The twilight of his presidency is an appropriate time to weigh President Biden’s foreign policy record. Any review calls to mind what the great LA Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda once said of his starting pitcher’s disappointing performance in a critical game: "he ain’t got bleep.” Sadly for the country, that could be said of Biden’s foreign (as well as domestic) policy record is worse than "bleep.”

The list of foreign policy disasters started with Biden’s return to the Paris climate agreement and membership in the World Health Organization (WHO) after President Trump left both. The unmitigated disaster of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan reverberates today through the region and globally. Much American blood and treasure was spent. Over $85 billion in military equipment was left behind and so inherited by the Taliban. But the Taliban was only the local winner. The geostrategic winner was People’s Republic of China (PRC). The U.S. left a key base at Bagram, which was on the doorstep of the PRC’s backdoor, and was a valuable piece of real estate not only for the war in Afghanistan but for the confrontation with the PRC. Now the PRC has the Americans out, the Taliban in, and another link in the PRC’s Western front secured.

Biden failed to deter the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. This war is a humanitarian nightmare for all concerned, it is a stalemated conventional conflict, evincing an intensity of combat not seen in Europe since 1945. The war also entails the risk of nuclear escalation, the tremendous cost of which the U.S. and its NATO allies would not escape.

Machiavelli wrote that in politics, you reward friends and punish enemies. Biden turned Machiavelli on his head, punishing friends and rewarding enemies.

After the June 2023 G-7 meeting in Hiroshima, Biden managed to insult Papua New Guinea, India, and Australia when he cancelled his visit to Papua New Guinea, which would have been the first by a U.S. President, and to Australia where he was to address the Australian Parliament and where Indian Prime Minister Modi was also present to meet him. Wars in the Middle East, and the hamstringing of Israel while Iran is rewarded are other failed legacies.

Ultimately, U.S. foreign policy is anchored on U.S. military power. Nuclear weapons are the foundation of U.S. military might and of U.S. alliances, particularly for allies like Japan to whom the U.S. has made an extended deterrence commitment. Biden has failed here too. The Biden administration has not provided the U.S. with a reinvigorated nuclear infrastructure to produce and maintain nuclear weapons, and with tactical and theater nuclear capabilities and missile defenses it needs. The PRC’s nuclear buildup was described as "breathtaking” by two U.S. Stratcom commanders in a row on separate occasions, U.S. Navy Adm. Charles Richard and U.S. Air Force Gen. Anthony Cotton respectively, as the PRC races for strategic superiority over the U.S. "Breathtaking” is word you want Stratcom commanders to use of U.S. capabilities. When they are using it to describe the enemy’s capabilities, you know the country is in trouble. While the PRC has been building frenetically, the Biden administration slowed the capabilities the U.S. needs urgently to meet the PRC’s aggression and ensure the viability of the U.S. extended deterrent commitments in the Indo-Pacific and Europe.

However, in the pantheon of Biden’s failures, it is towards the PRC that the Biden administration has made its greatest foreign policy fiascoes. First, the Biden administration ignores the existential nature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) threat because it seeks to continue the "Engagement” school of thought. With the exception of the Trump presidency, Engagement has been the dominant U.S. approach to the PRC since Bill Clinton. It asserts that the PRC is not an existential threat to the U.S. Far from it. Engagement contends that the Sino-American relationship should be cooperative. Any troubles may be addressed by more cooperation with the PRC and accommodation of the interests of the CCP to sustain that cooperation.

Engagement’s arguments are ubiquitous and dominate U.S. foreign policy toward the PRC. Engagement dominates Wall Street, foundations, think tanks, universities, media, Silicon Valley, K Street, major law firms, and government. The zenith was the November 2023 meeting near San Francisco. There 400 of America’s richest business leaders attended a dinner with the PRC’s dictator—Xi Jinping. They gave the CCP dictator standing ovations while Xi explained his vision of tyranny—on American soil—and how the American business elite could help him sustain it.

The refusal to understand the nature of the CCP threat is inextricably related to its second profound failure. That is, to state that U.S. seeks victory over the CCP by laboring with the Chinese people and people of goodwill around the world to overthrow the CCP at a time when the CCP is supremely vulnerable. Opportunities to overthrow the CCP have been rare and can be fleeting, but now exist. To do so would resolve the greatest national security threat of the U.S. in the 21st Century. The CCP must be targeted for destruction through political and economic warfare, backed by U.S. military might.

But Biden squandered this opportunity.

Rather than working to overthrow the CCP, the Biden administration is doing all it can to aid its illegitimate rule over the Chinese people. Biden has failed to capitalize upon the weakness of the CCP. In fact, de facto, he has supported the CCP. In an egregious and unparalleled act, Biden pledged at the G20 meeting in Bali in November 2022 that the U.S. would not work to overthrow the CCP. Biden is accepting what the CCP calls the "five ‘nos.’” That is, the U.S. will not seek a new Cold War, not seek to change the Chinese system, revitalization of alliances is not directed against China, not support Taiwan’s independence, and not look for conflict with China. In his recent visit to the PRC, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan restated that the U.S. would not work to overthrow the CCP.

Of course, the U.S. should seek to change the "Chinese system” by overthrowing the CCP. The U.S. needs to respond to these "nos” with one Reaganesque certainty: "we win, you lose.”

Biden’s support for the CCP is critical as it is supremely vulnerable. It is due to Xi’s misrule of the CCP and of the economy. While Xi appears to have the CCP in his ever-tightening grip, the economy is a disaster. The economy is in the tank due to anemic economic growth due to its great structural problems, demographic decline, U.S. pressure on its tech sector, investors concerned about CCP influence, and the viability of alternatives like India, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

Less noticed are the most pressing economic difficulties in the banking and local government sectors. The root of the problem is that banks generously provided loans to local governments for land purchases with expectation of safe return. The dramatic decrease of the demand for land has occurred unexpectedly and has shaken the pillars of the economy.

While the PRC’s economic growth was already in decline, the crises in the value of urban land and banking has the potential to destabilize the country. Due to corruption, which is always significant factor in the PRC, and risky practices—the ledgers of Chinese banks are such eminent works of fantasy and absurdity that they rival any product of Jonathan Swift’s pen—they will not survive this crisis on their own. If banks fail, social unrest will follow. The economic collapse of the PRC’s banking could generate sustained unrest that would remake Chinese politics.

In sum, the PRC’s economic expansion is over, and it has entered a period of economic decline. The only issue is how rapid is the economic decline. This has profound consequences for the ability of the Party to sustain its rule and for its stability. These are not problems that Xi can readily solve, and they introduce profound dangers for the CCP.

Now is the time to move against the CCP. Biden is allowing this time to pass, and so is saving the CCP. This is akin to Washington saving Cornwallis, Lincoln the Confederacy, or FDR, Hitler. The perverse legacy of the Biden administration is that he is permitting the greatest national security threat to Americans live another day and to continue its attacks on Americans and their allies and partners. When the CCP might have been defeated by measures short of kinetic war, they are being saved. Should war with the PRC come, Biden’s action will be appreciated for the colossal grand strategic error it is.

At precisely the time to pressure the CCP, Biden did not. His legacy is one of foreign and domestic policy failure. That legacy will be continued by Vice President Harris should she win in November. Only Trump will pressure the CCP and only Trump is feared by them. That’s why Xi is voting for Harris.

Bradley A. Thayer is a Contributing Columnist for Warroom and is the coauthor, with James E. Fanell, of Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure, and, with Lianchao Han, of Understanding the China Threat. Find him on Gettr and Truth as @bradleythayer and as @bradthayer on X.