Russian President Vladimir Putin’s delay of his scheduled Türkiye visit, the United States administration’s decision and Congress’s approval to sell Türkiye new F-16 aircraft and modernization kits for the old ones, U.S. Ambassador to Ankara Jeff Flakes’ article published by Deseret News, a Donald Trump-affiliated and church-related Utah outlet explaining "how it was essential to preserve U.S.-Türkiye ties" have all inspired a "bayram havası" (festive atmosphere) in some Turkish and American circles.

Meanwhile, our trusted friends in the Foreign Affairs Committee and their ilk put on their war paint and took up arms to tell the Joe Biden administration not to deliver new aircraft to Türkiye or, better yet, expel Türkiye from NATO altogether.

Neither the festivities of friends nor the lament of Boltons, Barkeys, Rubins and Shapiros could provide the real, viable answer to questions that one can put forward to, say, Jake Sullivan, U.S. national security adviser to the president, who, according to Politico’s Alexander Ward, "helped craft a new vision that took root among Democrats and formed the backbone of the Joe Biden administration’s thinking about the world."

Alexander Ward’s new book, titled "The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy After Trump," just came out, and he summarized in Politico "Jake Sullivan’s Revolution" through which "a new Bidenism is emerging." Ward says globalization and free market philosophies had their time to prove themselves, but they are not fitting anymore; the Democrats have to "lay out a road map for the nation’s ideological future" because "the times were changing, and America had to change with them."

As an aside, I think this conclusion seems more appropriate to Türkiye’s left in general and the Republican People's Party (CHP) in particular. But they do not have a Sullivan among their cadres.

Now, Ward itemizes Sullivan’s "revolution" in several points. At the top, Biden’s (in fact what Sullivan and his team crafted and convinced Biden to pursue) domestic and foreign policy thinking is the idea that the U.S. should now focus on "the home front," which is the reason why Biden chose to withdraw from Afghanistan. But did he really?

Did the U.S. turn its attention from the "endless wars that would provide humanity a perpetual peace" to its own problems, like the lack of proper logistical supply for its COVID-19-stricken economy? Or customer inflation? Unemployment? If Sullivan (and Biden) are telling the truth, then why didn't the force withdrawals happen in Iraq and Syria?

This is an important issue for Türkiye. The continuing U.S. presence in Iraq and Syria is simply paving the way to an eventual dismemberment of these countries. If the U.S. is re-embracing the notion that "commitment by both countries that a strong bilateral relationship is in our collective self-interest," it should have taken its soldiers home a long time ago.

Black Sea conflict and U.S. interference

Ward also claims Bidenism believes that U.S. forces stayed out of the Russia-Ukraine war and allowed Ukraine to shape its own response. Ward and Sullivan are right seeing a "rock-ribbed belief in keeping U.S. forces out of" any conflicts since the Vietnam fiasco, but it never allowed Ukrainians to shape their position regarding the Russian territorial demands. Russia and Ukraine, in the first month of the conflict, had come to Istanbul and drafted and cease-fire and negotiation timetable. But now the whole world knows that America, twisting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s arms, successfully had that agreement torn up. Of all the people, Biden and Sullivan should have known that a protracted conflict in the Black Sea region would have a real danger of multiparty, even a world war. Even if the conflict did not turn that way, a low-level region-wide conflict could severely harm delicate regional commercial balances. Not only Türkiye but almost all European Union countries’ trade and energy connections with Russia have been put in jeopardy. So, Sullivan skillfully evades telling the truth about the U.S. plans in the Black Sea region.

Ward delineates Biden’s response to "China’s decades of cheating in global economics," his handling of the financial crisis that shook the American middle class, his "pursuing a modern industrial and innovation strategy – both at home and with partners around the world," his empowering a "humming industrial base ... (that) can accomplish a solid cadre of allies ... (and) sustain American democracy." He concludes that, "This strategy will take resolve – it will take a dedicated commitment to overcoming the barriers that have kept this country and our partners from building rapidly, efficiently and fairly as we were able to do in the past."

In other words, as in the old times, the U.S. will get militarily stronger and economically sounder, and "our partners" should keep believing in our resolve.

Neither Wards' 354-page tome which basically renames "the globalists" as "the internationalists," nor Sullivan's long speech at the Brookings Institution, (according to Ward, a Washington think tank that for years has served as a beacon of Democratic establishment thinking) was really "laying out a road map for the nation’s ideological future." There is no "major reshaping" happening in the America’s capital.

Usually, the rabid partisans or sworn enemies of presidents, crafting new narratives to the old stories, attribute "doctrines" to them.

Michael Anton, for instance, in 2019, two years into his tenure, penned an article, titled "The Trump Doctrine" in Foreign Policy, and trashed his foreign policies in a few pages: "The fact that Trump is not a neoconservative or a paleoconservative, neither a traditional realist nor a liberal internationalist, has caused endless confusion."

Türkiye's introduction to 'Bidenism' with false accusations

"Bidenism" started for Türkiye with lies in his infamous remarks suggesting that Ankara helped facilitate the rise of the Daesh terrorist group. At Harvard University in 2014, then-Vice President Biden said President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had admitted erring in allowing foreign fighters to cross Türkiye’s border into Syria, eventually leading to the formation of the group. There was no such a thing, and Biden apologized later.

Bidenism continued to develop with "interventionism" in his now-infamous interview with The New York Times (NYT) editorial board in which he said Erdoğan has been excluding Kurds from national politics and Biden, talking his "partners" in Türkiye and empowering them in the elections, would have Erdoğan toppled. (Erdoğan has won three more elections after that!)

Another facet of Bidenism was Biden’s declaration of the 1915 events in the Ottoman Empire during World War I "mass killing and deportation of an estimated one million Armenians as genocide."

It continued with the U.S.’ tacit opposition to Türkiye’s fight against PKK terrorism as well as declared and undeclared embargoes, outright rejection of selling the F-35 aircraft under the pretext of Türkiye’s purchase of the Russian S-400 air defense systems and years of delaying the modernization of aging F-16s.

You cannot ignore all these experiences and keep saying that Turkish-U.S. relations are as strong as ever and the new Bidenism is going to make them stronger.

I doubt that all that theorizing can successfully arrogate the U.S. any reconciliation privileges with Türkiye.