Patterns of Appeasement

Trump gets blamed for cozying up to despots; Obama/Biden get a pass

“So I said to Vlad, civilized countries don’t invade other countries…”

---

The Russian collusion hoax may have gone boom long ago, but Democrats, progressives, etc. are still denouncing Donald Trump for being V. Putin’s hand puppet. The former president is just too darned cozy with foreign dictators and despots—solid evidence, supposedly, that he, too, is a totalitarian goon.

But what happened before and after Trump—when, as was said, the adults were in charge? Given the combined records of the Obama and Biden administrations, this denunciation of Trump betrays a convenient lapse of memory on the part of those who voice it. They seem to have forgotten, for instance, that President Obama commenced his first term with an egregious and gratuitous gesture of appeasement toward Putin.

When he entered office, Obama inherited a Bush Administration plan to establish antiballistic missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. These defenses were intended primarily to counter the threat posed by Iran’s development of long-range ballistic missiles, and secondarily to protect NATO countries against a similar Russian threat. Summarily, and with no advance notice to the Polish and Czech government, the Obama Administration cancelled the plan in September 2009. Afterwards the excuse was given that a reassessment of Iranian capabilities had driven the Administration’s decision, but there was no denying that Russia, which had strongly opposed the Bush plan, was highly gratified by the cancellation.

This high-handed action was the harbinger of Obama’s limp-wristed response to Russia’s increasing aggressiveness over the course of his presidency. There was the moment when, sotto voce, he assured outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he he’d have "more flexibility" to deal on issues like missile defense after the 2012 US presidential election. Obama asked Medvedev to pass those glad tidings along to Putin, who was then the Russian president-elect.

When V. Putin turned his attention to Ukraine, and particularly when Russia seized Crimea in 2014, the President merely tut-tutted that nations didn’t behave that way in the civilized and enlightened twenty-first century. Needless to say, Putin paid absolutely no attention to Obama’s scolding.  

Then there was the policy, glaring in its smug cluelessness, of engagement with the Islamic Republic of Iran. To be sure, the possibility that the world’s leading terrorist state might succeed in developing nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them gave legitimate cause for alarm. But the Obama Administration’s solution was a systematic policy of appeasement, forking over concession after concession to the ayatollahs in hopes of luring them into an agreement that would prevent the development of Iranian nukes. A legend took shape that there existed within the Iranian regime a cabal of “moderates” who would be empowered by American generosity and forbearance. Obama and his team were praised for the sophistication and maturity of their policy.

But the agreement that emerged was a joke, a testament to wishful thinking, an unverifiable mess that at best would have slowed down the Iranian nuclear weapons program.

The Obama Administration patiently endured many humiliations for the sake of this worthless deal. The Iranian regime made no secret of its contempt for America, the Great Satan. Nor in any way did the regime moderate its genocidal antisemitism or tone down its threats to wipe Israel off the map. When a rigged election led to widespread unrest in Iran, Obama had not one word to say in support of the people who’d revolted against their oppressors. And when the Trump Administration tore up the Iranian nuclear deal, former Obama Administration officials, Democrats and much of the media pitched a hissy fit—as if some great diplomatic triumph had been overturned.

As for the Biden Administration, it entered office pledged to reverse Trump’s action, reinstating the nuclear agreement with Iran—a course pursued with monomaniacal idiocy in the face of even more blatant Iranian provocations and insults. This went on right up to the October 7, 2023, Hamas pogrom in Israel. Biden & Co. were so eager to cobble something together that they enlisted Russia as the honest broker—this after Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine! Finally, however, reality elbowed its way to the front of the queue, and the Iranian nuclear deal now seems to be dead. But if there’s a second Biden term, who’s to say that there won’t be another attempt to appease the Islamic Republic?

 In fairness, it should be noted that the Biden Administration has stood up against Putin’s attempt to extinguish Ukraine’s independence and turn it into a Russian puppet state—though unfortunately, its policy has been hesitant and wavering. Enough aid was provided to keep Ukraine on its feet, but not enough to hand Putin the defeat that was possible when his armies were on the back foot. And now it may be too late to save Ukraine. The President seems paralyzed, unable to provide the forceful leadership necessary at this critical moment.

It should also be noted that the Russian despot’s decision to attack Ukraine was no doubt influenced by Biden’s disgraceful Afghanistan skedaddle.

America’s abrupt, craven abandonment of an ally, and the deliverance of Afghanistan into the hands of a brutal Islamofascist gang, was a catastrophe and a disgrace—made worse by the Biden Administration’s gross incompetence. The chaotic situation in the capital, Kabul, facilitated a terrorist bombing that killed almost two hundred people, including thirteen US military personnel, and wounded nearly two hundred more. The American withdrawal was so precipitous that thousands of people, including US citizens, who were at risk of summary execution by the Taliban, were simply left behind. And since those terrible days in the summer of 2021, the Taliban has resumed the reign of terror and oppression to which America put an end after 9/11.

Having watched that debacle unfold, V. Putin can perhaps be excused for concluding that America would do nothing if he attacked Ukraine but wring its hands and blather of sanctions.

Finally, there’s the Obama/Biden advocacy of a “two-state solution” to the long-running conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.

After October 7, we were told that a “revitalized Palestinian Authority” would be the cornerstone of a permanent peace—first governing post-Hamas Gaza, then assuming control of an independent Palestinian state. This idea has everything going for it, except the facts. The Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization on which it’s based, are scarcely less antisemitic and terroristic than Hamas, though perhaps less theatrically homicidal. The PA President, Mahmoud Abbas, was elected to a four-year term in 2005 and just…stayed on. He has, in effect, made himself President for Life. The PA itself is profoundly corrupt and its misgovernment of the West Bank bodes ill for any independent Palestinian state that might fall into his clutches.

How this dysfunctional, terroristic organization is to be “revitalized” is a good question to which the Biden Administration has no plausible answer.

Obama/Biden and their apologists are in no position to criticize Donald Trump over his attitude toward dictators and despots. His attitude is, indeed, deplorable, but for the most part it’s been just talk. On the other hand, his predecessor and his successor have actively sought to appease hostile foreign powers and groups who bear nothing but ill will toward America and its allies—while repeatedly bashing one of those allies, Israel. The result? One foreign policy crackup after another.

So “the adults are back in charge.” And look what’s happening.