March 22: America closes shop in the Global South

In which, events in Haiti and Niger reduce America’s global footprint, the Biden administration casts about the Mid East for some kind of deal, and I explore America’s new political landscape.

America closes shop in the Global South

Haiti continued to spin out of control this week as gangs tightened their grip in the capital of Port-au-Prince. As I reported last week, the Biden administration evacuated the American Embassy in Haiti, leaving behind a token security force. This brings the total number of embassy closures and/or evacuations in the Biden years to 11, the largest such stretch of embassy closures by any president. That rather sad statistic was underscored this week when the military Junta in Niger refused to renew security cooperation deals with the US military thereby closing American military installations in that country.

 I got curious as to where these 11 embassies closed by the Biden administration were located and, with the exception of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine (for obvious reasons), the closed embassies around the world have been located in the Global South. I've noted this many times in my criticisms of the administration's foreign policy, but there's been a huge contrast between the administration's pro-diplomacy rhetoric and its underwhelming diplomatic action. 

Obviously, if a country asks you to leave like Niger just did, then you have to leave, but the embassy closures and evacuations have been by choice, and many have not reopened even after the situations prompting their closures receded.

If the Biden administration is concerned about Chinese competition/influence in the developing world, if it's concerned about human rights (mass abductions in Nigeria? Too bad that the embassy is not fully staffed), if it's concerned about democracy (a really interesting twist on the Haiti story), then its focus should be on maintaining a diplomatic presence in the Global South. Unfortunately, events of the last couple of weeks in the Caribbean and Africa just don’t indicate an administration serious about its own stated objectives. Perhaps that’s why we’re stuck with

Team Biden’s shambolic MidEast diplomacy