Biden. His reversal of Trump’s policy of drawing down the US military forces in Afghanistan was hardly surprising. As is typical of the United States mainstream media, the real reasons for the US change of heart remain unmentioned. United States troops are staying in Afghanistan for three principal reasons.

The first reason is to continue supporting the political leadership of the countries Prime Minister, who knows that he was on borrowed time in the eventuality of an actual United States withdrawal. He is really little more than the Mayor of Kabul, with the Taliban in effective control of more than 60% of the countryside. The Taliban for its part has softened its stance towards the education of the female population and they look like being able to retain at least some of the freedoms that group have won over the years of US occupation.

The second reason is Afghanistan’s geography. It shares borders with seven states, none of whom are United States allies and one, China, is perceived by the Biden administration as an unmitigated threat to continued United States hegemony in Asia. This factor is highly unlikely to change, despite the increasingly desperate United States attempts to shore up its position in Asia. Part of that desperation is manifesting itself in the United States’ revived attempts (first under the Obama administration that Biden served as vice president) to create an “Asian NATO”, by fostering an anti-China alliance of the United States, India, Japan and Australia.

That measure is having only limited success. Japan’s trade with China increased by 20% in January over January 2020, and notwithstanding the long and difficult China-Japan relationship, the latter knows which side of the bread is buttered and will ultimately choose economic success over the increasingly dubious advantages of the United States alliance, first imposed in the wake of World War II and remaining very much a case of senior versus junior partner in the succeeding 75 years.

Given a free choice, the polls increasingly suggest that Japan sees its economic future linked to China’s growing strength rather than that of the fading United States. Japan also faces a severe demographic crisis, with there being 500,000 more deaths than births in 2019. For a country historically reluctant to accept immigration as a solution, the demographic outlook remains increasingly serious.

That demography will temper any Japanese ambitions for military interventionism.

The third reason the Biden administration is staying in Afghanistan is the one factor almost never discussed in the mainstream media: the critical role in that country place in the provision of 90% of the world heroin supply, almost 70% of which is exported under CIA control, providing that organisation with a highly lucrative quantum of “off the books” income, as well as enormous power in the exercise of that control.

The second area where the Biden administration is unlikely to change significantly from the Trump administration is over the status of Iran. Biden has made noises about re-joining the JCPOA that the Trump administration abandoned as part of its unqualified attacks upon the Iranian economy. Less well publicised is the fact that the Biden administration is making its re-joining the agreement contingent on policy changes by Iran. The latter country, unsurprisingly, has made clear it has no intention of following any American conditions attached to the latter’s re-entry to the agreement. The main precondition sought by the Americans is for Iran to cease the greater enrichment of its uranium, currently up to 20%.

This ambition has of course triggered Israeli alarm about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. If one was to believe the Israelis, who have been repeating the same mantra for years, Iran is on the verge of producing a nuclear weapon. Not only is there absolutely no evidence of any Iranian ambition to go nuclear armed, such Israeli protestations are never counted with the obvious question: why should Israel retain a monopoly among Middle Eastern countries of being uniquely nuclear armed. It is the West’s refusal to confront that reality that makes all of their statements about Iran so hypocritical.

Iran has no incentive to succumb to United States demands and is highly unlikely to do so. It has in recent years forged ever closer links to both Russia and China, neither of whom share the West’s obsession with Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions. The three countries recently engaged in their first ever joint naval military exercises. That relationship is expected to grow in future years.

The Iranians are also acutely aware that Biden plans to increase United States military involvement in Iraq, with most of the 10,000 proposed extra troops stationed close to the Iranian border. Again, this is a departure from the Trump administration policy. Although one would never view the United States policy toward Iran as friendly under Trump, it was not accompanied by overt military moves such as those being undertaken by the Biden administration. The United States simply ignored a January 2019 demand by the Iraqi parliament that US troops should leave their country, and there is nothing in the words or actions of the Biden administration to reveal a better acknowledgement of the legitimate demands of the sovereign Iraqi government. The Iraqi experience demonstrates yet again that the hardest thing for a sovereign nation to achieve is the removal of unwelcome, and in this case illegally occupying, United States troops.

If there is one bright spot on this horizon it is the result of the recent Group of Seven nation meeting last week. Biden was singularly unsuccessful in persuading his European counterparts to join his anti-China crusade. Those European nations know better than most which way the Geo-political winds are blowing. They are most assuredly blowing in China’s favour, and that is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

The Biden administration is unlikely to meekly accept defeat, and will undoubtably continue its anti-China policies. Therein lies the greatest danger to world peace: the American inability to recognise and accept that its power has radically diminished. The world is tired of US hegemony and the sooner the Americans recognise that fact the better it is for all of us.

James O’Neill, an Australian-based former Barrister at Law, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Read more:

https://journal-neo.org/2021/02/23/the-new-biden-administration-intent-on-repeating-us-mistakes/

Meanwhile:

The Biden administration will not adopt a definitive strategy against its Chinese rival until June. An ad hoc committee of the Pentagon will then have to present proposals to the White House.

Under the authority of President Xi Jinping, China has begun its deployment outside its borders. It has already placed 3,000 soldiers in the UN forces and opened a base in Djibouti. Logically, it should, as it did at the time of the historic Silk Road, set up military posts along the roads it is building to secure its international trade. Last but not least, it is relocating to the islets it abandoned in the 19th century in the China Sea.

China first intends to reclaim its living space, which it has been robbed by Western colonists. It is sure of its right and considers that it has every right to take its revenge.

However, in accordance with the strategy outlined in 1999 by General Qiao Liang and Colonel Wang Xiangsui [1], China intends to avoid any direct military confrontation with the United States. It prefers to bypass its adversary and has engaged in undeclared wars on the commercial, economic, financial, psychological, media and other levels.

Chinese irredentism implies excluding the Westerners who have occupied the Far East for a century and a half. It must be distinguished from the Chinese development strategy which has succeeded in a few years in lifting hundreds of millions of its citizens out of poverty.

New China’s economic strategy began in 1978 under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, but it only really bore fruit in 1994. By that time the Soviet Union had disappeared; the US army had been largely demobilised; President Bush Sr. had declared that the time to make money had come and his successor, President Clinton, had been asked by big companies to open up the Chinese labour market. Indeed, a Chinese worker, albeit untrained, cost about 20 times less than a US worker.

President Clinton would therefore decouple human rights negotiations (in the Anglo-Saxon sense) from trade issues. Then he would bring China into the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Within a few years, the big corporations would transfer their production plants to the Chinese coast for the benefit of consumers and to the detriment of US workers.

Two decades later, the US is consuming Chinese products massively, while its big corporations, which have become transnational, have seen their profits grow exponentially. But at the same time, US consumer goods factories have been relocated or closed while unemployment has spread. The distribution of wealth has been altered so that now there is hardly any middle class left, but mostly poor people and a few ultra-billionaires.

This phenomenon began to affect Europe when US voters chose Donald Trump as their president. He first tried to resolve the balance of payments issue with China (border adjustment tax), but was prevented from doing so by the Democrats and part of the Republicans. Unable to push through a relative border closure, it embarked on a tariff war in which Congress had no say.

In 2021, President Biden officially succeeded him. He was supported by the transnational corporations that derived their immense fortune from economic globalisation. Immediately, he declared his desire to normalise US-China relations. He called President Xi Jinping to talk to him about the situation of the Uyghurs in Hong Kong, but he immediately admitted that Tibet and Taiwan were Chinese, which his predecessor had partially disputed. Above all, at a press conference, he said that each country had its "own standards" and that the political positions of China and the United States each had their own logic. Thus he was able to say, once in the White House, that he "understood" China’s repression of Uighur terrorism, whereas a few weeks earlier he had accused China of "genocide" of the Uighur people under the guise of repression of terrorism.

Over the next four years, the Biden administration should therefore continue the work of Presidents Clinton, Bush Jr. and Obama, to the benefit of the multi-billionaires and to the detriment of its people. It will rely on a ruling class deriving personal benefits from this system.

In order to understand this arrangement, we summarise the eight main personalities supporting the US-China trade alliance. First on the political level: one of the main Democratic icons and the head of the Republicans in the Senate; then on the economic level, the two most important distributors of consumer goods; finally on the governmental level, the decision-makers of the Biden administration.

(see the list)...

Read more:

https://www.voltairenet.org/article212286.html

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By Anthony Blinken

In October 2018, the world was horrified by the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a lawful permanent resident of the United States, in the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Individuals should be able to exercise their human rights and fundamental freedoms without fear of government retribution, retaliation, punishment, or harm. Jamal Khashoggi paid with his life to express his beliefs. President Biden said in a statement released last October on the second anniversary of the murder that Mr. Khashoggi’s death would not be in vain, and that we owe it to his memory to fight for a more just and free world.

Today, the Biden-Harris Administration submitted an unclassified report to Congress, providing transparency on this horrific killing. Alongside the transmission of that report, and as part of the President’s pledge, the United States Government is announcing additional measures to reinforce the world’s condemnation of that crime, and to push back against governments that reach beyond their borders to threaten and attack journalists and perceived dissidents for exercising their fundamental freedoms.

To that end, today I am announcing the “Khashoggi Ban,” a new visa restriction policy pursuant to section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The Khashoggi Ban allows the State Department to impose visa restrictions on individuals who, acting on behalf of a foreign government, are believed to have been directly engaged in serious, extraterritorial counter-dissident activities, including those that suppress, harass, surveil, threaten, or harm journalists, activists, or other persons perceived to be dissidents for their work, or who engage in such activities with respect to the families or other close associates of such persons. Family members of such individuals also may be subject to visa restrictions under this policy, where appropriate.

To start, the U.S. Department of State has taken action pursuant to the Khashoggi Ban to impose visa restrictions on 76 Saudi individuals believed to have been engaged in threatening dissidents overseas, including but not limited to the Khashoggi killing. When identifying individuals for purposes of the Khashoggi Ban, we will also review them for designation under Section 7031(c) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act of 2020, as carried forward by the CA Act of 2021, which authorizes the denial of visas to them and their immediate family members as well as their public identification.

As a matter of safety for all within our borders, perpetrators targeting perceived dissidents on behalf of any foreign government should not be permitted to reach American soil.

I also have directed that the State Department fully report on any such extraterritorial activities by any government in our annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. The United States will continue to shine a light on any government that targets individuals, either domestically or extraterritorially, merely for exercising their human rights and fundamental freedoms.

While the United States remains invested in its relationship with Saudi Arabia, President Biden has made clear that partnership must reflect U.S. values. To that end, we have made absolutely clear that extraterritorial threats and assaults by Saudi Arabia against activists, dissidents, and journalists must end. They will not be tolerated by the United States.

Read more:

https://www.voltairenet.org/article212342.html

Either Blinken is naive, does not know where to find reality or is bullshitting. I believe he is bullshitting con brio... because the entire Saudi government is guilty of "ruthlessly suppressing" dissidents. Read also:

In late 2020, the US Treasury formally slammed Switzerland and Vietnam as “currency manipulators”, accusing them of deliberately seeking to devalue their currencies against the dollar to gain the upper hand in trading.

The US will use every tool to stop countries manipulating currencies and stealing US intellectual property, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during his speech on foreign policy on Wednesday. 

In December 2020, the US Treasury formally denounced Switzerland and Vietnam as "currency manipulators", accusing these countries of deliberately trying to devalue their currencies against the dollar to gain the lead in trading. The Treasury has included China, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Italy, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, India, and Malaysia on the so-called "monitoring list" with regard to potential currency manipulations. All these countries have repeatedly dismissed US claims as politicised, insisting that their monetary policies relied exclusively on domestic factors. 

The United States will not promote democracy around the world any more through military interventions and forceful regime changes, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

In his first major speech, Blinken laid out eight foreign policy priorities of the Biden administration, including supporting democratic values and practices overseas by peaceful means.

Blinken vowed the United States will use the power of example, encourage others to make key reforms, overturn bad laws, fight corruption and stop unjust practices.

Other priorities include defeating the coronavirus pandemic, rebuilding the global economy, crafting a humane and effective immigration system, revitalising alliances, tackling the climate crisis, ensuring the United States’ technological leadership and confronting China.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/202103031082244827-US-Vows-to-Stop-Countries-Manipulating-Currencies-Pledges-No-More-Forceful-Regime-Changes/

Read from top.

As the official attitude of the new American administration will be "to Stop Countries Manipulating Currencies, and No More Forceful Regime Changes", The CIA is going to be very busy — far busier than the Pentagon — in "not promoting democracy through costly military interventions or by attempting to overthrow authoritarian regimes by force"... Oh, they (Blinken) now ADMIT THAT THEY WERE DOING IT! (Trump was not doing it: he wanted the troops back Home)...

You know what this means, unless you use cotton wool for brains... Meanwhile the Pentagon will just go with Friendship Parades on the high seas and in the air, close to recalcitrant countries, and visiting ports of allies to bring the poor populace some free chewing gum tablets, with the full regalia of navy flags...

And please do not trust one word from Blinken (except the word "costly") because they might do "military" thingies on the cheap anyway. Read: 

And by the way, planning an extra US$1.9 trillion budget hole (printing dollars that do not exist) in the US economy is a HUGE AMOUNT OF CURRENCY MANIPULATION... The banks are going to steal a big proportion of it...