Trio of new Cold War officials running US foreign policy, including that on China

IN the current dangerous times in which we face the prospect of a nuclear war among the superpowers, it is certainly shocking, and extremely worrying, that in the June 27 US presidential debate, President Biden's behavior showed that, as the acclaimed investigative journalist Seymour Hersh explains in detail in a piece I post below, there is no longer a functioning president.

If you watched the debate, streamed live June 27 (US time), you'll certainly doubt if Biden understands the intricacies and nuances of geopolitics that could lead to nuclear war — and humanity's extinction. His view of the Russia-Ukraine war is the 1950s Cold War, thinking that if the US allowed Russia to defeat Ukraine, it would result in a domino effect that would prompt Russia to invade Poland and many other Eastern European nations.

I don't think he would understand what the Philippines' disputes with China are, only that in his mind, China is still the Communist China, which had wanted to help communist North Korea invade the US puppet state South Korea in 1950, which General McArthur would have nuked if President Truman had not fired him.

I don't think Biden would have understood the fact that what the Philippines claims is Chinese aggression in Ayungin Shoal involves the former's very wrong assertion that it falls within its exclusive economic zone while ignoring China's claim that it is within its sovereign territory, one of its outlying archipelagos it calls Nansha Qundao. Well, if President Marcos and his security officials — especially his defense secretary and national security adviser — can't understand it, the much older Biden definitely wouldn't and wouldn't bother to study.

US foreign policy under Biden has been totally run by three officials, with Blinken simply endorsing whatever they propose. These are the new Cold War warriors, scheming strategists and deeply anti-China. With President Marcos having become servile to the US, this troika will determine the Philippines' future with regard to its relationship with China.

Blinken

First is Secretary of State Antony Blinken. He previously served as deputy national security adviser from 2013 to 2015 and deputy secretary of state from 2015 to 2017 under President Barack Obama, who launched in 2009 the so-called Pivot to Asia policy, which was a thinly veiled program to demonize China. Blinken was previously national security adviser to then-vice president Joe Biden from 2009 to 2013. If you want an idea of how much of a Cold Warrior he is, Blinken was vocal in advocating for the 2003 invasion of Iraq while serving as the Democratic staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2002 to 2008.

Sullivan

Second is National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. He previously served as director of policy to President Obama, national security adviser to then-vice president Biden and deputy chief of staff to Hillary Clinton at the US State Department. Sullivan's most notable achievement was that it was he who recommended to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to get the Philippines to file an arbitration suit against China in 2013, citing a study of scholar Robert Beckman during the Scarborough Shoal stand-off that had threatened to break into a violent conflict.

During the recent Ayungin Shoal incident, it was Sullivan who called our National Security Adviser Eduardo Año to claim that the US commitment to the country under the US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty was "ironclad."

Campbell

The third official running US foreign affairs issues is Kurt Campbell, the current deputy secretary of state. Campbell's biggest accomplishment is that he resolved, through a brilliant simple subterfuge, the Scarborough Shoal incident between China and the Philippines in 2012. He did this by lying to the Aquino 3rd administration, through our ambassador to the US Jose Cuisia — who was on a first-name basis with Campbell — that the Chinese agreed to a simultaneous withdrawal by Philippine and Chinese vessels from the shoal. Gullibly believing Campbell's claim, Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario ordered the Philippine vessels to withdraw, only to find out later that the Chinese hadn't. That, in effect, surrendered the shoal to the Chinese. Apparently, for that feat Campbell would be promoted to deputy state secretary, the second-highest official in the State Department.

However, there was no such agreement, only proposals for an agreement made by Campbell, with the top Chinese official Fu Yi telling him that she would have to get Beijing's approval for this important decision — which did not come.

Del Rosario's gullibility was due to the fact he was never a diplomat and was not aware that such important decisions are not made by a single diplomat, but are made through a process of intense discussions up the ladder of a foreign affairs organization. These events are discussed in detail, with meticulous documentation, in my book "Debacle: The Aquino Regime's Scarborough Fiasco and the South China Sea Arbitration Deception," which can be ordered online at rigobertotiglao.com/shop or amazon.com.

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Hersh

Following is the Seymour Hersh article emailed to me, which I found very worrying, entitled "Who is Running the Country?"

"Readers of this column know that President Joe Biden's drift into blankness has been ongoing for months, as he and his foreign policy aides have been urging a ceasefire that will not happen in Gaza while continuing to supply the weapons that make a ceasefire less likely. There's a similar paradox in Ukraine, where Biden has been financing a war that cannot be won and refusing to participate in negotiations that could end the slaughter.

The reality behind all of this, as I've been told for months, is that the president is simply no longer there in terms of understanding the contradictions of the policies he and his foreign policy advisers have been carrying out. America should not have a president who does not know what he has signed off on. People in power have to be responsible for what they do, and last night showed America and the world that we have a president who clearly is not in that position today.

The real disgrace is not only Biden's but those of the men and women around him who have kept him more and more under wraps. He is a captive, and as he rapidly diminished over the past six months. I have been hearing for months about the increasing isolation of the president, from his one-time pals in the Senate, who find that he is unable to return their calls. Another old family friend, whose help has been sought by Biden on key issues since his days as vice president, told me of a plaintive call from the president many months ago. Biden said the White House was in chaos, and he needed his friend's help. The friend said he begged off and then told me, with a laugh: 'I would rather have a root canal procedure every day than go to work there.' A long-retired Senate colleague was invited by Biden to join him on a foreign trip, and the two played cards and shared a drink or two on the Air Force One flight going out. The senator was barred by Biden's staff from joining the return flight home.

Isolation

I have been told the increasing isolation of the president on foreign policy issues has been in part the doing of Tom Donilon, whose younger brother, Michael, a key pollster and adviser in Biden's 2020 presidential campaign and in the current re-election effort, was part of the team that spent much of the week briefing Biden for last night's debate. Tom Donilon, who is 69, was President Biden's national security adviser from 2010 to 2013 and sought unsuccessfully to be named as Biden's director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He remains very much an insider.

Given Biden's obvious decline in recent months, it is impossible for an outsider to understand why the White House agreed to any debates with Donald Trump before the election, let alone committing to the earliest presidential debate, the first of two, in modern history. One thought, I was told, was that if Biden performed well, as he had in his State of the Union speech in March, the issue of his mental capacity would be tabled. A poor performance would give the Biden campaign time to do a better prep job for the scheduled second debate.

There also was pressure from the major Democratic fundraisers, many of them in New York City, for the campaign to do something to counter the perception of the president's obvious growing impairment, as reported and filmed by major media. I have been told that at least one foreign leader, after a closed meeting with Biden, told others that the president's decline was so visible that it was hard to understand how, as it was put to me, 'he could go through the rigors' of a re-election campaign. Such warnings were ignored.

Savants

What now? One of Washington's political savants told me today that the Democratic Party is now facing 'a national security crisis.' The nation is backing two devastating wars with a president who clearly is not up to it, he said, and it might be time to start drafting a resignation speech that would match or outdo the one given in March of 1968 by President Lyndon Johnson after his narrow victory over Sen. Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary.

'They're trapped,' he said of the senior advisers in the White House who hoped that Biden would somehow do well enough in last night's debates to carry on, with the much-needed support of the more skeptical financial supporters in New York City.

Not everyone I talked to today agreed that it is time to force a Biden resignation and hope for the best at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August — to dump the ticket and seek new candidates. 'My humble opinion,' one longtime contributor to the Democratic Party told me, 'is to let the dust settle. Must examine the realistic options before some quick reaction creates an internal Democratic Party split with far-reaching consequences beyond 2024. Accept reality... 2024 is likely beyond recovery at this point. Too steep a hill to climb. Plan and execute a long-term plan to counter Mr. Orange and build a moderate platform for the recovery... and let Biden wander off to the Jersey Pine Barrens.'

TikTok, Facebook

A differing view was expressed by another political guru. 'This is the age of social media — TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and X — and a political campaign can go very far very fast.'

Whatever happens, we have a president — now fully unveiled — who just may not be responsible for what he does in the coming campaign, not to mention his actions in the Middle East and Ukraine.

Whatever happened to the 25th Amendment that authorizes the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to declare the president incompetent? What is going on in the Biden White House?"

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