Last month, President Biden addressed the Munich Security Conference where he said “America First” is over. He said that we are not going to look back. Well, if he reiterated the America First policy, we would not be looking back but continuing forward with the foreign policy of the last four years. Actually, rejecting America first is looking backward, as Biden said, because rejecting America first was the policy of the Obama-Biden Administration.

The Chinese Communists must be jumping for joy with these remarks by the president. These remarks will accelerate China’s goal to overtake America before their time table of 2025. When America is first, the world has been a safer place to live. America has been a deterrent to tyrannical regimes taking other countries by force. The last great example of this is when the Obama-Biden Administration lacked the resolve to make clear to these tyrants that America will not let them take control of independent states like Crimea. So, in 2014 Russia sensed American lack of resolve and annexed Crimea back into Russian control. Russia also threatened to take back the Ukraine but President Trump had the resolve to stop Russia from doing that. Because of Trump’s resolve the Ukraine is an independent state today.

Also, the Obama-Biden Administration left President Trump with Kim Jong Un, the Supreme Leader of North Korea, sending missiles over the air space of our allies in Southeast Asia. President Trump spoke loudly and carried a big stick by telling the North Korean Leader that our president would use “Fire and Fury” if Kim does not stop this intimidation of our allies in the region. When President Trump left office, there were no North Korean missiles flying over our allies. This is how the world is a safer place when America is first.

Further in his address in Munich, President Biden announced that “America is back, the Trans-Atlantic Alliance is back.” Then Biden said, “we are not going backward,” after he just said that we are going back. What does it look like to Biden for going back to the trans-Atlantic Alliance? Do we go back to our European “allies” refusing to pay their agreed upon fair share of the cost of the NATO Alliance the way they did during the Obama-Biden Administration? Do our Allies force that burden to be placed back on the backs of American taxpayers? Or does it mean that we do not challenge our allies for the disproportionate trade tariffs on American automobiles which treats American auto workers unfairly.

When President Trump said he would raise American tariffs equal to that of Europe, our allies said they would “retaliate” with more tariffs if Trump did that. Do friends and allies use words like “retaliate” when all America wanted was a level playing field for our workers.

The playbook of the Obama-Biden Administration has always been that we need to unite with our European allies in confronting China on China’s disregard for working in the structure of the World Trade Organization. How well did Europe support us during the Obama-Biden years in office? The truth of the matter is that the European Union is less concerned about helping to defend America’s national security interests than they are about ensuring that they can sell their own goods in the China consumer market. China has used its largest consumer market in the world to coerce nations selling into their consumer market to not hold China accountable for their unfair trade practices.

So, it is naïve at best and unreasonable at worst to think that our European allies will be there to support America when they did not do it during the Obama-Biden years. Recently, one European Union official made it clear that they will not help us when he said, “nations do not have friends, just national interests.” To his credit, Biden went on to say that democracy is not a relic as the communist in China and Russia and putting forth that argument that democracy is a relic. Biden went on to say that “democracy does not happen by accident, we must defend it, strengthen it and renew it.” I could not agree with the president more on this point. Biden went on to say that the U.S. and the European Union need to “prepare together for long-term strategic competition with China.” Biden named “Cyberspace, Artificial Intelligence and Biotechnology” as the new subjects of competition.

I agree with his assessment of this new Cold War playing field. There are two problems that President Biden is not recognizing. One, is that most of the innovation in these disciplines are the intellectual property (IP) of the U.S., not Europe. This is why China is stealing American intellectual property and not Europe’s IP. Second, since our European allies have little IP that the Communist Chinese want, Europe will be more protective of selling their products into the Chinese market than working together with America to “setting the rules as to how these technologies are used rather ceding those forums to Beijing,” as Biden suggested.

If you want to read the full article about the Biden address, go to the New York Times February 19th article entitled, “Biden Declares the era of Trumpstyle “America First” diplomacy over.” If America is not first anymore than the Communist Chinese, by their own public assertion, will be first. Do we really want a tyrannical government to be first in the world? I for one do not want that to happen.

(Joseph Mendola Warner.)