by Napoleon Williams
As usual and now to be expected, articles by Brian Garvey are informative, analytical, and constructive. The one entitled “Trips by Biden, Pelosi, and Markey are Bad Diplomacy“, was no exception.
However, it had, in my opinion, a serious deficit in perhaps implying there is something wrong with leaders of nations meeting for talks.
I think it is important generally for leaders of nations to meet, particularly at a time when the UN has ceased to perform this function, leaving it to gatherings of somewhat like-minded nations to hold summits outside the UN structure, a very worrisome and unrepresentative development.
The issue with respect to summits should be the purpose of the meeting, accompanied by questions of the extent of transparency, the fruits, and key elements of contents.
Garvey performed an excellent job in illustrating the visits to Taiwan by members of Congress as basically efforts (1) to blow up the decades old agreement between China and the U.S. for the U.S. to recognize only one China and one government of China government (2) to promote warlike attitudes and purpose towards the government of China, (3) to show the ruling establishment in Taiwan that the U.S. would support its independence and statehood even if it resulted in war, (4) though not stated, to continuing efforts by developed nations either to divide up developing nations or to claim ownership rights to their continental lands and/or islands, and (5) to advance consistent practices and goals of the U.S. in casting China as an enemy towards which war might be justified.
The article nicely partitioned the section on Saudi Arabia into two parts: one about the propriety of the summit meeting because of Saudi assassination and war in Yemen; and two about enlisting Saudi Arabia for an anti-China bent. However, I thought the way it was done could be a source of potential confusion in that one might be seen as justifying support for the other.
To be sure, I thought the title of the article could subsume the two different aspects concerning Saudi Arabia.
However, I think there would have been some value in saying at the outset that the article was focused on how the U.S. was using trips by people in the U.S. government (by the way I describe them this way because the Constitution of the U.S. does not depict members of Congress as officials), in large part to cement treatment of China as an enemy, and, using specifically a trip by Biden to Saudi Arabia as a way to remove Yemen and Saudi assassination as matters interfering with relations towards the two countries and to focus their hostility against other nations, one of which is China.
By the title of his article, I thought Garvey had pinpointed a useful way to communicate to the public how the U.S. was using trips by members of the U.S. government in a tailored way and one not furthering good foreign policy goals and values.
