THAYER: Showing Americans New Ways to Lose: Exactly What Did Biden Promise Xi?

During the Mets disastrous 1962 season when the team went 40-120, still the worst record in MLB baseball, their manager, the great Casey Stengel, said "the Mets have shown me more ways to lose than I even knew existed.”

That is true of the Biden administration too.  Biden’s actions have generated what we should term the "Stengel standard,” they have shown Americans more ways to damage the country than Americans could have conceived.  The stakes are deadly for the American people and becoming more precarious.  In the wake of the disastrous Xi-Biden meeting in mid-November, Americans are trying to figure out what exactly the Biden administration gave Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.  The answer is everything for which the tyrant could hope before he had his dinner with the 400 business leaders.  Their reception for Xi was so rapturous it must have both amazed and warmed Xi’s heart that so many useful idiots could be in one place at one time—and no doubt also perceived the political leverage the 400 give him to be employed against anyone in the U.S. who tries to stop him.

The Biden administration is not clear about what precisely happened at the meeting.  It is time for Biden to be transparent about what happened and specifically what Xi proposed and what Biden promised him.  Two major issues have to be addressed—the American people deserve answers to each.

First, what did Biden promise regarding U.S. efforts to promote regime change to overthrow the CCP.  Xi is vulnerable to pressure that Biden might execute against the CCP including on technology, trade, and U.S. investment.  The PRC’s economy is in downturn and the CCP regime faces the risk of unrest at home.  That risk would be expanded if Biden placed pressure on the CCP.  The spokesmen and media in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have been open regarding the CCP’s view of the meeting and Xi himself stated "that is unrealistic for one side to remodel the other, and conflict and confrontation has unbearable consequences for both sides.”  Xi is clearly worried that the U.S. may seek to "remodel” the PRC and so this threat of aggression "unbearable consequences” only reinforces this.  If Biden reassured Xi, then the U.S. removed from the table its most powerful weapon to free the Chinese people from the CCP’s tyranny, weaken Russia, Iran, and other states friendly to the PRC, and to eliminate a great danger to the American people.

On Taiwan, it is critical that Biden be clear regarding what he promised Xi in detail, not what he expressed in his press conference remarks.  Xi stated that the PRC will realize unification, and that unification is unstoppable.  Biden stated that the U.S. opposed changes in the status quo from either side.  That is precisely what he should not have said.  Biden also stated that his administration backs a "One China” policy as all previous administrations have done.  That is incorrect.  Nixon and Kissinger acknowledged that both sides have a "One China” but U.S. policy was precisely that:  to acknowledge that the PRC and Taiwan have "One China” policy.  This gross misunderstanding has worsened since the Clinton administration.  In contrast, Biden should have used the opportunity to strengthen deterrence for Taiwan to do the utmost to prevent a CCP effort to conquer it.

What the Biden administration is touting as successes are actually damaging to American security, which is fully in keeping with the "Stengel rule.”  Biden received worthless promises to cooperate on climate change, the restarting of military-to-military engagement, and an agreement on fentanyl.  The climate change agreement is hokum designed to hurt the U.S. economy and increase its energy dependence on the PRC while the PRC’s grows.  The mil-to-mil is a particularly dangerous form of hokum that promises to provide the PRC’s military with insights and advice from the U.S. military.  On fentanyl, the Biden administration announced that the PRC had agreed to restart bilateral cooperation on counternarcotics with the aim to reduce fentanyl, precursor chemicals and production equipment, such as pill presses.  What the Biden administration did not mention was that the Trump administration had already reached an agreement with the PRC in 2019, which the PRC poorly enforced and which the PRC side stepped.   Beijing now ships to Mexican drug cartels directly even if it no longer does from the PRC.  There is no reason to expect that this agreement will be anything other than a "pie crust” one—made to be broken by the PRC, as was the 2015 cybersecurity agreement between Xi and President Obama.  It is well known that the PRC’s financial centers help with money laundering and so directly support this drug trade.

The American people are compelled to ask what has the Biden administration promised Xi.  If they told him that they will not support regime change and has the administration pledged that it will recognize that Taiwan is part of China, then the Biden administration has unilaterally disarmed the United States from the ability to attack the head of the snake.  On Taiwan, they have lost an opportunity to deter aggression and have demonstrated a weakness that invites a PRC attack.  The Biden administration has stated that they do not want to change the status quo on Taiwan.  But by so doing, they have changed the status quo.  Where firmness was needed, Biden provides opaqueness, obfuscation, and confusion.  When Xi tells the world that the Taiwan issue is unstoppable, Biden’s proper response is any PRC military effort to seize Taiwan will be defeated.  Stengel’s exasperation at his Mets is now felt by Americans toward the Biden administration.  Showing Americans more ways to lose than they ever knew existed is disastrous for the American people and their interests, profoundly harmful to the country’s standing, and invites war.  Time for a new manager.

Bradley A. Thayer is a Warroom Contributing Columnist.