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Joe Biden’s rambling interview with Time Magazine on foreign policy fuels uncertainty

• By ADAM CREIGHTON

WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT
Joe Biden has kept the option of sending US troops to Taiwan open should China invade the island, in an often incoherent, one-on-one interview with Time Magazine that appeared to confirm why the president rarely gives unscripted interviews.

In the lengthy interview published early Tuesday the president suggested Vladimir Putin had invaded Russia, before confusing the Russian leader with Chinese president Xi, when asked about whether the administration’s recently announced tariffs on Chinese certain imports would lift domestic prices.

“No, because here’s the deal. There’s a difference. I made it clear to Putin from the very beginning that — I’m not, we’re not engaging in … For example, Trump wants a 10 per cent tariff on everything. That will raise the price of everything in America,” Mr Biden said.

Turning to Taiwan, Mr Biden said “it would depend on the circumstances” whether the US would send troops to defend Taiwan in the event China acted on its long-stated aim to bring the island democracy under Beijing’s control.
Any US confrontation with Beijing over Taiwan would have major implications for Australia which as Washington’s top allay in the Pacific could be expected to contribute.

The president’s interview emerged hours before he delivered noticeably short remarks at the White House to announce a tougher immigration rules to crack down on the flood of asylum seekers across the southern border.
“You know, I don’t have any (unintelligible) He wanted to know why I was doing all these things. I said the simple reason I’m doing those things: to make sure that you don’t, that you aren’t able to change the status quo any,” he continued, referring to his relationship with Xi Jinping.

Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, said the president’s remarks contradicted earlier statements in 2021 and 2022, in which he unambiguously said the US would defend Taiwan with military force.

“Biden’s Taiwan policy is a confused mess … Biden, one 3-4 occasions, changed America’s stated policy by saying America would defend Taiwan. Now, he’s walking that back,” he said on X.
Victoria Coates, a foreign policy expert at the Heritage Foundation, said the interview reflected the ambiguity the president provided Russia ahead of its Ukraine invasion in February 2022, when he said a “minor incursion” by Russia might be acceptable to the US.
“What a horrendous permissive signal of weakness to send to the CCP on the 35th anniversary of Tiananmen Square,” she commented on X, referring to the interview.

The president talked up his role in establishing the Quad group of nations and the AUKUS pact to help contain China.
“I put together a quad that never existed before. I put together — I mean personally put together — worked on it, I put together AUKUS with Great Britain and Australia,” he said.
Turning to Europe, the 81 year old president said Donald Trump would withdraw the US from NATO, despite the passage of legislation last year which reserves any such decision for congress.
“And so we end up in a situation where, when I came into, when I got sworn in, we were in a position where we didn’t have — for example, there’s a quote from Macron at the time saying that, in 2019, that Trump wants to eviscerate NATO,” the president explained.

“Everybody, all the bad guys are rooting for Trump, man. Not a joke. Think about it. Think about it,” he told Time’s Washington Bureau Chief Massimo Calabresi and Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs in a sit-down interview at the White House conducted on 28th May.
The president said the US would not seek to end the war between Russia and Ukraine until Russia had been expelled from all Ukrainian territory.
“No, we’re on a slippery slope for war if we don’t do something about Ukraine. It’s just not gonna … anyway..” the president trailed off according to the online transcript, which was edited for clarity.
“It wasn’t just about taking part of — He wanted, he wanted to go back to the, to the days when there was NATO and there was that other outfit that Poland, everybody belonged to. So that’s what it was about. And in the meantime, what happened was, we were able to — and by the way, we spent a lot of money in Ukraine”.

The president suggested Israel may have committed war crimes in Gaza and that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu could be prolonging the war in Gaza for political reasons.
“There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion,” he said.
ADAM CREIGHTON

Joe Biden’s rambling interview with Time Magazine on foreign policy fuels uncertainty | The Australian