FWIW # 18 Follow Up September 2021

Before I begin this important essay, I’d be remiss if I didn’t comment on the situation that crystallized President Biden’s character and attitude to any American who saw the event happen. While standing on the tarmac, receiving the bodies of the 13 young Americans who died in Afghanistan needlessly due to the enormous faulty decisions the president and the people standing with him had made, President Biden looked at his watch—not once, but several times. I don’t know of any place more important for him to be than that airport. It is tragic when a serviceperson dies in a war. It is a grievous miscarriage of duty when they die needlessly due to bad leadership. I’m sure the families regret he was being so inconvenienced by the process of bringing their loved ones home.

A few days after FWIW #17 was published, the Supreme Court ruled for a second time that the administration and the CDC did not have the power to deny landlords the right of eviction for nonpayment of rent. Shortly thereafter, the Attorney General of the United States, supposedly the chief law enforcement office in the country, publicly asked law faculty members of Harvard, Yale, and other law schools, as well as lawyers across the country, to help tenants fight eviction no matter what the Supreme Court ruled. How can the chief law enforcement officer defy the Supreme Court without clearly signaling to the country that this autocratic administration cares nothing for the rule of law unless it solidifies their hold on power?

The military leadership of President Biden’s Pentagon is now saying the US will have to work with the Taliban to stop ISIS K. Once Kabul fell to the Taliban and our military leadership declined the Taliban’s offer to allow the US to handle security in Kabul, the security was given to one of the core and most ruthless segments of the Taliban: the Haqqani Network. It was the Haqqani Network that let the car bomb and the suicide bombers through its checkpoints. The Taliban is as responsible as ISIS K and President Biden are for the deaths of those young soldiers. What kind of military leadership do we have now?

CONNECT THE DOTS

One aspect of a world inundated with a hurricane of serious news every day is anyone standing in the storm sees the events, but doesn’t put together some implications since the pieces of information are not always connected. We have just finished seven months and 11 days of the Biden administration. Conservative news media and the administration, hardly conservative, have either deliberately (likely?) or by coincidence (who believes in coincidences?) teamed up to distract many observers with an immigration crisis, diverting attention from a string of decisions that have significant implications for this country and our allies. Let me make one perspective clear: this discussion is not pro-Republican or pro-Democrat. I am just an observer of what is reported in the media. Connect the dots as reported in newspapers or news organizations.

1. On January 20, 2021, President Biden revoked the permit for the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline.¹

This pipeline, stretching from the tar sands in Canada to Steele City, Nebraska, was a shorter route with a larger-diameter pipe than that of the original Keystone (K) pipeline. There was another aspect to the KXL: It would have gone through the Williston Basin shale oil fields of Montana and North Dakota, where these American drillers could have used the pipeline. The current K is longer, but it is complete delivering Canadian oil to Cushing, Oklahoma, and to Houston and Port Arthur, Texas. President Biden’s actions stopped construction of a shorter route with more capacity rather than cutting off the Canadian oil flow altogether. The result is less Canadian oil coming into the US, and therefore the price of energy in the US will climb. At what price do shuttered wells in the US find it attractive to pump again? We are already seeing the price of gasoline rise. Is this the intent of the environmentalists, to raise the price of gasoline to entice Americans to switch to electric vehicles? In an environment where prices for everything are adjusting to a serious depreciation of the US dollar’s value (inflation), using someone else’s consumable commodity, like oil, while keeping domestic supplies in the ground may be good for the country and for individual companies, but bad for consumers. There is more complexity to the issue. The gulf coast refineries that use the heavy oil from Canada will look for more heavy oil to import. Where will they likely get it? Russia and Russian-supported Venezuela have heavy oil.²

2. President Biden did not impose sanctions on the Russian companies building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany, in effect giving Russia another pipeline taking gas to Europe.³

Russia delivered gas to Europe through a gas pipeline traversing Ukraine for years. Before the collapse of energy prices in April 2020, the US energy industry was planning to ship liquified natural gas to markets around the world, including Europe and Asia. Now, because no sanctions were imposed on the Russian companies, Russia’s economy will improve measurably since oil and gas are over 60% of Russian exports and over 30% of that country’s GDP. This is a country that blatantly uses cyberwarfare against US private and public entities. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken stated, “We will continue to oppose the completion of this project.”⁴ How can they do that when it is finished? Yet, President Biden and Secretary Blinken had the power to stop the project and failed to use it. Their excuse is they wanted to appease Germany, the European terminus of the pipeline.

3. On June 1, 2021, President Biden suspended oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.⁵

In the pending infrastructure bill negotiated with the Republicans, both parties have agreed to sell oil from the Strategic Reserves to pay for some of the expenditures.⁶ Biden has already rejoined the Paris Climate Accords, committing the US to economy-strangling reductions in carbon emissions. Further reducing America’s ability to maintain a secure and steady supply of fossil fuels will not help the global climate. Russia has completed the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany, giving the Russian economy a boost. Russia is also building thousands of miles of oil and gaspipelines to supply Europe and Asia. It has announced a $170 billion oil and gas development in northern Russia. Russia is spending another $10 billion upgrading its railroads to boost coal exports.⁷ The US coal industry is slowly being put out of business, while Australia, China, India, and Russia are developing mining projects that could increase global coal capacity by at least 30%. In China, over 100 coal mines are under construction.⁸ All four countries are signatories to the Paris Accords. All four countries will benefit from the United States limiting oil and gas supplies to this country and exports to compete with these four countries.

In four months and 11 days, President Biden and his administration stripped the US of its energy independence and boosted the flagging economy of one of our biggest adversaries, Russia. Let’s hope there is a strategic plan behind what he has done. There is one irrefutable truth, however: the lower- and middle-class workers and families in the United States are going to feel pain from these policies. They already are with the rise in gasoline and heating oil prices. President Biden’s advisors must know this; yet, with all their idealism about the questionable issue of climate change, they don’t appear to care if this country’s citizens are financially crushed and our adversaries gain politically and economically. What would cause a president to deliberately financially hurt his country’s citizens while significantly enriching one of its major enemies, Russia, and tangentially helping another, Iran?

Let’s turn to another issue.

4. As of May 28, 2021, in the Middle East, the steps being taken by the Biden Administration were as telling as its dealings with Russia.

The Revolutionary Guard has been the armed enforcer of the Iranian radical clerics’ ruling party. In the February 2021 elections, the new parliament took a decisive turn against budding pro-reform policies by electing more hard-liners. In May 2021, the Iranian legislators elected Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf speaker of the parliament. He is a former commander of the Revolutionary Guard. His election by most parliament members signaled to the world the hardline, West-hating clerics are still in charge in Iran. How did President Biden respond to this clear signal from Iran that they were not interested in compromise?⁹

5. On June 10, 2021, because the Iranians hadn’t made concessions at the talks to resume the nuclear deals in Vienna, the Biden administration lifted some sanctions on three Iranian officials and energy companies.¹⁰

America promised to lift more sanctions if the Iranians would change their courses from building a nuclear bomb and exporting aid to terrorist organizations in the Middle East. The Iranians shook their heads and smiled. Lifting sanctions clearly gave Iran the potential for more oil and gas exports, and therefore more money flowing into their government as well as a boost to their economy, just as the Biden administration’s actions boosted the Russian economy. The American position was to try for a consensus on a new nuclear agreement before June 18, 2021, when the Iranian presidential election would take place. The Iranians did not make any concessions before that date. What they did was elect a president who is close to the ruling Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, thought by some to be the Ayatollah’s successor.

Even before the election, the Biden administration gave the Iranians another opening to spread their influence by slashing the number of US antimissile systems in the Middle East. The Patriot antimissile batteries are being removed from Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. A second antimissile system is being withdrawn from Saudi Arabia, and jet fighter squadrons in the region are being reduced.¹¹ These pullouts of defensive protection for countries friendly to the US follow the February 4, 2021, Biden announcement that the US is withdrawing support for the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia’s fight against Iran-backed Houthi rebels associated with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.¹² The Biden administration downplayed the withdrawals, saying they were managing the risks in the Middle East, not elevating them. The logic of that comment clearly shows the decision-makers don’t understand the psychology of the Iranians, their militia proxies, and their Muslim heritage.

The new Iranian president has criticized the former Iranian president for reaching out to Western countries in trying to get sanctions eased. The new president, taking office in August, clearly stated that Iran will not stop aiding Shiite militias around the region and will not backtrack from its current state of nuclear development, including development of missiles to deliver a nuclear warhead.¹³ President Biden states he wants an agreement that will last longer and include limits on the missile program and Iranian support of Shiite militias in the region.¹⁴ Why won’t the US president and negotiators hear what the new Iranian president is saying? Why won’t the US administration see that Iran is carefully crafting relationships with Russia, China, and Pakistan that will help them evade US sanctions? The US has voluntarily lifted sanctions with no corresponding concessions from the Iranians.

In Henry Kissinger’s book World Order, he explores and shows that the Muslim political stance throughout history has been to make agreements with adversaries for specified periods so Muslim countries could have time to build strength, intending in the future to overcome their enemy. A recently published book, Iran’s Perilous Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons by David Albright, Susan Burkhard, and others from the Institute for Science and International Security, documents Iran’s fraudulent stance on its nuclear weapons program throughout the last 25-plus years. A substantial amount of the source material for the book comes from the papers stolen from Iran by Israel. While I haven’t finished the book, the Iranians, like the North Vietnamese, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban, focused on achieving their goals with no fear of the weak United States political and military leadership. All these adversaries have defeated the vaunted American military not on the battlefield, but at the political table. President Obama and now President Biden and their advisors have not seen and will not see how they are being manipulated by adversaries who fight the right way: total war, not lawyer-sanctioned facsimile war.

The US has limited options. Our adversaries know from the last 75 years of history that indirect, attritional warfare will eventually allow them to win any war with us. In March of this year, Iran and China signed a 25-year economic and security partnership. China will invest over $400 billion in Iran’s oil, gas, and petrochemical industries and in Iranian transportation and manufacturing infrastructure.¹⁵ In effect, if there is a war between the US and Iran, China’s investment will protect these vital infrastructure targets from US military action. Where is China getting these funds and other monies? From selling Americans cheap goods made by semi-slave labor. In exchange, Iran will supply China oil at a discount, thus bypassing our sanctions. Some authoritative reports, denied by Iranian officials, say China will lease some Iranian islands and have 5,000 security forces in Iran. Iran continues to have a working relationship with Russia. As the Russian economy strengthens after the actions taken by President Biden (see above), the relationship between these two US adversaries will strengthen. While US sanctions have hampered Iran’s economy, as Iran develops its relationships with countries that do not accept the US right of sanctioning, their net effect will lessen.

After the debacle in Afghanistan, what will be the outcome of these steps by the Biden administration to strengthen our adversaries? None of us know. What we can expect is a high risk of our adversaries misconstruing the message of weakness. Many times, calamities erupted because one party or the other misread intentions. There are three possibilities of aggressive action by our adversaries in the next three and a half years: First, China may attack Taiwan and take over that country, which it already claims is part of China. Second, Russia may finish taking over Ukraine since it already controls half the country and the Crimea. Third, Iran may make one of three aggressive moves: formally take over Iraq since Iranian militias control most of it now, use drone and missile attacks to cripple the Sunni states that are our allies, or use its missiles to devastate Israel with conventional bombs. Does anyone think the Biden administration would commit a reduced-capacity US military to counter any of these actions? Or would the Biden administration impose sanctions and try to negotiate a standstill of the aggression, urging a meeting of our allies to discuss the issue?

The US financial condition is more precarious than it was before the Chinese Communist Party unleashed Covid-19 on the world through its incompetence and duplicity. Besides the trillions of dollars spent to keep the US economy afloat over the last 15 months, the legacy of spending $7 trillion on ineptly fought wars since 2001 and the political decision-making at the Federal Reserve make us vulnerable. The entire adversarial situation reminds me of the old men in New York’s Union Square who are willing to play chess with anyone who has a dollar. The tourists are having a good time, thinking they are smart, like the political leadership of the US. The old men are serious and intent on winning, just like our adversaries. Guess who wins.

Since 1945, the United States has played at being the world’s cop, halfheartedly throwing away treasure and the lives of our soldiers while our adversaries have seriously undertaken to erode the culture and financial stability of this country. As Bin Laden said before and after 9/11, he wasn’t interested in defeating America militarily; he was going to bankrupt the United States. Our enemies are multiplying as they smell weakness, and our adversaries are getting help from some of the political establishment on both sides of the aisle in Washington. The last eight months have significantly weakened the United States—this is a fact. What is necessary is understanding this reality and protecting ourselves as best we can.

¹ Rob Gillies, “Keystone XL Pipeline Halted as Biden Revokes Permit,” Associated Press, January 20, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-alberta-2fbcce48372f5c29c3ae6f6f93907a6d.

² Vipal Monga and Colin Eaton, “What Is the Keystone XL Pipeline and Why Did the Developer Abandon It?” Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-is-the-keystone-xl-pipeline-and-why-did-president-biden-issue-an-executive-order-to-block-it-11611240342.

³ Brett Forest and Jessica Donati, “US Declines to Impose Sanctions on Nord Stream Pipeline,” Wall Street Journal, May 19, 2021, https://lnt.ma/u-s-declines-to-impose-sanctions-on-nord-stream-pipeline/.

⁴ Forest and Donati, “US Declines to Impose Sanctions.”

⁵ Matthew Daly, “Biden Suspends Oil Leases in Alaska’s Arctic Refuge,” Associated Press, June 1, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/alaska-arctic-wildlife-refuge-oil-gas-drilling-biden-b9f20088957d42e99b791ff94169198f.

⁶ Andrew Duehren, Kristina Peterson and Sabrina Siddiqui, “Biden, Senators Agree to Roughly #1 Trillion Infrastructure Plan,” Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-senators-agree-to-roughly-1-trillion-infrastructure-plan-11624553972.

⁷ Editorial Board, “America’s Energy Gifts to Dictators,” Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-energy-gift-to-dictators-11623279139.

⁸ Editorial Board, “America’s Energy Gifts.”

⁹ Najmeh Bozorgmehr, “Former Revolutionary Guard to Be Speaker of Iran’s Parliament,” Financial Times, May 28, 2021, https://www.ft.com/content/a31b62ed-c3ff-416b-9c80-2977820a574e.

¹⁰ Ian Talley and Laurence Norman, “US Lifts Sanctions amid Stalled Nuclear Talks,” Wall Street Journal, June 10, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-administration-lifts-sanctions-on-more-than-dozen-former-iranian-officials-energy-firms-11623347091.

¹¹ Gordon Lubold, Nancy A. Youssef, and Michael R. Gordon, “US Military to Withdraw Hundreds of Troops, Aircraft, Antimissile Batteries from Middle East,” Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-military-to-withdraw-hundreds-of-troops-aircraft-antimissile-batteries-from-middle-east-11624045575.

¹² Mark Katkov, “Biden Administration Ends US Support of Saudi-Led Offensive in Yemen,” Npr.org, February 4, 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/02/04/964070756/biden-administration-ends-u-s-support-of-saudi-led-offensive-in-yemen.

¹³ Sune Engel Rasmussen and Laurence Norman, “Iran’s New Hard-Line President Poised for Pivotal Role in Nuclear Talks,” Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/irans-new-hard-line-president-poised-for-pivotal-role-in-nuclear-talks-11624205291.

¹⁴ David Gardner, “Curbing Iran’s Regional Ambitions Remains a Distant Hope for the West,” Financial Times, June 20, 2021, https://www.ft.com/content/42c8f1b0-3f03-4a11-85c7-65f060cbaefd.

¹⁵ Farnaz Fassihi and Steven Lee Myers, Defying US, China and Iran Near Trade and Military Partnership, New York Times, March 27, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/11/world/asia/china-iran-trade-military-deal-html.

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