richardmurray

My Thoughts Before The Articles
The first article is correct but incorrect. Biden like his predecessor Obama is poor on policy making. this is a simple truth. but, Saudi arabia nor Iran love the usa. Both of these countries are well aware that the usa rather them both be satraps. To be blunt, OPEC led by saudi arabia was not something the usa wanted and fought hard against, and the usa is why the shah was murdered. The usa has more to do with the most important recent events in either of these countries lives , as a negative agent. 
To the arab -israeli concept, again, it is a miscomprehension. The other people commonly called arab from morocco to Pakistan may be willing to turn their back on the palestinean effort, but they clearly comprehend with Da'ish, known in the anglophone as the islamic state, that the common people desire a unification last seen a the times of the caliphates. The caliphates didn't have an israel, the caliphates had a palestine. 
The article author misses a simple point, Biden has a domestic voting base that is self righteous. A domestic voting base that believes all firms/individuals/groups have to act according to a nonviolent/nonsectarian/individualistic/anti-strong communal mantra. But most governments in humanity are sectarian/willing to use violence beyond a legal code/proudly racial/anti minority. Pakistan/India/Saudi Arabia each have abused minorities/each are culturally inflexible to immigrants/have governments led by particular groups. So, Biden wants to do two things at the same time. He wants to do business with these countries but he also wants to chagrin them. And that is dysfunctional.  
At the end of the day, the USA has banned or blockaded or stymied most if not all the countries from saudi arabia to china in a major way. The USA sent troops to mexico and put a gun to the mexican presidents head to gain the north of mexico and make it the western states. Iran/Saudi Arabia/Pakistan/India/China are all rivals, who have blood between them, but nothing that extreme. I argue they finally see the USA as their collective true opposer.

To the second article, 
the problem is the difference between Western Europe plus the USA at the end of the second phase of the World War and the rest of humanity at the same point. It is as i say to Black people whose forebears were enslaved completely in the USA. From a white communal situation, USA history is: Native american/European colonies/USA<original/louisiana/war between states/world war/usa world order or norms>, but from a black communal situation, USA history is: Native American/Slavery complete/Slavery through jails/Civil rights act 1965/Early integration of the 1980s/Integration or the Obama Presidency and after>
When human beings talk about history, we tend to say, the victor's write the books. But your essay isn't the book. The history book is designed as a guide for general use. But your words are yours. When history books speak of the internet, you can expect a generalization, that will be favorable to the USA. But when I speak of the internet, I speak of mismanagement/misguidance at the beginning. Dysfunctional systems designed to emphasize media over purpose. In my opinion the internet needs to be chutted. Not because a system of communication between humans is bad. No, the structure of the internet is dysfunctional. Too much energy/time/resources are spent on repeated prose/advertising/dysfunctional websites. In parallel, the writer of the second article, speaks of the norms or world order, but that is from a western European standpoint. The problem is, when the NAzi party fell in germany, western europe, which includes the U.S.A.+ Japan set up this idea of humanity, where they lead and the rest of humanity follows. But, the rest of humanity outside western europe had a different view. Russia wanted to be the leader but overreached itself, miscalculating how impotent it will be in the rest of humanity outside eastern europe. Western europe had centuries of connections in africa/asia/latin america/caribbean that made the victory over russia simple to see. But, the rest of humanity , outside russia, was trying to figure out what they will be after generations, 20 year multiples, of white european rule. China was once cut up into parts by western europe. The article says wolf warrior, should china trust the countries who less than one hundred years ago had cut it up into fealties for their financial empowerment while telling chinese they can't walk in certain parts of the cities in china. Shouldn't china be offensive/militaristic. This is the problem with the former colonies of the western european powers, commonly called the developing countries. These countries historically went from European Imperialism to European satrap.  These countries don't have a sense of self rule. The last time the lands that were once part of european empires straightly had self rule was before european impires took them over. In that environment do you expect people in those countries to cherish the rule of law or the rule of power. The USA whose military is throughout the entire humanity, talks of the rule of law, while its power influences beyond the law everyday. but then people in the usa want countries absent power but influence by power to cherish some legal code that serves them nothing but pain. 
China realizes the former colonies of white european empires<white european empires includes the U.S.A.> in the caribbean/south america/africa/asia want to be wolf warriors too. They want want China alone as a former european imperial colony achieved. Self rule. And china achieved self rule through a combination of violence to its own as well to others/determination even when the self was harmed/a line of my way or the highway with no compromise or deals/enough population or natural resources to exist free from external manipulation <sorry haiti or cuba>.  Eastern Europe or Australia want to join western europe < which includes the u.s.a. > that is fine. They are like the U.S.A. , not naturally western european but through the years have become connected to western europe deeply. But, the rest of humanity, which is a much larger population wants to be wolf warriors. Yeah, maybe kill some citizens to close to betrayal. Yeah, maybe hurt a minority group viciously. Yeah, maybe public while proud of negative actions for its betterment. But, that is the way. The goal is to be free, not liked. China isn't asking the rest of its peers to like it, to be it, they are asking them to be free to become what they want to be while giving china financial favor over the usa. The USA can't offer a better future than the chinese, cause the chinese are offering countries the chance to be what they want to be. The USA can only offer to be a cheap dysfunctional clone of western europe and as Tunisia proves, people in the former western european satraps are becoming more and more tired of that. 

IN AMENDMENT

China's problem is how to separate the immigrant groups in the usa from the countries they come from. The USA's great advantage in influence is the minority of people who live in the usa but influence affairs in their country of origin or descendency. People who haven't been in Jamaica for ten years influence jamaica more than people who never left jamaica. People who haven't been in the Phillipines for years influence the phillipines more than filipinos who never left the phillipines. The USA has agents, like the cuban community in the usa who have no positive connection to the country of their ancestry, like cuba,  but work tirelessly against it while living in the usa. The issue isn't immigration but how immigrants influence or are used to influence the countries they came from. 

If you come from Iran and you are living in NYC, why can't you shut up about Iran. You don't live in IRan, you don't act in the government in Iran. Why can't you just wish iran well and shut up and focus more on the usa, the place you actually live. 

THE ARTICLES

A man in Tehran, Iran holds a local newspaper reporting on its front page the China-brokered deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore ties on March, 11 2023.
ATTA KENARE / AFP / Getty Images

Saudi-Iran Deal: China Fills a Middle East Vacuum Left by the Biden AdministrationMar 24, 2023 4 min read

James Phillips
Visiting Fellow, Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies

James Phillips is a Visiting Fellow for Middle Eastern affairs at The Heritage Foundation.

China scored an unexpected diplomatic coup with the March 10 announcement that it had brokered an agreement between archrivals Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore diplomatic relations, which had been ruptured for seven years.

How did it happen? Beijing exploited a vacuum of power created by multiple miscues by the Biden administration. Biden’s bumbling, disastrous 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan considerably lowered America’s stock in the region. The Administration made a bad situation worse by making vain efforts to appease Iran with another illusory nuclear agreement and a misguided push to castigate Saudi Arabia as a pariah, despite its importance as a longtime partner for the U.S. on regional security issues.

The Chinese-brokered agreement pushed Washington even further into the diplomatic sidelines of Middle East influence. It set back U.S. national interests by undermining American efforts to isolate Iran’s rogue regime, build an Arab-Israeli framework for containing Iranian threats, and expand the Abraham peace accords between Israel and Arab states by including Saudi Arabia.

Prior to the March 10 agreement, China had not played a significant role in Middle East diplomacy. At a time when the United States is perceived by many regional allies to be withdrawing from the Middle East, the accord confirmed China’s role as a new power player in the region and a rising global force.

Iran’s threats to Saudi Security

Iran and Saudi Arabia have endured a hostile relationship since the 1979 Iranian revolution, which added deep ideological tensions between Iran’s revolutionary regime and the Saudi kingdom to pre-existing tensions over nationalist and sectarian religious disputes.  Iran’s Shia revolutionaries have sought to displace the Sunni fundamentalist Saudis as the most influential leaders of the Muslim world.

Diplomatic ties between the two Islamic powers were broken in 2016, after Iranians attacked and ransacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran following Saudi Arabia’s execution of a Saudi Shia cleric perceived to be pro-Iranian.  In addition to the fierce sectarian rivalry, the two countries have fought bloody proxy battles, supporting clashing militias and terrorist groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen.

Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Yemen have attacked Saudi oil facilities and civilian infrastructure with Iranian-made drones and ballistic missiles. Iran also launched a drone and cruise missile attack on Saudi oil facilities in 2019 that temporarily shut down roughly 5 percent of global oil production.

Saudi Arabia’s tentative détente with Iran, brokered by China, exposes a dangerous shift in perceptions about the Middle East balance of power.  It is not surprising that Iran would look to China for diplomatic mediation, given their increasingly close alignment following their 2021 Comprehensive Strategic Partnership agreement. But it is disturbing that Saudi Arabia, with its long-term ties to the U.S., sought Chinese diplomatic backing.

Saudi-American tensions

A critical factor in the deterioration of Saudi-American relations has been the ham-handed policies of the Biden administration, which has neglected important security issues and focused on virtue signaling about Saudi human rights abuses.

President Biden came into office pledging to turn Saudi Arabia into a “pariah” for the 2018 assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident journalist.  The Biden administration went out of its way to publicly chastise Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader of the kingdom, for that killing, while turning a blind eye to Iran’s far worse human rights record.

The Saudis chafed at the criticism. Moreover, they were alarmed that the Administration failed to adequately respond to mounting threats to their security posed by Iran and its proxies.  The Biden administration froze arms sales to Saudi Arabia, cut off support for the Saudi-backed war against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, withdrew some of the U.S. missile defense systems deployed to Saudi Arabia, and prioritized the revival of the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, which the Trump administration withdrew from in 2018.

The Saudis regarded Biden’s drive to resurrect the flawed Iran nuclear deal as a major threat to their own security, fearing that another weak nuclear deal would allow Tehran to pocket billions of dollars of sanctions relief that would be used to finance Iran’s escalating military and terrorist threats against its neighbors.

The Saudi government values many aspects of its ties to the United States, particularly in the economic and technological spheres, as demonstrated by its purchase earlier this month of 78 Boeing 787 Dreamliner commercial aircraft, in a deal worth almost $37 billion.

But the Biden administration’s cold shoulder and its complacent down-sizing of the U.S. military presence in the region prompted the Saudis to seek additional security insurance against aggression by Iran, which enjoyed steady support from China and Russia.  Saudi Arabia has now hedged its security bets by bolstering relations with Russia, China, and even Iran.

The Bottom Line

The Biden administration, which claims to be “pivoting” to the Indo-Pacific, left a diplomatic and security vacuum in the Middle East. China is now working to fill that void, pivoting to the Middle East at America’s expense.

President Biden’s threat to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” not only pushed Riyadh into China’s arms, but weakened regional efforts to contain Iran, and set back hopes of expanding the Abraham peace accords between Israel and Arab states to include Saudi Arabia.

The Administration’s misguided aggravation of Saudi-American tensions created an opportunity that Beijing was happy to exploit.  It now enjoys better relations with Riyadh than Washington does.

In addition to China, Iran is a major beneficiary of the agreement, which helps it escape diplomatic isolation and buy more time for advancing its nuclear program. Moreover, Saudi Arabia is now less likely to join Arab-Israeli efforts to contain Iran.

The Biden administration needs to recalibrate its Middle East policy to give a higher priority to security issues and the need to deter and defend against multiple Iranian threats to regional security.

Perhaps then long-term partners in the Middle East, who now harbor increasing doubts about U.S. security guarantees, would stop looking to China to augment their security.

U.R.L.
https://www.heritage.org/global-politics/commentary/saudi-iran-deal-china-fills-middle-east-vacuum-left-the-biden

President Xi Jinping of China enters the APEC Economic Leaders Sustainable Trade and Investment meeting on November 19, 2022 in Bangkok, Thailand.
Lauren DeCicca / Getty Images

The U.S. Is Losing the Developing World to ChinaDec 8, 2022 3 min read
COMMENTARY BY
Michael Cunningham
Research Fellow, China, Asian Studies Center

Michael is a Research Fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center.

China has an image problem, and Xi Jinping’s "wolf warrior" diplomacy is largely to blame. At least that’s how most in the United States and Europe see it. But this narrative fails to recognize the headway Beijing is making in other parts of the world. What many fail to realize is that Beijing is conducting an effective diplomatic offensive in the developing world, and it poses a real challenge to U.S. global leadership.

To be sure, the abrasive tone China has presented to the international community has caused serious problems in Beijing’s relations with much of the developed world. Even many of China’s most important trading partners are increasingly aligning with the U.S., undoing decades of painstaking efforts by a smoother generation of diplomats. This is a weakness in Xi’s diplomacy, and Washington should capitalize on it.

But on a global scale, Xi’s diplomatic style isn’t failing so much as it’s playing a different game with rules unfamiliar to many Western powers. So-called wolf warrior diplomacy isn’t a flaw of Xi’s "New Era" program—it’s a feature of it. Since Xi came to power, China has recalibrated its diplomatic strategy to focus on the developing world, which it hopes to use to change the world order gradually.

This was a radical shift. Since the 1980s, the primary aim of Chinese diplomats was to placate the U.S. and its allies, easing their concerns about the Chinese Communist Party’s global intentions and convincing them that China’s rise actually benefits the existing international system. This policy was successful—the U.S. not only didn’t oppose China’s rise, but it actively enabled it, truly believing the disinformation narrative that engagement would result in democratic and free market reforms.

But the effectiveness of this U.S.-centric approach to diplomacy started to wane during the Trump administration. By 2017, Xi already pivoted from Deng Xiaoping’s injunction to "hide your strength and bide your time" in favor of assuming China’s place as a major world power in its own right. "Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy" aims to "reform" the international system and create a China-led world order, which is ominously referred to in Chinese as a "community of common destiny for mankind."

This is where the developing world comes in. Beijing knows it cannot currently challenge U.S. hegemony through military means. Rather, in a strategy likely informed in part by the CCP's own experience using workers and peasants to overthrow Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government in China, Beijing hopes to entice as many members of the international community as possible to back its rise as a global leader. In a United Nations system characterized by "one country, one vote," the country with the most supporters often wins, and there are considerably more developing and nondemocratic countries than there are developed Western democracies.

China has worked to entice countries that are less invested in the U.S.-led international order to take its side and help fight its battles in the international community. This includes nations that openly resent the U.S. and oppose its leadership, such as Iran and Russia. China’s harsh anti-American rhetoric and aggressive treatment of Western countries appeal to these countries, giving Beijing credibility in their eyes.

It also includes underdeveloped countries in Africa, Latin America, and the South Pacific, which are not necessarily opposed to U.S. leadership but whose favor Beijing can buy through economic statecraft. China’s tone in dealing with these countries differs vastly from the harshness with which it approaches the West. In the case of many of these countries, state-owned Chinese firms are among the only developers willing to invest in much-needed infrastructure projects. While many developing countries don’t fully trust China and worry about becoming overly reliant on Beijing, cooperation is usually the least expensive and often the only way for political leaders in these countries to fill urgent needs for their struggling populations.

The U.S. can’t expect to win over rogue states intent on its decline, but it can and must compete with Beijing in the developing world. Already, China is having considerable success securing the votes it needs to block U.N. actions inconsistent with its interests. The greatest casualty has arguably been global human rights norms. China punches well above its weight in the U.N. Human Rights Council despite not even ranking among the top funders of that body. The fact that the world’s preeminent human rights authority is unable to pass a resolution to even discuss the genocide in China’s Xinjiang region shows how effective Beijing’s assault on democratic norms has become.

This is just one of many examples of how Beijing is using its influence over developing countries to overturn global norms and promote its interests in opposition to the U.S.-led global order. It is past time for the U.S. policy community to take China’s influence in the developing world seriously. Many developing countries desire alternatives to Beijing’s enticements, and the U.S. and its allies should develop strategies to compete with China for their loyalty.

U.R.L.
https://www.heritage.org/asia/commentary/the-us-losing-the-developing-world-china