OPINION:
For one brief, fleeting moment, President Biden addressed the world like an American president should, resolutely facing down the real and present threats to freedom. It was quickly replaced by the president being forcibly dragged, even by his own party, to restrict the purchase of Russian oil this week.
Always willing to allow a dithering and divided Europe to take the lead, Mr. Biden remains committed to the failed strategy of running into the arms of our enemies to solve political problems of his own making.
Beholden to the left’s green idolatry and a hapless, lead-from-behind 2.0 foreign policy, the Biden administration is aiding and abetting the New Axis powers rather than recommitting this country to strengthening the free world.
This week Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg again urged Americans to buy electric vehicles as a way of countering the spiking gas prices caused by the Biden administration’s war on American energy. White House press secretary Jen Psaki also admonished Americans to embrace renewable energy during the energy crisis.
This concept is detached from reality in many ways, not the least of which is the fact that 85% of the lithium needed for EV production is controlled by communist China. The U.S. hasn’t built a new lithium operation in more than 50 years despite having tremendous lithium deposits including in the brine of the Smackover Formation that runs from Texas well into the southeast.
Depending on who’s doing the calculation, significant adoption of EVs will increase demand to our power grid substantially. Tesla CEO Elon Musk believes that the increase will require double the electrical output than what is currently being produced. Our aging national power systems cannot sustain such a surge in demand. Windmills and solar panels have no shot to sufficiently increase supply.
Mr. Biden wants us to drive expensive electric cars but refuses to acknowledge that doing so will make the U.S. more dependent on Chinese materials and processes.
While the Biden administration was doing its best to strengthen the Chinese economy, it was running to socialist Venezuela to beg for an increase in oil exports to the U.S. Venezuela is Russia, China and Iran’s closest and most useful ally in the Western Hemisphere. Former President Donald Trump was right to impose sanctions on the brutal socialist regime and reduce America’s imports from the country.
The U.S. should be cutting itself off from Venezuelan oil. Biden’s approach is the exact opposite. In cutting off the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada, Mr. Biden thumbed his nose at one of our closest allies and largest oil importer in favor of the brutal regime of Nicolas Maduro.
If we continue to fund our enemies and our enemy’s friends because we refuse to harness our own energy resources, we cannot stop the advance of authoritarians like Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Iranian mullahs and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, among others.
While Mr. Biden was begging the socialists in Venezuela to release more oil, he was also advancing on his negotiations with Iran, with Russia mediating the discussion, over a deal to provide nuclear power to the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.
Negotiations have inexplicably continued to advance on giving the Iranians nuclear capabilities despite the war in Ukraine, Iran’s patently obvious anti-Western alliance with China and Russia, as well as their continued role in funding the war in Yemen.
The last time Mr. Biden negotiated a deal with the Iranians it led to the U.S. handing over hundreds of millions of dollars that helped fund Islamofascism and terror networks. Just think of the lunacy of it all. While his own party leads the charge against American nuclear, oil and natural gas, Mr. Biden is doing all he can to ensure Iran has more power and more money.
In the 20th century, America was slow to counter the communist threat, but the military and ideological battle lines were ultimately drawn. We then leaned into our anti-Soviet strategy with all the might of American power, pride and innovation.
At this point, Americans would be right to ask whether Mr. Biden’s strategy is so deliberately supportive of our enemies, that it is borne out of some kindred ideological connection between the American left and the authoritarians.
If that is the case, or if the religion of climate change is so powerful a force in our politics as to ignore the threats posed by our enemies, this new Cold War will end very differently than the last one.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax Television, an author and a former Bush administration official.
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