The 2022 mid-terms is almost complete and the House will switch to the GOP and the Senate remains in Dem hands….with the results it may bring change in our foreign policy….

Mid-term elections rarely deal with foreign policy, and this year’s mid-terms were no exception.  However, the elections will have consequences for U.S. foreign policy, and the Biden administration could exploit various openings if it acted “outside the box.”  There is room for President Joe Biden to take new initiatives in the field of national security, even as Republicans are poised to take over the House of Representatives.  Biden’s domestic and legislative agendas are essentially dead on arrival with Rep. Kevin McCarthy or any of his troglodyte colleagues as Speaker of the House.  Biden knows, moreover, that forward movement on foreign policy is less difficult than advancing a liberal domestic agenda.

First of all, the mid-terms will affect Biden’s agenda for Ukraine, particularly the ability to continue the current pace of military assistance to President Volodymyr Zelensky. Since the war began nearly nine months ago, the Biden administration has authorized and the Congress has approved more than $60 billion in aid to Ukraine. McCarthy has already stated that a Republican-led House would be unwilling to approve “blank check” assistance to Ukraine.  Three of the leading Republican supporters of military assistance to Ukraine—Rob Portman (OH), Richard Burr (NC), and Ben Sasse (NE)—are leaving the Senate, and the Republican leadership in 2023 will be far more concerned with beating up the Biden administration over the withdrawal from Afghanistan than with challenging the Russian occupation of Ukraine.

The mainstream media as well as the British Economist believe that Russia needs to suffer a decisive defeat in Ukraine so that Vladimir Putin’s failure is unambiguous, but it is already obvious—even to some Russian politicians and oligarchs—that Moscow has failed miserably.  Continuing the war could lead to an expanded conflict that involves the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), particularly the United States, and could lead to the use of tactical nuclear weapons.  If Ukraine suffers greater economic losses, then there is great risk to the kind of democracy that Zelensky and his colleagues say they want to create.  Greater conflict will also test the patience of West and East European states that will have to get through the winter with limited access to Russian oil and natural gas.

It is time to talk.  Ironically, it is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, who has been the most outspoken about getting to the negotiating table.  It is wrong for the military adviser to the president to go public with policy advocacy, but in this case his ideas deserve a sounding within the National Security Council.

The Mid-Term Elections And American Foreign Policy

Personally I would like to see a major change in our foreign policy but I am not very optimistic basically because the defense people have lobbyists with buckets of money to throw at our members of Congress…so change, in my opinion, will e very little and as usual too late.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”