Eric Zuesse: Why Biden Became President

Click to see the full-size image

Written by Eric Zuesse.

What motivated Joe Biden to become U.S. President (other than the standard clichés, which won’t even be so much as mentioned here)?

And why was he chosen (by whomever did the choosing) to win that post?

I shall dispense, here, with, ignore, all mere assumptions, and will make my case ONLY on the basis of the actual evidence, which I shall link to, so that you can see it and judge it for yourself:

On 1 June 2023, I headlined “How U.S.-and-Allied ‘News’-Media Exploit Americans’ Prejudices”, and described the way that U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media build upon existing prejudices instead of upon the best available evidence in constructing their narratives, of what is happening, and of why it is happening. The case-example there was Ms. Tara Reade’s switch from having been, in 1992 and 1993, an employee in Senator Biden’s office, to her becoming, on 31 May 2023, an applicant for asylum in Russia. The next day, June 2nd, Russia’s RT News bannered “Biden was always biased against Russia – Tara Reade to RT (VIDEO): ‘They will never get a seat at the table,’ Biden said of Moscow in the early 1990s, his former aide claims”, and reported:

US President Joe Biden has long harbored a bias against Russia, expressing it decades before the current tensions between Washington and Moscow, Tara Reade, an ex-congressional aide to Biden who accused him of sexual assault, has claimed in an interview with RT.

Reade, who describes herself as a whistleblower and has written op-eds for RT in the past, recently moved to Moscow, citing safety concerns, and said she plans to apply for a Russian passport.

“I tried to lift my voice and warn people back in 2018, 2019, 2020, that if Joe Biden became president he would take us to war with Russia,” she told RT’s Maria Butina.

According to Reade, she arrived at this conclusion in the early 1990s, while serving as an aide to Biden, who was a senator at the time. Back then, the US was formulating its policy towards the new Russia that had just emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“He was very biased against [Russia], Joe Biden was. And at a meeting – I happened to be in and out of that meeting – I heard him say, ‘They will never get a seat at the table,'” she recalled.

She also stated there that she was born into a family who were of Russian origin and who felt a fondness for Russian culture, and, since she had shared these sentiments her family held, was personally disturbed to hear her boss (Biden) saying this about Russia after its communism had ended.

That caused me to look to find what relevant evidence is online regarding whether or not that “They will never get a seat at the table” is a credible allegation from Biden, at that time (1992 and 1993). I found that it is, and here is the evidence that causes me to feel this way:

Biden 18 June 1997 Atlantic Council speech:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?86974-1/nato-expansion (includes James Woolsey’s intro)

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-1997-11-07/html/CREC-1997-11-07-pt1-PgS11957.htm

He was introduced by R. James Woolsey, the Director of the Atlantic Council (NATO’s PR organization) who had attended Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship from 1963 to 1965. (Biden himself had not been a Rhodes scholarship winner.)

Nothing is said in Biden’s speech (its transcription is here) concerning Russia, it’s not even mentioned, but he urged to expand NATO. He said, “As the Democratic party’s chief foreign policy spokesman in the Senate, I have the responsibility to lead the fight for ratification.” And: “What possible justification can there be for confirming the old cold war division of Europe by freezing out the new democracies east of Germany?” (His refusal to include Russia itself in that category was the conclusive give-away indication of his MIC-controlled advocacy, his being funded by the military-industrial complex.) The speech ended with:

     I  believe it will be very difficult for most of my colleagues 

     to vote against admitting the Poles, Czechs, and Hungarians 

     if the final accession negotiations reveal that they are 

     qualified for membership.

       But I also believe that unless the United States quickly 

     comes to a satisfactory burden-sharing understanding with our 

     European and Canadian allies, the future of NATO in the next 

     century will be very much in doubt.

       In that context, an advance European declaration of 

     willingness to share fairly in the enlargement costs that 

     NATO will announce in December, and a spirit of compromise on 

     a post-SFOR force for Bosnia, would considerably enhance the 

     chances for ratification of NATO enlargement by the U.S. 

     Senate.

       Together we can enlarge and strengthen NATO, but only if we 

     fairly share the burden of meeting the challenges of the 

     twenty-first century.

The application-process for a Rhodes Scholarship is extremely selective, and is overseen and evaluated by employees of the Rhodes Trust, which was created by Cecil Rhodes, who died in 1902; and, in the original draft of his will (that ended up creating this Trust) stated (which Rhodes never disavowed, and this was the most explicit statement of his intention) — this is how the Rhodesist view was stated, originally, in the 1877, first, version of Rhodes’s will (as it became published in 1920):

“To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world, … the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, … and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity.”

(Hitler likewise alleged that his concern was to end all wars, but by a global German dictatorship, instead of by an Anglo-American one. And, both Hitler and Rhodes were intensely racist, and were, to used Mussolini’s terms, synonymous for this ideology, “fascist” and “corporationist,” advocating for rule not by the public, but by and for the country’s super-rich, the controlling owners of those mega-corporations.)

Matthew Ehret, in his 26 March 2022 “The Rhodes Scholars Guiding Biden’s Presidency”, describes not only those, but Bill Clinton’s (and he, of course, was the U.S. President during 1993-1997 when Biden was helping to lead the anti-Russia policy of the U.S. and UK Governments):

Clinton Opens the Floodgates

With Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential victory, Rhodes Scholars like Strobe Talbott (Assistant Secretary of State and co-architect of Perestroika) and Robert Reich (Secretary of Labor), were joined by “Rhodies” Ira Magaziner, Derek Shearer (Senior Economic Advisors), Susan Rice (Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs), Kevin Thurme (Health and Human Services Chief of Staff), George Stephanopoulos (Communications Director), Richard Celeste (Ambassador to India) and dozens of other Rhodes Scholars. These individuals were funneled into positions of influence that aimed to oversee the “end of history”, as celebrated by neocon thinker Francis Fukuyama, as the Soviet Union disintegrated.

While some Rhodies remained in positions of power during the period of the presidency of George W. Bush, the Rhodes Hives again enjoyed vast policy-shaping influence under the Obama-age where the architecture for global governance was being built on the wreckage of troublesome nation states like Libya, Syria and Ukraine.

Despite the set back caused by Trump, whose victory interfered with Hillary Clinton’s coronation, Rhodies are stubborn creatures, if nothing else. It was later revealed in 2020 that both Talbott and Rice were at the heart of Russiagate.

Strobe Talbott speaks during a Brookings event hosting then-Vice President Joe Biden, Source: YouTube

While still serving as Brookings Institute President in 2015-17, it was Talbott who interfaced with MI6’s Sir Richard Dearlove and Christopher Steele in the months before the elections by cooking up and circulating the “dodgy dossier”. It was Rice who was revealed to be at the center of the “unmasking” entrapment operation that targeted Michael Flynn in January 2017.

It would be the height of folly to presume, as some commentators have done, that Talbott’s role in this operation indicates an American guiding hand in the effort to undo the 2016 elections. Yet, the fact is that Talbott’s entire life and world outlook have been shaped by British Imperial principles that are programmed into the minds of most Rhodes Scholars like himself.

Strobe Talbott, Bill Clinton, and Frank Aller during their Oxford days. Source: adst.org

As Jeremy Kuzmarov demonstrates in his recent essay published in Covert Action Magazine, both Talbott and his Oxford roommate Bill Clinton had likely been recruited to the CIA long before receiving their scholarships. Kuzmarov also demonstrates that Bill Clinton played a key role smuggling Khrushchev’s memoir out of Russia during a “research” expedition to Moscow. Clinton’s role in this operation gives new meaning to the role Talbott played in translating that memoir into English as part of a much larger Anglo-American intelligence operation designed to revise Soviet history.

It was also during his time at Oxford that young Talbott adopted a near-religious commitment to a post-nation state world order.  

Upon his return to America, Talbott was shepherded into a prominent role in the western propaganda bureau, serving as a leading editor of Time Magazine. It was during the end of this phase of his career that the soon-to-be Assistant Secretary of State outlined his manifesto for the New World Order in a July 20 1992 article entitled “The Birth of a Global Nation”.

In that article, Talbott stated:

“All countries are basically social arrangements…No matter how permanent or even sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary…Perhaps national sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all….But it has taken the events in our own wondrous and terrible century to clinch the case for world government.”

Within his 1992 manifesto, Talbott describes NATO as “history’s most ambitious, enduring and successful exercise in collective security” and then celebrates the International Monetary Fund. Talbott said “the free world formed multilateral financial institutions that depend on member states’ willingness to give up a degree of national sovereignty. The International Monetary Fund can virtually dictate fiscal policies, even including how much tax a government should levy on its citizens.”

Forecasting the Blair-Cheney “Responsibility to Protect” protocol which would soon justify the humanitarian bombings of Kosovo, Iraq, Libya and Syria, Talbott championed the destruction of national sovereignty made possible by the invasion of Kuwait in 1991, saying “the internal affairs of a nation used to be off limits to the world community. But the principle of ‘humanitarian intervention is gaining acceptance.”

During the entire Clinton Presidency, Talbott ensured that his utopian beliefs would not remain ink on paper, but be put swiftly into action, interfacing closely with Soros’ Open Society Foundations and overseeing the Shock Therapy of Russia during the 1990s.

Revenge of Rice and the Rhodies

Among the top Rhodies guiding US President Joe Biden is none other than Susan Rice, who is now the director of Biden’s Domestic Policy Council. 

In 1990, Rice received her PhD in International Relations from New College, Oxford and, in 1992, received the first annual award from Chatham House for “the most distinguished dissertation in the UK in the field of International Studies” for her thesis “The Commonwealth Initiative in Zimbabwe 1979-80”. In her thesis, Rice lauded the British peace keeping transition after the empire’s 13 year war against Zimbabwe liberation.

President Barack Obama and National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice talk on the phone with Homeland Security Advisor Lisa Monaco regarding a terrorist attack in Brussels, Belgium, March 2016. Source: Flickr

Describing her love of Oxford, Rice delivered remarks at Rhodes House in 1999 saying: 

“To be at Rhodes House tonight with so many friends, benefactors and mentors is a personal privilege. It is like a coming home for me for much of what I know about Africa was discovered within these walls, refined at this great university with generous support of the Rhodes Trust.”

It is worth keeping in mind that as she spoke those words, Rice had recently demonstrated her imperial worldview by coordinating the destruction of a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory in 1998 and threatening South Africa with economic destruction unless it gave up its desire to produce generic and affordable AIDS medication that same year.

Regarding Barack Obama, he (and his friend Timothy Geithner) came from a familial background in the Ford Foundation, CIA-and-other, Rhodesist imperialist sub-culture, and was accurately summarized by Cornell West on 24 August 2014 (soon after Obama had grabbed Ukraine via his coup):

“He posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national security presidency. The torturers go free. The Wall Street executives go free. The war crimes in the Middle East, especially now in Gaza, the war criminals go free. And yet, you know, he acted as if he was both a progressive and as if he was concerned about the issues of serious injustice and inequality and it turned out that he’s just another neoliberal centrist with a smile and with a nice rhetorical flair.”

Anyway: Biden was the #1 choice of America’s billionaires in 2020 while he was campaigning for the Democratic nomination and after he won it.

Whereas Republican politicians are more concerned to lower wages and for other domestic-policy objectives of America’s billionaires than they are concerned with increasing the U.S. Government’s empire, and so they (except for their extremists, such as the Bushes, Dick Cheney, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain) aren’t as much into the Rhodesist operation as Democratic politicians are, they are not, at all, opposed to Rhodesism (neoconservatism): they simply are not quite as obsessed with it as Democratic politicians are and generally have been ever since Harry Truman.

So: given that this is the post-WW-II Democratic Party tradition, which that Party’s billionaires constantly fund, it would have been virtually inevitable that Biden, like all billionaire-backed politicians in both Parties, would have said in 1992 or 1993, what Tara Reade is now saying that he had said back then. Biden came into the U.S. Presidency because he is determined that America will conquer Russia. That has been basic Democratic Party tradition ever since 25 July 1945.

It is also of interest that he said this that early, when Yeltsin was Russia’s President and while the official U.S. policy toward Russia was NOT for regime-change in Russia. Consequently: the commonplace U.S-and-allied view that what’s needed is, like Biden nowadays is saying, “For God’s sake, This Man Cannot Remain In Power”, is, likewise fraudulent: what the Rhodesists demand is instead to control Russia — and China and everywhere else. That’s also why Putin, who stands against that, is far more approved-of by Russians than Biden is approved-of by Americans: and, by that measure (though not on some others), Russia is more of a democracy than America is. Maybe Tara Reade will conclude that that is so; or, she might conclude to the contrary: that Russia is even more of a dictatorship than America is. Only time will tell. If there will be time left.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

MORE ON THE TOPIC:

• Democrats Believe Biden Is Their Best Hope Despite Being One Of The World’s Oldest Leaders
• The Self-Delusions of Neocons, All The Way From Bush to Biden
• In Video: 35 Years Ago Biden Came To Kremlin To Discuss INF Treaty