Not Best Friends Anymore?

Its rather disturbing that the incoming US President Joseph Biden apparently has an unhealthy interest in what happens in Britain ....

Wannabe Genial Irish Man or Angry Leprechaun As President

 ...... while absolutely none in the the real worlds hotspots and issues .....

What makes me say that?

Well so far he's pronounced that in the UK, America does not want to see a "guarded border" between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, following Brexit, and that  "We've just got to keep the border open". He has reinforced the veiled threat in that comment, by stating that any future UK-US post-Brexit trade deal will be "contingent" on the UK respecting the 'Good Friday Agreement".  

But what's with this imperial "WE" .... is he under the mistaken illusion that the UK is the 52nd (if you include Washington DC as a state), state of the union?

Obviously as an "Irishman," as he happily informed the BBC when a reporter asked him for a comment (“The BBC?” Biden responded, adding“I'm Irish.”), Mr Biden apparently identifies more with the republican sympathies of the Boston Irish (divorced as those are from the realities of the Irish situation), than the 'special relationship' that more Anglo US presidents have at least paid lip service to.

This bit of Irish romanticism is perhaps understandable, after all like former US presidents John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama, president-elect Mr Biden's descendants left Ireland for America during "The Famine" decade (and in fact the descendants of all those 'Irish' presidents apparently left  within about 10 years of each other).

However although its been claimed that there have been around 22 Irish-American presidents, many, if not most of them, have been Ulster/Scots i.e. Protestant, and so the Irish connection was down played, or just ignored ... its only those with 'Rural Catholic' backgrounds, and whose antecedents go back to those emigrating over to the US during the 1840's and 1850's, who count as 'Irish'. Biden's links with Ireland for example are actually rather distant (the 1840's), but he still waves them in front of the British, as if it was his grand parents from the Easter Rising.

But all that aside, if this was his only intervention in the UK's internal politics, we might dismiss it as a fact that would fade with the onset of 'realpolitik'. But not content with just determining the UK's borders, John Podesta, a senior Democrat with close links to Mr Biden's incoming administration, and a former adviser to Presidents Obama and Clinton, informed the UK media that the reduction of the UK spending target for the overseas aid budget was "extremely unfortunate". So I guess, how we spend our money during a financial crisis, is also a matter on which the new US administration feels it has the right to pronounce.

I know how as a UK prime minister I would react to all this interference .... I would point out to Mr Biden that the UK is a fully sovereign nation, nuclear power, member of the UN security Council, 5th biggest economy in the world, and formerly loyal military and security ally in many of the US's badly thought out foreign interventions.

I would further point out that with Turkey and Russia both showing military and diplomatic gains in the Middle East / North Africa, while China is making a determined push to become the number one big dog, the US might be lacking in capable allies in the very near future ..... so perhaps Mr Biden should address his attention to his enemies and not his friends. There is also the little matters of North Korea and Global Warming to think about.

I have yet to hear a single policy announcement from Biden's team on any of those key foreign areas, other than a vague commitment on bringing up human rights issues with China, and rejoining the deal over Iran (too late by the way, they have already got nuclear grade uranium) .... but two pronouncements on internal UK matters .... how not to win friends and influence them.

This is a US President who seems to have missed the last 20 or 30 years of world history, and indeed seems unaware of how many friends the US has lost in the last 12 yrs (Obama lost a lot of influence by his dithering, which made allies in hot spots turn to 'new friends,' aka China).

I suspect that those who are glad to see President Trump gone, may also quickly realise that Biden is not going to be a return to the old normality either ... he's an old man, with old thought patterns, and who is heading a centrist administration, which wouldn't look out of place with the Obama era. It has no new ideas to deal with the crises that it will be facing, and may end up looking in the wrong direction for both its enemies and friends. 

Eire, France and Germany are all talk and no trousers when it comes to actual action ... lets hope their talk, is all that's needed under Old Joe's tenure, because interfering in the affairs of friendly democracies and allies is not going to keep them friends for long.