Context
The World Worried About Trump? Biden Has Had A Disastrous Showing
US President Joe Biden
The US President and so-called leader of the free world, Joe Biden, has had a poor showing on the top job so far, and that's after succeeding Trump.
Series of missteps: Biden's subpar performance has had severe consequences for the world. It:
Pushed the world to the brink of another war
Destroyed the global respect for the rule of law
Made the difference between democracy and autocracy immaterial
Ignited high inflation that may result in countries going bankrupt
The Ukraine crisis: The US alone could have prevented Putin from invading Ukraine, not by arming Ukraine before the war began, but by reassuring Putin that NATO would not expand closer to Russia. However, the US did not take that route.
Why not? There are two possible explanations:
Russia was the easier and smaller enemy to take on and destroy.
The US military-industrial complex needs active wars to be viable or profitable. As unnerved European nations arm themselves, the military-industrial complex will keep churning out arms and ammunition.
The Chinese behemoth: Trump never doubted that China was the bigger threat to the US. However, his political opponents made him seem like a Russian puppet.
Biden has pushed Russia to take refuge under China, even as he himself mollycoddles China.
Biden's economic war: The US President tried to isolate Russia by:
Freezing their assets
Organising boycotts of Russian businesses and oligarchs
Asking American businesses to leave Russia and accept losses
Biden’s missteps have plunged the world into a stagflation; high inflation has already occurred, and recession looms in the major economies.
Impact on Russia: Even Russia benefited from sanctions against it as oil prices have boomed.
Europe reduced its oil and gas imports from Russia.
India (5X) and China (2X) started importing cheaper Russian oil in much larger quantities.
Elsewhere, The Wall Street Journal calculates that businesses have lost $59 billion from sanctions imposed against Russia and retaliatory actions.
Fit for the job? Questions are being raised by many about whether Biden is even fit to rule. Besides the obvious public gaffes, bloopers, and notable speech slurring, there are reports that he may be facing “cognitive” difficulties (a polite word for some form of or early-stage dementia). (Read/view here, here, here, here).
Post-Trump era: When Trump was elected, doomsayers predicted a turbulent tenure. Now under Biden, things have gotten rockier.
