Biden Heads to Asia To Build Up ‘Global NATO’ Against China

May 19, 2022 (EIRNS)—U.S. President Joe Biden headed to the airport for his four-day trip to Asia today, right after his short ceremony with the President Sauli Niinistö of Finland and Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson of Sweden, welcoming those nations’ application to join NATO.

In a press briefing the day before, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan hyped these back-to-back events as displaying the United States as a king-of-the-world wannabe:

The President’s first trip “to the Indo-Pacific,” following upon the

“historic ... watershed moment in European security” represented by “two nations with a long tradition of neutrality ... joining the world’s most powerful defensive [sic] alliance ... comes [at] a pivotal moment. President Biden has rallied the free world in defense of Ukraine and in opposition to Russian aggression. He remains focused on ensuring that our efforts in those missions are successful. But he also intends to seize this moment—this pivotal moment—to assert bold and confident American leadership in another vital region of the world: the Indo-Pacific....

“While he’s in Tokyo, President Biden will also launch a new, ambitious economic initiative for the region: the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.... We think this trip is going to put on full display President Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy and that it will show, in living color, that the United States can at once lead the free world in responding to Russia’s war in Ukraine and at the same time chart a course for effective, principled American leadership and engagement in a region that will define much of the future of the 21st century....

“The message we’re trying to send on this trip is a message of ... what the world can look like if the democracies and open societies of the world stand together to shape the rules of the road, to define the security architecture of the region, to reinforce strong, powerful, historic alliances.”

In a final flourish of Alfred E. Newman triumphalism, Sullivan proclaimed:

“We go into this trip very much with the wind at our back, with a strong case to make that we have what it takes to be able to deliver against the security and economic challenges of our time. And President Biden will head into the Indo-Pacific with a spring in his step....”