Antony Blinken

Friday

Charles Lipson

Biden’s press conference was a feast of disinformation

Joe Biden emerged from his cave, saw his shadow, and told us there will be three more years of winter. That winter, descending on America’s position in the world, was on public view at Biden’s Friday press conference about Afghanistan. Standing behind him was the Vice President, the secretary of defense, the secretary of state and the national security adviser, a stark contrast to the sad photo of Biden alone on a video call from Camp David with those advisers. Why have them stand there, mute? To convey to the public that the administration was united...and to convey to his advisers that they were all on this sinking ship together.

press

Thursday

Paul Wood

Will America rescue the mullahs?

‘Death to Khamenei. Death to the dictator.’ Iran’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi, is sworn in today against a backdrop of protest, the sound of chanting echoing in his ears, whether literally or figuratively. The chants are often about the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, but are also directed at the regime as a whole. ‘Clerics get lost’ is another favorite. Street demonstrations began three weeks ago in the province of Khuzestan but spread to many other places, including the capital, Tehran. People are angry about water shortages and the wretched, broken state of the economy. The question now is whether the protests will build and, if so, whether Raisi will live up to his terrifying reputation and crush them.

iran mullahs

Tuesday

Victor Davis Hanson

The American descent into madness

Nations have often gone mad in a matter of months. The French abandoned their supposedly idealistic revolutionary project and turned it into a monstrous hell for a year between July 1793 and 1794. After the election of November 1860, in a matter of weeks, Americans went from thinking secession was taboo to visions of killing the greatest number of their fellow citizens on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Mao’s China went from a failed communist state to the ninth circle of Dante’s Inferno, when he unleashed the Cultural Revolution in 1966. In the last six months, we have seen absurdities never quite witnessed in modern America. Madness, not politics, defines it. There are three characteristics of all these upheavals. One, the events are unsustainable.

madness

Monday

Stephen L. Miller

‘Insisting’ and ‘demanding’ will get us nowhere with China

How can America hold China to account? Its ruling party has committed human rights abuses and bears responsibility for the pandemic that has killed an estimated three million people and crashed economies worldwide. The Biden administration is making feckless requests of the CCP — and not demanded much more. As questions mount about the origins of the COVID-19 virus and the growing possibility that it escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and may even be an engineered virus created through gain-of-function research, (research in-part outsourced and paid for by American taxpayers), begging China to cooperate with the US, its allies and the World Health Organization isn’t going to cut it.

insisting china

Friday

Roger Kimball

Joe Biden’s dire opening chapter on the world stage

Thoughtful observers of life often comment on the richness of the English language, its huge polyglot vocabulary, its precision, it sinewy expressiveness. It is doubtless politically incorrect to say so, but English has also shown itself to be a conspicuous ally of political liberty. I have commented on this in the past, noting that 'there seems to be some deep connection between the English language and that most uncommon virtue, common sense'. Speakers of English can be plenty extravagant, it may go without saying, but there is something about English — exactly why, I do not know — that acts to tether thought to the empirical world.

world stage
alaska
Fred Fleitz

A diplomatic disaster in Alaska

It goes without saying that when conducting high-level diplomacy, you don’t insult the other party at a joint press conference before the negotiations begin. And if you choose to do something so foolish, you must be ready when the other party retaliates in its response. It is incredible that secretary of state Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan did not understand this when they began talks with their Chinese counterparts in Alaska yesterday. At what was supposed to be perfunctory two-minute statements by the US and Chinese delegations to the press before the talks began, Blinken and Sullivan criticized Chinese activities against the Uighurs, in Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as for cyber attacks on the US and economic coercion of US allies.