April 7: Called it! Diplomatic dithering and its consequences

In which, the Biden administration continues to fiddle while the world burns, Trump has his day in court (the first of many), and Finland enters the NATO club

Called it! Diplomatic dithering and its consequences

Readers of this newsletter know I’ve been pretty critical of the President’s foreign policy since before he was sworn into office. From the moment the Biden foreign policy team took shape, my mounting concern was that it was not a team built for the world the administration was going to be facing.

The ensuing years have only strengthened that early conviction of a President not up to the foreign policy moment, and the Small Wars Journal foreign policy tracker shows this in rather stark terms.

This week, we saw more examples for the Biden administration’s diplomatic floundering as Saudi Arabian and Iranian diplomats met in China to build on their newly normalized relations, the CIA Director got a rather cold welcome in Riyadh, Russia is demonstrating its ability to fight a war in one region and burnish its diplomacy in another, and this coming off of last week’s less than impressive democracy summit.

The Biden administration continues to be long on talk, short on favorable outcomes, and while some could argue that this is largely the story of an administration drawing back from the Middle East, the broader trend holds true the world. More on that below.