America and our allies arguably face the greatest national security threats since World War II with — and largely due to — a top level U.S. leadership vacuum.
China, despite its own failing economy, is advancing its global communist military agenda, including forcible Taiwan conquest, with uncontested impunity while conducting massive spying campaigns against our defense operations and government officials.
Iran is being rewarded access to many billions of dollars for ransoming American hostages and millions in “humanitarian” aid to Hamas as it sells sanctioned oil to China, supplies weapons to proxies and Russia for wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and fires missiles at U.S. military bases.
Then, as Tehran races to achieve nuclear weapons capabilities, the Biden administration chooses to wage indefensible wars on climate change and U.S. fossil-fueled energy independence.
A Climate of Concessions to China
It was cringingly painful to witness recent photo ops of President Joe Biden and his junior league B Team negotiating urgent national security matters with China’s President Xi Jinping and his Beijing varsity while furtively hoping for any good results.
Included, representing our side of the table, was Secretary of State Antony Blinken who previously headed Joe’s University of Pennsylvania Biden Center think tank funded with major Chinese donations where illegal classified documents were discovered.
Next to Blinken sat National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan who had bragged about Middle East calm and serenity just weeks prior to diabolically savage Hamas attacks on 20 Israeli cities, along with Climate Envoy John Kerry has who joined with him as ardent proponent of the fecklessly failed “Iran Nuclear Deal.”
There were many important issues they could have addressed.
After all — as previously mentioned in this column — President Xi had snuffed Biden’s plea for discussions over several months, and in the interim, had subjected Blinken to embarrassing peanut gallery treatment during his Beijing diplomatic trip.
Like, for example, our president might have thought to bring up espionage concerns regarding that giant spy balloon that flew across sensitive U.S. military sites; Chinese sponsorship of a spy base in Cuba; and maybe their government hacking into unclassified email accounts of Blinken’s top aids and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
As for heralded summit breakthroughs to celebrate … not so much.
Xi apparently agreed to clamp down on Chinese companies that manufacture and export precursor materials used to produce deadly fentanyl that is freely flowing with criminal elements — presumably including terrorists — across Biden’s open southern border.
In exchange, our side agreed to terminate deadly climate-killing carbon dioxide by shutting down American fossil energy and buying China’s discounted zero-emission solar panels and wind turbines.
Recall also that Beijing’s oversupply of solar panels was exacerbated by Trump administration tariffs, threats to impose anti-dumping duties, and implementation of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which all together prevented those made with Chinese polysilicon from entering the country.
This as China builds the equivalent of a new coal-fired plant weekly and orders more than 100 million barrels of oil daily each from Iran and Russia to support their wars in Israel and Ukraine, respectively.
More Money for Iran Mullahs
After previously agreeing to unfreeze $6 billion in ransom to free five American hostages, the Biden administration incredulously reissued a July State Department sanctions waiver — part of an unwritten nuclear agreement — that gives Iran access to more than $10 billion in revenue for gas and electricity supplies to oil-rich Iraq.
As noted by Wall Street Journal editors, Biden bypassed predictable rejection of such a waiver, hoping it would help keep tensions in the Missile Eastern region quiet until after the 2024 election.
According to U.N. inspectors, Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched near-weapons-grade uranium continues to grow unchecked, with Reuters reporting that Tehran will soon have enough material for three nuclear bombs.
On top of another estimated $80 billion in illicit Iran oil sale sanctions relief since Biden took office, add another paltry $100 million earmarked in direct U.S. funding for “humanitarian assistance in both Gaza and the West Bank.”
Few informed folks can doubt that this charity will instead finance Iran-backed Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PLJ), and Lebanese Hezbollah proxies along with continued Tehran drone and missile attacks on American military installations in Syria and Iraq … nearly 60 during just the past month alone.
America has fired back in retaliation only three times, taking care to exclusively target vacant facilities.
The weak Biden White House management obviously doesn’t want to risk angering moody mullahs.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.