Biden defends "the liberal world order"

What's that?

Global democratic capitalism, the very thing O and Hillary publicly trumpeted and Bernie could barely think of without a curse.

Biden hammers Trump in scathing speech

“I really feel incredibly strongly that the women and men sitting before me, who have been the intellectual backbone of the foreign policy establishment in this country for decades, have to start to speak out,” he said. 

“President Obama and I have been very quiet and respectful, giving the administration time, but some of these roots are being sunk too deeply. I believe it’s time to challenge some of the dangerous assumptions that are attempting to replace that liberal world order.”

Biden, who spent four decades serving in high public office, was receiving the Zbigniew Brzezinski annual prize at the Center for Strategic and International Studies thinktank. 

The auditorium was packed, with many people standing, and hushed as he offered a damning verdict on the Trump presidency.

Acknowledging that many Americans feel left behind by globalisation, he said: “The appeal to populism and nationalism is a siren song, a way for charlatans to aggrandise their power, raise themselves up, break down those mechanisms that were designed, whether in our constitution or internationally, to limit the abuse of power, and destabilise the world.

“It’s not alarmist. We’re walking down a very dark path that isolates the United States on the world stage and, as a consequence, endangers – not strengthens – endangers American interests and the American people.”

. . . .

“Among the many problems plaguing this administration’s foreign policy: ideological incoherence, inconsistent and confusing messaging, erratic decision-making, unwillingness or inability to solve problems caused by understaffing. When’s the last time, in the state department, you can stand on the seventh floor and yell and hear an echo?”

. . . .

Both Democratic and Republican administrations in the past had worked to uphold the liberal international order, he continued. 

“The president’s vision, in contrast, is grounded in a disturbing admiration for autocrats and an apparent faith that the world will mistake bluster and bullying for strength.”


He derided Trump’s recent appearance at the UN, where the president emphasized national sovereignty and self-interest. 

“To stand in the well of the general assembly, and wave the flag of narrow nationalism, while warning of a future vulnerable to ‘decay, dominion and defeat’ marks a dangerous revision of political small-mindedness that led the world to consume itself in two world wars in the last century, and it abandons America’s hard-won position as the indispensable nation, as a leader that inspires more than fear.”

Go read it.

Good stuff.