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CRITIQUING BIDEN’S WORLDVIEW, DEMOCRATIC PARTY TACTICS AND
AMERICA’S DESTINY  
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Richard Falk
July 9, 2024
Counterpunch
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_ This tendency to ignore the world should be more troubling to
American voters than even Biden’s refusal to leave the presidential
stage in light of his thinly deniable disabilities of age and mental
health that have put his 2024 candidacy in peril. _

, Photo by Tim Mossholder

 

The Democratic Party is waging its 2024 electoral campaign by focusing
on two themes: first, a denunciation of all that Trump proposes to
bring to the presidency, centering on the destruction of American
democracy if elected, and secondly, a positive domestic record of the
Biden years with several notable benefits for the American people
including jobs and wages, climate, energy policy, social protection,
gun control, and a stock market at record highs.

What is missing from this rosy picture of America and even more so
from Democratic Party advocacy is neither claims nor explanations of
foreign policy, only a deafening silence. It is as if the leadership
of the Democratic Party wants the voting public to forget that there
is a world out there beyond national boundaries. And it has good
reasons to adopt this evasive approach, especially in an election
year.

And yet this national posture seems strange as the US has so heavily
invested in military capabilities to secure its global dominance in
the decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union over 30 years ago.
 And as a consequence, finds itself currently engaged controversially
in the wars raging in Ukraine and Gaza. It appears that even Biden is
reluctant to claim credit in national settings for US support of
Israel and Ukraine, and prefers to speak in generalities about the
greatness of America as a country whose future is bright except to the
extent dimmed by the threat advent of Trump and Trumpism. This
tendency to ignore the world should be more troubling to American
voters than even Biden’s refusal to leave the presidential stage in
light of his thinly deniable disabilities of age and mental health
that have put his 2024 candidacy in peril. Such an evasive pattern
gives voice to absurdly grandiose, yet distorting, assessments of the
present broad political situation.

Biden’s speech on the 3rd Anniversary of the January 6th
Insurrectionary attack on Congress is a typical example. After a
lengthy, persuasive recital of warnings about the Trump menace, Biden
offers some unhinged general remarks, starting with his oft-repeated
startling expression of personal faith in the future of America: “I
have never been more optimistic about the future of our country.” 
No explanation is given for why this is so, and there could not be one
even if Orwellian tropes were relied upon. No mention of the dubious
wars, massive homelessness, dangerously large inequalities, an
epidemic of mass shootings, growing migrant tensions, backsliding on
carbon emission and the related rise of extreme weather events, or
numerous signs of rising risks of future major wars with China and
Russia, quite possibly prompting the use of nuclear weapons, of deeply
disturbing erosions of academic freedom often accompanied by punitive
encroachments on dissent and freedom of expression, as well as the
bitterest and most divisive societal polarization since the Civil War.
I confess that I have never in my life felt more pessimistic about the
future of the country. At least one would have expected a
self-professed liberal such as Biden to be forthright about addressing
the unmet illiberal challenges that have been rampant during his years
in the White House, and a program to do so if Democrats are given a
mandate to govern in November.

Biden also was immaturely boastful on the same occasion. “We’re
the greatest nation on the face of the earth.” And possibly
betraying his uncertainty immediately added these words but no
specifics, “We really are.’ Then proceeded to display the kind of
hubris long associated with the twilight period of past declining
empires. Counter-historically Biden observed that “We know America
is winning. That’s American patriotism.’ It underpins the broader
claim that evokes doubt and opposition outside the West: “There’s
no country in the world better positioned to lead the world than
America…Just remember who we are. We are the United States of
America, for God’s sake.’ Remembering who we are, or have become,
is the ideological leader of the (il)liberal democracies of the West
who mostly lent a helping hand to Israel while it in recent months
carried out a genocidal assault on the helplessly vulnerable 2.3
million civilian population of the tiny Gaza Strip. This American-led
complicity in what much of the world’s peoples perceived as a
transparent genocide was even proclaimed as such in the rationale
articulated and policies pursued by Israel’s political leaders and
put into deadly practice by its armed forces. While claiming to be
“defending the sacred cause of democracy” Biden doesn’t respect
the citizenry sufficiently to acknowledge Israel’s policies face
unprecedented challenges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ)
and the International Criminal Court (ICC), offering neither an
explanation nor an apology. We must ask ourselves whether such a
failure to include the citizenry in evaluating foreign policy that
much of the public dissents from is in keeping with an existential
commitment to democratic styles of governance. Or for that matter,
whether cooperative security arrangements and friendly relations with
the governments of India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others can be
reconciled with the goals of promoting a democratizing world.

US democracy has from the founding of the republic almost 250 years
ago been associated with a constitutional arrangement that stresses
the division of and balance between the three principal branches of
government as supplemented by the guiding idea that even the acts of
the president are not above the restraints and accountability
procedures of law. Currently, both of these vital pillars of a
functioning democracy are crumbling, and near collapse. The US Supreme
Court has never been so out of touch with the values of society and
the defense of its democratic character, not only by its denial of
women’s reproductive rights but in relation to upholding the rule of
law in relation to the behavior of the president and the regulation of
corporate wrongdoing. Congress, in many vital sectors of public
policy, has become captive to well-funded lobbying pressures and the
interests of the wealthiest American leading commentators to argue
that plutocracy has become a more accurate description of the form of
government than democracy, To be optimistic in the face of such
developments has all the appearances of playing the role of the fool.

For me, an unmistakable indicator of the alienation of the governing
process from the citizenry is the extension of a bipartisan invitation
to the embattled Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu to address
a joint session of Congress later in July. This bestowal of such a
signal honor on a foreign leader for whom ‘arrest warrants’ have
been recommended by the habitually cautious ICC, will be further
enhanced by a meeting with the President in the White House
undoubtedly accompanied by a TV moment exhibiting harmony between
these two leaders that includes unconditional support and a profession
of shared values. Such an inappropriate gesture of approval is a slap
in the faces of those many American opponents of Israel’s policies
in Gaza over the course of recent months, especially a show of
disrespect toward young Americans who protested on university campuses
across the country, and for their activity experienced police
brutality and professionally harmful punishments from educational
administrators, themselves under pressure from donors and politicians.
The Netanyahu invitation is an edifying metaphor that confirms the
dark foreboding of skeptics like myself critical of the US global role
since the end of the Cold War and deeply pessimistic about the future
of the country. From such an angle, Biden’s off-the-wall optimism
and the tactics of the Democratic Party establishment are not
reassuring. Rather I find these patterns as strong evidence of
dangerous forms of escapism from the uncomfortable realities of
national circumstances and stubborn show of a failing leader’s
vanity.

_RICHARD FALK is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International
Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global law, Queen Mary
University London, and Research Associate, Orfalea Center of Global
Studies, UCSB._

* US Electoral Campaigns 2024; Biden Campaign 2024; US Foreign
Policy; Genocide;
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