Biden’s Bitter Legacy Signals ‘Culmination of Betrayal’ of Post-Cold War Hopes for Peace
© AFP 2023 / SAMUEL CORUM
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President Joe Biden appeared before Americans Wednesday night to elaborate on the decision announced last week that he would not be seeking reelection for a second term. Commenting on political and historical backdrop to Biden’s remarks, observers John Varoli and Peter Kuznick said they clearly point to a nation and a world in crisis.
“I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future, all merited a second term. But nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition. So I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation,” Biden said in his televised address Wednesday, explaining his decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential race.
“I will keep working to ensure America remains strong and secure and the leader of the free world,” Biden said.
“I will keep rallying a coalition of proud nations to stop Putin from taking over Ukraine and doing more damage. I will keep NATO stronger, and I’ll make it more powerful and more united than any time in all of our history. And I’ll do the same for our allies in the Pacific. You know, when I came to office, the conventional wisdom was that China would inevitably…surpass the United States. That’s not the case anymore. And I’m going to keep working to end the war in Gaza, bring home all the hostages, and bring peace and security to the Middle East and end this war,” he said.
Beltway media, including the traditionally Biden-loyal Washington Post, dubbed the lame duck president an “anti-icon,” saying his “brief, targeted” address was “pragmatic, muted and self-effacing,” and “a little bit hard to watch.”
Biden’s top 2024 challenger, former president Trump, took to Truth Social to lambast “Crooked Joe Biden’s Oval Office speech” as “barely understandable, and sooo bad.”
“Crooked Joe Biden and lying Kamala Harris are a great embarrassment to America – there has never been a time like this,” Trump wrote in his traditional bombastic fashion.
Culmination of 35 Years of Disappointed Expectations
“I look at what’s happening today through the scope of what’s been happening since…the end of the Cold War, since 1991,” former NYT and Bloomberg contributor-turned independent foreign affairs observer John Varoli told Sputnik, commenting on the meaning of Joe Biden’s address beyond their immediate implications.
“It’s just been a horrifying time in American history,” Varoli said of this period of roughly 35 years. “It is the most disgraceful, wicked period in American history. And it’s just the feeling of betrayal…The Biden years are the culmination of this betrayal. You have to understand, we Americans, young Americans like myself…met [the end of the Cold War] with enthusiasm, with optimism. We were like ‘this is all great. It’s going to be peace in the world. No nuclear war. We’re going to get along with Russia.’ We were so full of optimism that we were going to build a better world.”
Instead, the journalist recalled, the decades since 1991 have been filled with US wars, regime change operations and other aggression, from the Gulf War and the bombing of Yugoslavia, to NATO’s expansion, culminating with the Euromaidan coup in Ukraine, all in the interest of building and propping up the American unipolar moment.
“What the hell’s wrong with these people?” was the natural reaction to these processes, Varoli said. “Then you realize, it was a plan. Professor Jeffrey Sachs said it. He saw it. He was there...This is nothing accidental…Biden is the culmination of this absolute insanity and madness. Imperial madness, imperial insanity, this bid for global domination.”
What’s taking place today in US politics is “basically the final chapter in [the] collapse” of “this whole imperial project,” according to the observer, with even mainstream outlets basically admitting, by reporting on Biden’s big donors pulling the plug on his reelection bid, that the US has turned into “an oligarchy.”
“We are really now in uncharted territory, people just have no illusions. I did some research…[and] found a poll from 2022 that said 85% of Americans think there are serious problems with our political system. 85%! That was two years ago. Now it’s probably obviously like 100%. People say there could be a civil war. People just zone out. They become apathetic,” Varoli said.
Crucial Inflection Point
“This is a crucial moment in American history,” Peter Kuznick, professor of history at the American University in Washington, DC and co-author of the book ‘Untold History of the United States’ together with film director Oliver Stone, told Sputnik.
The historian pointed out that like Trump before him, Biden surrounded himself with neoconservative hawks, from Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan to Victoria Nuland, bringing the world closer to a world-ending conflict between the superpowers.
“I’m very concerned about what’s going on in the world now. The situation in Ukraine is very troubling. As I wrote in a recent article coauthored with Ivana Hughes, the Columbia professor who heads the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, we are very concerned that the continued and increasing NATO militaristic policies in Ukraine, on top of the Russian invasion, putting the world on a glide path to World War Three and nuclear war. The fact that the Biden administration has effectively banned any discussion of diplomacy and simply doubles down on more advanced weaponry, and then gives Zelensky permission to use that weaponry to attack inside of Russia, has really made a bad situation even worse,” Kuznick said.
Ditto goes for the situation in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the observer, where President Biden’s “gung-ho militarization” and even talk “about expanding NATO to the Pacific,” alongside the existing network of regional alliances like QUAD and AUKUS, have created a “highly militarized situation there.”
“Whether it’s over Taiwan or it’s over the South China Sea, we’re heading for World War Three in the Pacific also. US Army General Minihan said he expects the US and China to be at war by 2025, and top Republicans in Congress said they agreed. Well, that’s horrifying also,” Kuznick stressed.
Looking back to history, Kuznick recalled that “as Kennedy and Khrushchev learned” during the Cuban Missile Crisis, once an international crisis emerges, “there’s no way to control them.”
“So Khrushchev called for eliminating all conflicts between us that would cause another crisis. Well, that’s what we need today. That’s the spirit we need,” Kuznick said.
