Biden Steers Clear of Foreign Policy

 

The public deserves a more thorough accounting of what their government is doing in their name.

by Daniel Larison Posted onFebruary 8, 2023

Even by the standards of past State of the Union addresses, Biden’s speech last night was remarkably light on references to foreign policy. Stephen Wertheim commented on this during the speech:

It is understandable that most of the speech would be on domestic issues. A State of the Union address is principally a report on the conditions in the country and what the administration is doing about things at home. Even so, there is something amiss when the president has so little to say about foreign affairs. In a speech that lasts more than an hour, foreign policy should rate more than a tiny fraction of that time.

Foreign policy is one of the areas where the president has the greatest leeway, and foreign policy decisions that the president has made and will make can have serious consequences for the country as a whole. The public deserves a more thorough accounting of what their government is doing in their name, and Americans should expect the president to inform them of how he has been acting on their behalf over the previous year. If there is not much from the last year for Biden to boast about, that is itself something that the public needs to know.

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Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2023/02/08/biden-steers-clear-of-foreign-policy/