The many foreign policy details left out of Biden's State of the Union

Biden should have spent more than a few minutes talking about his administration's warmongering foreign policy

Joe Biden's 2023 State of the Union address touched on a lot of themes, ranging from drug costs, credit card late fees, "good" paying jobs, and infrastructure. Biden talked about capping the price of insulin at $35, as opposed to fully subsidizing it so the 1 out of 10 Americans with diabetes will never be priced out of life-saving medicine. Biden talked about "replacing poisonous lead pipes" so "every child in America can drink the water" instead of having "permanent damage" to their brain, a sentence that sounds like it came from the writers over at The Onion. And in a truly revolting display, the same man behind the racist 1994 crime bill invited the family of Tyre Nichols to attend while he talked about the importance of "reforming" police departments which have apparently made it a yearly tradition to brutalize and kill as many unarmed black men as possible.

Biden also spent parts of his speech yelling at Congress to crack down on corporate cheaters, take care of student debt, raise the minimum wage, and pass the Pro Act, never bothering to mention how Democrats had a majority at one point and could have made all of these things happen if they really wanted to.

To maintain the illusion of a two party system, the State of the Union also witnessed Republicans yelling "liar!" at the president, booing him, and other such theatrics. It was only when Biden talked about supporting the war effort in Ukraine and continuing to instigate tensions with China that the room erupted in chants of "USA!" with "both sides" becoming one side, one party: The War Party.

And yet it's strange that Biden spent such little time talking about foreign policy considering his administration has been so busy using taxpayer dollars to lay the groundwork for a third world war. For example, Biden didn't mention the new US bases in Guam and the Philippines. He didn't mention how, in December of 2022, a US spy plane "came within 20 feet" of Chinese fighter jets in the South China Sea, nor did he mention how these kinds of provocations by the US in and around Chinese territory have become fairly normalized. He didn't mention joint military drills between the US and Japan in the Pacific, or how Japan is doubling its defense spending in the largest military buildup since World War II.

What's more disturbing about Biden's speech is that while he mentioned China, Russia, and US involvement in Ukraine, he left out other ongoing US conflicts. For example, the US was involved in 43 operations "against ISIS" in Iraq and Syria in January. As of 2022, there were still at least 2,500 US troops in Iraq, and Stars and Stripes reported in December that the US military and partner forces launched "hundreds" of operations against ISIS that year in Iraq, as well as in Syria, where US troops have been accused of looting the country's oil. President Trump himself even admitted that this is why US troops are still in the country, saying in 2019 that the US military is in Syria "only" for the oil. In 2020, a former senior Trump administration official told Foreign Policy that "we have to stay [in Syria] and make sure the oil flows" because of a US-backed deal with the Kurds to develop oil fields. This past January, a US base in Syria was attacked with drones, which was of course blamed on Iran.

Speaking of Iran, the Pentagon's Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) admitted that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon, writing in their 2022 report that the country "does not today possess a nuclear weapon" and is not pursuing one. Regardless, Biden has inflicted new sanctions on the country, prompting Trita Parsi, Executive Director of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, to point out how the president is "continuing and embracing Trump's max pressure policy" while expecting a different result. In late 2021, the US was accused of trying to steal a tanker full of Iranian oil sailing along the Gulf of Oman.

Elsewhere, other US military actions are also underway, such as in Somalia, where 30 "militants" were killed by a US airstrike in January 2023. That same month, a suspected US drone strike killed three alleged "al-Qaeda members" in Yemen, where the US has backed the Saudi-led coalition in a conflict that has killed at least 377,000 people, most as a result of starvation and disease. Closer to home, the crippling trade embargo on Cuba that was eased under Obama and reversed back under Trump has continued throughout the Biden administration. In late 2022, every UN General Assembly member voted in favor of a resolution condemning the embargo, with the only two votes against it coming from the US and Israel.

I don't think Biden's lack of foreign policy discussion was a coincidence. It has become a long-standing tradition in American politics and in American media to never mention the provocations that lead to wars and to only cover the reactions to such provocations. We hear about North Korean missile launches but never hear about the US-South Korean military drills provoking them. We hear about attacks on US troops in Syria but never hear about why those attacks are happening, or why US troops are still even there. We hear about Chinese and Russian military build-ups, but rarely hear about the US military build-ups in Europe and the Pacific driving them. Leaving Americans in the dark about foreign policy allows them to be exploited when there is a reaction to these policies, and it appears as though this was the Biden administration's mentality when drafting their 2023 State of the Union.