Biden administration may have to cut some of the bullying, sanctions crap, like it or not

Stupid and ineffective sanctions, fomenting a new Cold War with China...while he's been much better than I expected on domestic issues overall, in foreign policy, except for Ukraine, Pres. Biden has been horrible. Hopefully he'll get it together, at least bit by bit.

Iran, the oil exports of which the US had devastated, seems to have increased its sales abroad by about a third, with volume rising from 669,000 mn bpd in 2021 to 900,000 mn bpd in 2022, a 35% increase, according to VOA. Most of Iran’s oil goes to China, which will need even more of it as its economy opens back up. The Iran sales to China evade US sanctions.

I conclude that virtually the only way for the US to keep economic pressure on the Kremlin in the second half of 2023 is to turn a blind eye to an even bigger expansion of Iranian exports, which could help offset the expected 0.9 million barrels a day shortfall.

In short, in the real world Washington may have to choose which country to put under maximum pressure sanctions, and it just may not be possible to do both.

Many social scientists believe that, anyway, harsh sanctions on a country devastate the middle class and make it weaker vis-a-vis the government, and so actually harm civil society activism. Iran’s protest movement would do better with fewer, not more, U.S. sanctions — especially broad ones targeting civil institutions such as the Central Bank. - Informed Comment

Deconstructing Biden's wretched foreign policy

Wretched, exceedingly hypocritical, and arguably quite dangerous. This gets into quite a bit of detail, in making its compelling case.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other members of the Biden Cabinet are fond of proclaiming the “rules-based international order” (RBIO) or “rules-based order” every chance they get: in press conferences, on interviews, in articles, at international fora, for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and cocktails. Along with the terms “human rights” and “democracy,” the RBIO is routinely used to claim a moral high ground against countries that they accuse of not following this RBIO, and wielded as a cudgel to attack, criticize, accuse, and delegitimate countries in their crosshairs as rogue outliers to an international order.

This cudgel is now used most commonly against China and Russia. Oddly enough, whenever the United States asserts this “rules-based order” that China (and other “revisionist powers”/enemy states) are violating, the United States never seems to clarify which “rules” are being violated, but simply releases a miasma of generic accusation, leaving the stench of racism and xenophobia to do the rest.

This is because there is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the RBIO.

The RBIO isn’t “rules-based,” it isn’t “international,” and it confounds any sense of “order,” let alone justice. It is, at bottom, the naked exercise of U.S. imperial power and supremacy, dressed up in the invisible finery of an embroidered fiction. The RBIO is a fraudulent impersonation of international law and justice. - Toward Freedom

Biden's foreign policy is mostly a wretched disgrace

Except for getting ground forces out of Afghanistan, most of what's been going on has been a neocoward dream come true.

Before it’s too late, we need to ask ourselves a crucial question: Do we really — I mean truly — want a new Cold War with China?

Because that’s just where the Biden administration is clearly taking us. If you need proof, check out last month’s announcement of an “AUKUS” (Australia, United Kingdom, U.S.) military alliance in Asia. Believe me, it’s far scarier (and more racist) than the nuclear-powered submarine deal and the French diplomatic kerfuffle that dominated the media coverage of it. By focusing on the dramatically angry French reaction to losing their own agreement to sell non-nuclear subs to Australia, most of the media missed a much bigger story: that the U.S. government and its allies have all but formally declared a new Cold War by launching a coordinated military buildup in East Asia unmistakably aimed at China.

It’s still not too late to choose a more peaceful path. - TomDispatch

Biden's Middle East policy shows little, if any, improvement

The demonizing of China is really bad, too. But this is even worse, for now.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is shaping up to be as much of a disaster as secretary of state as Mike Pompeo. He appears to have nothing to say about Israel’s outrageous new plans to steal more Palestinian land and to further divide Palestinians into Bantustans as was done by Apartheid South Africa to the Bantu population.

He is hobnobbing with the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates and Israel, celebrating the “Abraham Accords” that marginalized the Palestinians, and rattling sabers against Iran. He won’t give Iran guarantees of an end to the crippling US financial and trade blockade on Tehran, then blames Iran for declining to give up its civilian nuclear enrichment program in return for nothing. As for Israel’s nuclear arsenal, that bit of proliferation goes unmentioned and never has attracted any sanctions. - Informed Comment