policy front reports of china sending 25
warplanes over taiwan and iran enriching
its uranium to 60 percent now
plus a call with russia the president
spoke with vladimir putin today over the
phone
as tensions between russia and ukraine
seem to be reaching a new
boiling point we'll discuss all of this
let's bring in charlie hurt he's a
washington times opinion editor and a
fox contributor charlie thanks for
joining me
great to be with you jerry so it's a
pretty sort of fairly standard practice
i think we've seen over the years that
the new guy comes in and he gets tested
on the foreign policy front by the
foreign powers
but this is taking that to a kind of a
new level this looks like a kind of
global hazing of the new guy right with
all these challenges
yeah i think that's a very nice way of
putting it uh unfortunately it is uh so
much worse than i think hazing
just because you have such uh you know
there's the stakes are so high
and think about it you know and and you
know it couldn't be happening to a
better guy
uh than joe biden since he has been sort
of the foreign policy expert
in washington for five decades now he
you know
long before he ever got into the white
house with president under president
obama
he was heralded as probably the wisest
man on foreign policy
in the united states senate and he's
been here for a long time so he's been
very much part of the problem all of
these problems going back
literally decades and he was sort of the
point person for a lot of them
so uh it couldn't be happening to a
better guy but it also happens at an
interesting time because
you had a guy like donald trump who
whatever you think of donald trump he
was willing to play all the games
differently he threw all the rules out
and he did every
he kept everybody guessing and foreign
leaders had no idea what he was going to
say next what he was going to do next
and and then you go back to joe biden
and joe biden is this very he's a very
sort of
uh you know uh a slow plotting
there's not going to be anything he's
not going to do anything it's going to
surprise anybody
which i think is sort of a disadvantage
for him do you i mean
he's been around as you say in
washington for 50 years there are a lot
of people out there who would say that
actually he's contributed
to creating some of the foreign policy
messages that the united states has if
not if not all of them but
let's take them one at a time i think i
think the big one right immediately
right today because the phone call with
putin
is russia and what russia is doing in
ukraine now you know the the the
president's been pretty
tough at least verbally rhetorically uh
on putin so far saying he was a killer a
couple of weeks ago
warning him today again not to do
anything in ukraine
is this are they is there a standoff
here now do you really think that this
the the the biden administration is
confident that it's going to be able to
you know if you remember the the the the
obama administration
uh just let the vladimir putin take over
crimea invade
ukraine nothing done do you think
they're they're determined to do it
differently this time
um i kind of sort of have a hard time
imagining that just because of
everything that joe biden has on his
plate right now
but you're exactly right you know the
obama administration talked tough about
russia
as as have democrats for the past four
years but when it came to actual
actually doing stuff and actual uh you
know putting teeth into foreign policy
donald trump was far tougher than obama
was and
i suspect that it will he will prove to
have been far tougher
than joe biden winds up being either but
but this whole focus on
on russia is at the expense of where our
focus probably
ought to be which is on china yeah i
mean that's the and that's
we bring us to china china's making
increasingly threatening moves over
taiwan
again the by the administration tony
blink and the secretary of state was out
there again saying the other day warning
china not to do anything but again do
you think the world has confidence
that the biden administration really is
prepared to stand up to china
if it decides to do something really
aggressive no i think without a doubt uh
the world does not have that confidence
and uh you know if you step back
obviously the you know the issues that
we have with china are so
vastly complicated china is playing this
you know hundreds year
uh ball game and we play little
four-year games at a time
um so that so you know they have all
these advantages it's very
very difficult but the one thing that
you can say with absolute certainty
is that it's better for the united
states to be strong
with a good economy if you want to be
dealing with china and have any leverage
with china
if you give up on those two fronts then
china's just going to take advantage of
us and whether they're
you know this menace that wants to take
over the world or they just want to
dominate their sphere whatever the case
is
if the united states is weak or
perceived as weak around the world
or our economy goes in the toilet then
we don't have any
hope of standing up against china
charlie thanks i do think part of the
problem is that uh
you know as the chinese pointed out in
that first meeting a few weeks ago with
the u.s officials
the u.s has spent the these the biden
administration and the democrats have
spent so much time over the last few
years trashing the united states and
everything it stands for
that they've been doing a better job of
that than the chinese or any of
america's enemies have done this it
sounded like a democratic debate more
than it did
exactly they're the fear the fiercest
critics the fiercest critics of america
for the last
fight for the last 10 or 15 years have
been the democrats and they're now
running the place but charlie
thank you very much indeed for joining
us