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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

Biden’s new diplomatic offensive stalls

by New Worker correspondent

US President Joe Biden has launched a new diplomatic offensive in a renewed American effort to restore US prestige in the Global South and bolster the imperialist alliance to ensure that the Ukraine war goes on for another long year. But while a prisoner exchange with Iran has raised Western hopes of a thaw in relations with the Islamic Republic, Biden’s attempt to get the House of Saud to normalise relations with Israel have, so far, come to nothing.

Meanwhile Vladimir Putin, back from his high-level talks in Siberia with Democratic Korean leader Kim Jong Un, is preparing for another summit, this time with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The Kremlin says Vladimir Putin will meet Chinese president Xi Jinping in Beijing in October. Their talks will take place during the Belt & Road Forum in the Chinese capital next month.

Biden kicked off his new diplomatic campaign at the UN General Assembly’s autumn session this week. At the world forum in New York, the American president called on world leaders to back Ukraine while preparing to meet his lackey, Vladimir Zelensky, in Washington to help push a further $24 billion Ukraine military aid package through Congress.

But the Democrat president is coming under increasing fire from some of his Republican rivals who want the USA to spend less money on Kiev’s failing war effort, while his bitter foe, Donald Trump, says he’ll seek a quick end to the war if returned to power next year.

Earlier in the month the American foreign minister, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, made a two-day surprise visit to Ukraine to announce more than $1 billion in aid for Ukraine. Money buys people, as the imperialists well know, but it doesn’t buy victory. In Ukraine the battles rage across the southern and eastern fronts but the front-lines remain almost unchanged. The Ukrainians are repeatedly trying to break through the Russian defences, directing their main assault efforts from one area to another. But they are constantly being beaten back in a war of attrition that is decidedly turning out to be in Russia’s favour.

Meanwhile in the Middle East, the news that US efforts to secure ‘peace’ between Saudi Arabia and Israel have stalled have overshadowed the US–Iranian prisoner swap deal and the unfreezing of some six billion dollars-worth of Iranian oil money that took place this week.

Saudi Arabia informed the Biden administration of its decision to halt all talks of normalising ties with Israel on Sunday. This follows reports in the Israeli media that the Netanyahu government had point-blank refused to meet Palestinian and Saudi demands for the transfer of most of the West Bank from Israeli to Palestinian control and the demolition of illegal outposts in the occupied territories.

The “autonomous” Palestinian Authority in the West Bank also called on the Americans to take “irreversible” steps towards the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, including US backing for the recognition of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations, the USA reopening its consulate in Jerusalem that historically served Palestinians, and the scrapping of Congressional legislation characterising the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as a terror organisation.

The Americans wanted the Palestinians and the Saudis to back down and accept the meaningless platitudes that their other Arab clients have accepted in the past to cover their surrender peace treaties with Israel.

But the Saudis are now increasingly using their immense oil and financial power to pursue an independent foreign policy in the Middle East. Saudi foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said on Monday that there will be no solution to the Palestinian–Israeli conflict without an independent Palestinian state. “The two-state solution must return to the forefront,” he said.