As Russia readies for a winter offensive in its war in Ukraine, communist China brews over Taiwan and buttresses Moscow for the anticipated realization of its new global order, and Iran and its proxies wage a war against Israel that risks escalation, much is made of America’s passivity on the world stage. Yet the problem might not be one of Washington’s passivity but of a leftist foreign policy gripped by the very deconstructivist, postcolonial dogma that afflicts our most critical institutions.
This ideology, which began to surface in the 1960s, is a curious amalgam of Jacques Derrida’s deconstructivism and Frantz Fanon’s postcolonialism — with some Marxism thrown in for good measure. Here, meaning is variable, truth unattainable, lived experience paramount, and violence a necessity for change. Wrong can be right, woman can be man, and foe can be friend. The aim, ultimately, is to dismantle Western thought and champion the ostensibly oppressed, as defined by the ideology itself.
No doubt, President Joe Biden likely harbors little intent of undoing Western civilization. Yet, in foreign affairs, his administration has tended to proceed as if with an air of moral relativity and a curious fixation on equity. These have often undermined, rather than advanced, America’s foreign policy and security interests.
Consider but a handful of actions undertaken in the two months since Hamas attacked Israel. Iran, which facilitated the attack, has been granted a 120-day sanctions waiver to access $10 billion in funds previously frozen in Iraq. Never mind that Tehran is the world’s largest sponsor of state terrorism or that, since Oct. 17, and through its proxies in the Middle East, it has launched at least 66 attacks on American forces and assets.
Biden’s administration also helped to broker the recent pause in hostilities between Israel and Hamas — the terms of which, predictably, Hamas failed to honor. On his visit to Israel last month, Secretary of State Blinken acknowledged as much. He then proceeded to chide Israel for its lack of “credit” in its efforts to defeat Hamas and condemned its military conduct. “Further significant displacement of civilians inside Gaza” is to be avoided, the secretary said, as is “damage to life-critical infrastructure like hospitals.” Similar statements have been made by Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
Never mind that if Israel can neither evacuate civilians nor hit Hamas when it hides in critical infrastructure, it would barely be able to fight. Never mind, too, that no such demands have been made of Hamas, which on Oct. 7 launched the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
Instead, on meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Blinken reiterated Washington’s “commitment to advancing the establishment of a Palestinian state.” The ideology that afflicts Washington demands that the avowedly oppressed should be championed.
For China, Biden has lifted sanctions on Beijing’s Institute of Forensic Science, which is implicated in human rights abuses, including those against the Uyghurs. The move is in exchange for hints from Beijing that it might do more to rein in fentanyl flows. Never mind that Beijing has made similar commitments in the past, none of which have been fulfilled. Never mind, too, that for China’s communists, fentanyl is akin to a weapon of war strategically leveraged to debilitate and undermine America.
The Biden administration has also ceded to Beijing what could be strategic military advantages. In its agreement to limit the use of artificial intelligence in nuclear and autonomous weapons, the administration has likely hastened China’s military innovation and undermined America’s. China’s historic disregard for its international commitments makes it unlikely that it will uphold its end of the bargain.
The resumption of military-to-military exchanges is equally dubious. The challenge is not one of failed communication, but of a China in pursuit of a global order implicit to which is the end of America’s global dominance. It would take quite the phone call to stymie such an agenda.
“The world is big enough for both of our countries to thrive,” Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen said on her recent trip to Beijing. Sure, Xi Jinping might be a dictator, but his lived experience makes it such that his interests ought to be respected.
Such remarks and other Biden administration exploits are frequently portrayed as gaffes or signs of a Washington in retreat. Yet one can err only so many times before recognizing and attempting to rectify the follies made.
The administration, too, has hardly been a passive bystander to global affairs. Its actions of the last two months, as of Biden’s term to date, have been deliberate, informed by a dogma that has been festering in Washington since at least the Obama administration.
“I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism,” President Barack Obama opined in Strasbourg, France, in 2009. Yet if everyone is exceptional, no one is — and that, indeed, is the point. If meaning is relative and truth an apparition, on what grounds might America proceed with moral authority? Or Israel defend itself? Or the West attempt to frustrate the aims of an axis of revisionist nations (Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea) intent on upending the global order?
The ideology that has found its way to the White House is a dangerous attempt to deconstruct and destroy the very tenets of our society: logic, morality, discourse, and ideas. It is time for more people to grasp the depth of the problem and ensure that, in 2024, it finds its way out. For if it does not, it will have likely destroyed the most successful nation in history — and with it, indeed, Western civilization.
Aleksandra Gadzala Tirziu (@awgadzala) is the founder of the geopolitical risk firm, Magpie Advisory, a visiting fellow at Independent Women’s Forum, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and a contributing editor with the New York Sun.