By John Ubaldi, “Ubaldi Reports”

The coronavirus and the economy have been the defining issues of the 2020 presidential election, but one issue never discussed has been foreign policy. What we don’t know is what would a Joe Biden foreign policy look like?

President Trump’s handling of foreign policy has been discussed and analyzed extensively, but Biden who has over four decades in government first as a U.S. senator then vice president has accumulated a substantial foreign and national security record.

During this period Biden has made key votes while serving as a senator from which he spent twelve years either as chair or ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In this role, Biden assumed the role as a leading foreign policy authority which was one of the reasons why President Obama chose him as his vice president.

Now that we are less than a week away from the November 3rd Presidential election, what we don’t know is what foreign policy vision does Biden have for America? Will he replicate the Obama foreign policy? This has never been asked except in the concept that he repudiates Trump’s handling of foreign policy.

During the Obama-Biden administration displayed greater use of the United Nations, international organizations and regional countries in dealing with global issues.

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in both the Bush and Obama administrations stated in his 2014 book, “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War,” Gates wrote that “he (Biden) has been wrong on nearly every foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

Some of Biden’s votes and polices he championed as senator have really never been addressed or scrutinized.

In 2000, while ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he championed and voted for President Clinton’s initiative to normalize trade relations with China and helped to precipitate its entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). One of the stipulations was that China was to end its support for state owned enterprise as a stipulation for entry. Both Democratic and Republican administrations have failed to hold China accountable, and many of these businesses are linked to theft of U.S. intellectual properties.

This U.S. policy helped China rise economically but it also helped to close some 60,000 U.S. factories. The Economic Policy Institute reported that it also cost the U.S. 3.7 million jobs, mostly in manufacturing.

A question Biden has never been asked, why did you oppose Operation Desert Storm, but then voted for the 2003 Iraq War, one from which he still championed in the summer of 2003. On the campaign trail stated something entirely different as his vote was not for intervention, but video shows his strong support in the summer of 2003.  Why the difference?

Biden then opposed the Iraq War surge in 2007, which helped bring stability to the country. Biden opposed action to assassinate Osama bin Laden in 2011, and then told a far different story afterwards.

Biden supported the War in Afghanistan and as Robert Gates mentioned in his book, during the Obama presidency was constantly undermining the military by consistently telling the President that the generals were trying to hamstring you on troop levels, when in fact they were not frustrating combat commanders and his own secretary of defense.

During the last presidential debate, Biden boldly stated that Trump has been weak on Russia, but when in fact during the Obama-Biden administration the reset with Russia from 2009-13 failed miserably. In 2014 Russia annexed the Crimea and took over part of Eastern Ukraine.  In that same year Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by Russian trained separatists. U.S. policy allowed Russia to enter the Syrian civil war and to establish long-term military presence for the first time in over forty years.

The Libyan military adventure was a mitigated disaster of failing to heed the lesson of Iraq, this eventually led to the deaths of American diplomats in Benghazi, leaving behind a failed state.

The Obama-Biden administration prematurely withdrew from Iraq which the U.S. had to return to confront the Islamic State, earlier the Obama-Biden administration called ISIS the JV squad.

As the Obama administrations point person on Iraq, you stated in 2010 that on CNN’s Larry King, “I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration.”  This didn’t turn out that well!

Biden and his vice-presidential nominee, California Democratic Senator Kamala Harris, have repeatedly criticized Trump’s China policy but the Obama-Biden China policy was less than stellar.

The Obama-Biden administration failed and was unwilling to confront China as Beijing was allowed to steal U.S. aerospace, energy, satellites and telecommunications information and use it to wage economic, military and political sabotage and warfare, according to a 2013 Mandiant report.

The failure to confront this threat and put in place adequate security safeguards allowed Chinese hackers too breach the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s computer system in 2015, accessing the personnel and security records of some 22 million Americans.

Little or no questions have been asked of Biden who plans to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord, on how he would confront China who has lied and deceived the west on matching the requirements set forth in the agreement. How would Biden prevent China from expanding its influence through its Belt Road Initiative across the globe?

Biden has also stated that he would rejoin the Iran nuclear agreement, but what has been stated would a Biden administration relax or end sanctions on Iran as part of rejoining the agreement? Iran has steadfastly stated that no negotiations until sanction are lifted, but if sanctions are lifted what would prevent Iran from utilizing economic relief to fund its proxy terror groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas and other terror groups across the Middle East?

This happened when Obama-Biden administration signed the Iran nuclear agreement, what would prevent this from happening again? How would this impact the current peace treadles recently signed by Arab nations and Israel?

This is only a small sampling of the foreign policy history of Joe Biden, what wasn’t mentioned was the Obama-Biden administrations failure in dealing with Cuba and Venezuela.

Does Joe Biden offer a return to the Obama administration’s vision of foreign policy; it didn’t work out to well.