My Take | As US ally blows up the Mideast, China preserves Asia’s prosperity

The premier journal Foreign Affairs is advertising big time about a coming essay by outgoing US Secretary of State Antony Blinken – on “Biden’s Foreign Policy Legacy”, or in other words, about his own very brilliant influence on that very policy.

I can’t wait to read it – just for a laugh. The key player in the worst foreign policy team since that great American horror show starring George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, the Blinken-Biden dynamic duo has caused damage to global stability and security at a very fundamental level. But for them, it’s always the other guy to blame – the all-purpose devil himself, China.

Now I don’t want to get into a discussion about political philosophy. Perhaps the coming article, of which the journal has offered a preview, is just a rush job.

But it may be worth pointing out, as Blinken wrote: “As secretary of state, I don’t do politics; I do policy. And policy is about choices.” But aren’t those choices inherently and highly political?

I recommend he read or reread the first chapter, titled “De la politique”, in Democratie et Totalitarisme, by Raymond Aron, a friend and mentor of Blinken’s far more illustrious predecessor, Henry Kissinger.

Aron observes that for the French, there is only one word, politique, for both politics and policy, and it’s convenient because every policy is ultimately determined by politics. As a teenager, Blinken attended a French coed in Paris, so he would have no trouble reading Aron in the original.