Let’s move on to the United Nations Human Rights Council, from which President Trump withdrew in 2018. The UNHRC was founded in 2006 to replace the U.N. Human Rights Commission which had become a mutual admiration society for human rights violators. Membership had its privileges: immunity from criticism. The council was supposed to be an improvement over the commission. It turned out to be a clone instead. The Peoples Republic of China was among the states voted onto the UNHRC by the U.N. General Assembly last fall, despite evidence of genocide against the Uyghurs, the Turkic Muslim people of Xinjiang. Other current members include Russia, whose leading opposition figure, having survived an assassination attempt, is now in prison; Venezuela, an oil-rich country, millions of whose impoverished citizens have fled; Cuba, responsible for much of the suffering in Venezuela; and Pakistan where dwindling religious minorities (e.g. Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, and Ahmadi Muslims) suffer oppression. It would be bad enough if the UNHRC were merely turning a blind eye to the abuses of its members. Among the other transgressions that have received little media or diplomatic attention. Emma Reilly, a professional staffer at the UNHRC, became aware that the names of individuals planning to testify about Beijing’s human rights violations were being secretly passed along to the Chinese delegation, so that they and their families could be threatened, intimidated and perhaps eliminated. She reported this practice to U.N. authorities. They responded by saying they would never do such a thing, and besides they’ve stopped. And they’ve been attempting to fire her, despite the whistleblower protections the U.N. has on its books.

President Joe Biden has said that America would defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack. His staff said that our policy toward China ― “strategic ambiguity” ― hasn’t changed. The Biden administration’s actions belie those words. Mr. Biden has changed our policy toward China and Taiwan and the methods and means by which we are able to deal with each of them. The evidence is in at least two parts. First, China is buying enough Iranian oil ― in defiance of US sanctions ― to reportedly keep the Iranian economy afloat. That means China is subsidizing Iran’s aggression across the Middle East. Yet Mr. Biden is taking no action to sanction or otherwise penalize China for buying Iran’s oil. To Mr. Biden, both China and Iran are too fearsome to attempt any action that might inconvenience either. It’s an appeasement, weakening our policies on both China and Iran. Second, China’s military is undergoing major transformative growth. In part, it is being redesigned to prevent our forces from being able to intervene in any attack on Taiwan, Japan, India or Australia. We are sleepwalking while China and Russia are building new weapon systems against some of which, like its hypersonic missiles, we have no defense. Our forces need a bottom-up review of what threats we face and what means we have to deal with them now and twenty years from now. Mr. Biden is not willing to face these challenges. He does not seem to care. In Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, serious people with deadly intent are making use of our negligence.

The regime has long emphasized that a peace declaration could never be a bargaining chip for getting its nuclear weapons. A peace declaration would be a feel-good diplomatic gesture, an empty promise based on dangerous naivete that did nothing to improve the security situation on the Korean Peninsula. It would only provide a vague hope of improving inter-Korean relations and persuading Pyongyang to less belligerent behavior. There is a real downside, however, to this simplistic, non-binding diplomatic gesture. A peace declaration could have serious negative consequences for alliance security by creating a false sense of security. Declaring peace prior to addressing the real threat to peace ― North Korea’s nuclear and conventional forces ― could generate a domino-effect advocacy for prematurely reducing U.S. deterrence and defense capabilities that protect America’s allies in the region. North Korea’s continued refusal to engage in dialogue should not induce the U.S. and South Korea to rush to yet another bad agreement with Pyongyang. The Korean landscape is already littered with the detritus of failed and broken pacts. The Kim regime habitually violated the Korean War armistice, the 1991 inter-Korean pledge not to use force or armed aggression against each other, and numerous denuclearization agreements. That does not bode well for regime compliance to yet another agreement. In addition, the United States has provided non-hostility declarations and promises not to attack North Korea with either conventional or nuclear weapons. Those declarations had no impact on Pyongyang’s aggressive behavior or production of nuclear weapons. There is no evidence that a peace declaration would have any greater effect on North Korean behavior than those previous efforts.

Despite North Korea’s ongoing nuclear weapons buildup and provocations, South Korean President Moon Jae-in is trying to convince the United States to declare an end to the Korean War. While the 1950-53 war seems a relic of the past, North Korea today poses a very real security threat. In his waning months in office, President Moon is increasingly desperate to jump-start dialogue with the recalcitrant Kim regime and secure his legacy as a peacemaker on the Korean Peninsula. President Biden should reject Mr. Moon’s entreaties while continuing to highlight the importance of the bilateral alliance to deter North Korean adventurism. Hampered by international sanctions from offering economic largesse to the North, Mr. Moon resurrected his peace proposal during a speech to the United Nations in September. He asserted that a declaration ending the Korean War would create “a new order of ‘reconciliation and cooperation’ on the Korean Peninsula [and] make irreversible progress in denuclearization.” The Biden administration quietly rebuffed Seoul’s entreaties but was forced to disagree publicly after South Korean officials repeatedly announced Washington was on board and on the cusp of releasing a joint peace document. The U.S. correctly recognizes that a peace declaration should not be made as an upfront inducement simply to get Pyongyang back to the table. Any such declaration must come as part of a comprehensive denuclearization agreement. North Korean officials quickly rejected Mr. Moon’s peace proposal as interesting but premature. Before considering Seoul’s conciliatory offering, Pyongyang demands significant concessions, including ending allied military exercises, reducing U.S. forces in South Korea and removing international sanctions.

President Biden’s legacy of weakness continues. Conservatives warned in the lead to November’s presidential elections: When America is weak, the world swirls in chaos because all of the evil players come out of their corners to exploit America’s weakness. And Biden is a weakling. If there were any doubt, any lingering doubt at all, Afghanistan proved that truth. “In ‘deeply troubling’ move, North Korea appears to have restarted plutonium-producing reactor,” Yahoo! News wrote. The story went on to report how the International Atomic Energy Agency found that “since early July, there have been indications, including the discharge of cooling water, consistent with the operation of the reactor” at Yongbyon. The Wall Street Journal added to the dismal news by noting a lab near Yongbyon seems to be active, with workers busily involved in the separation of plutonium from spent fuel from the reactor. “[It’s] deeply troubling,” not to mention a violation of Security Council resolutions, the IAEA wrote. Inspectors were booted from North Korea in 2009, so really, nobody knows for certain how far along the country’s moved down the path of nuclear weapon development. Twenty weapons? Fifty? Sixty? Experts aren’t sure. But as with Afghanistan and this administration’s insistence on talking and trading and deal-making with the Taliban ― and the disastrous results that have come ― so, too, will go similarly foolish diplomatic endeavors of Team Biden versus North Korea. Why would Pyongyang cave to a feeble White House ― to a frail and feckless U.S. president? Of course, North Korea will talk. North Korea will present on the international stage as trying to work with its global colleagues. Just like the Taliban.

North Korean refugees are betrayed with increased frequency by the third countries they are required to pass through in order to get to freedom in South Korea. In December 2019, Vietnam arrested and promptly deported three North Koreans. Last year, Thailand gave in to Pyongyang’s demands to deport 13 North Koreans. Fair-weather friends in Southeast Asia have been unreliable partners in ensuring North Koreans reach safety, but conditions inside North Korea are so grave that defectors often take the risk anyway. Another factor is the changing political landscape in South Korea. Moon Jae-In’s government, favoring friendly relations with the North, has failed to intervene to prevent third-country deportation. Instead, it is spending its resources auditing South Korean human rights organizations and forbidding them from sending leaflets into the North. The United States must place more pressure on China and other third-country destinations to uphold their obligations under international law. The U.N. COI made clear that China could be held accountable for violating its obligations under the U.N. Refugee Convention. Equally important, the U.S. must press Seoul to be a more reliable partner in protecting North Koreans seeking a better life in the South. Timely and consistent diplomatic pressure has been proven successful in securing the release of imprisoned refugees. Time is of the essence for the 1,000 or more North Korean refugees currently trapped in China. The U.S. should consider whether it can pressure Beijing not to forcibly repatriate these refugees and find ways to ensure that North Koreans find safety, in South Korea or within our own borders.

North Korean refugees are once again endangered by China’s policies of forcible repatriation. Taking advantage of North Korea’s partially reopened border, China is believed to have deported roughly 50 individuals back to North Korea. Human Rights Watch recently reported that more than 1,000 North Korean refugees are currently held in detention and also at risk of deportation. Vulnerable North Koreans face systematic repression upon their return to North Korea. A 2014 report from the United Nations Commission of Inquiry (COI) found that most of those returned are thrown into prison camps, ordinary or political, where they will most likely be subject to torture, malnourishment and forced labor. China’s actions demonstrate a willingness to appease Pyongyang even if it means violating international law. The U.N. officially classifies North Koreans as “refugees sur place,” meaning that any nation that deports North Koreans is in violation of the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention and the U.N. Convention Against Torture. As a signatory to the Refugee Convention, China violates it every time it repatriates a North Korean. China’s actions come as refugee resettlement for North Koreans has hit a record low. In 2020, only 229 North Koreans were resettled in South Korea. In the second quarter of 2021, a mere two people were resettled in the South. Defections are low, due in no small part to the Kim regime’s brutality. At the start of the pandemic, North Korea created buffer zones along its border and gave its soldiers shoot-on-sight orders for individuals entering or leaving the country. These measures mean that, despite possible indications of famine, fewer people are willing to risk exiting the country.

The relationship between the United States and China has been moving for some time toward an elusive inflection point. The uncertainty is over - the sudden shift came on Monday night. That’s when the leaders of the world’s dueling superpowers faced off by video conference. President Joe Biden had his chance to confront the man responsible - ultimately, if not personally - for his nation’s catastrophic release of COVID-19 upon the world. Instead, he held his tongue. The world now knows who’s boss: President Xi Jinping. Sitting face to face, virtually, with his Chinese counterpart for the first time as the U.S. president, Mr. Biden could have bored in with a steely gaze reinforced by a patriotic heart. The moment called for an honest accounting of China’s role - intentional or otherwise - in strewing the deadly virus that has killed 765,000 Americans and more than 5 million globally. The chance was lost, and it won’t return. Not that China’s master would have buckled before a demand for accountability. Beijing’s powers that be dropped the appearance of cooperation with World Health Organization investigators four months ago and have clapped back at calls for transparency ever since. Even the regime’s most ardent apologists have tabled the fable that the virus is a malevolent product of Mother Nature. The courage to confront is a moral duty that Mr. Biden avoided with his feckless attempt to sweep the pandemic under the rug. The president raised “concerns about the PRC’s practices in Xinjiang,” a description of systemic persecution of Muslim Uighurs in northwest China. However, NBA star Enes Kanter has garnered greater attention for the issue by wearing game sneakers inscribed with “free China.”

Democrats in America, along with their communist and socialist and collectivist friends around the world, know this coming election is not going to be pretty for their side. Republicans are united and passionate about the need to oust Democrats from Congress and win back the majorities needed to stop Biden’s overreaches and stumbles ― and they’re steadily bringing aboard a whole bunch of Independents who are seeing similarly. If Democrats can’t hold Congress, Biden will lose much of his political support system. And if Democrats can’t hold the White House in 2024 ― it’s back to the drawing room for the Great Resetters. The coronavirus can only take the political opportunists of collectivism so far. After that, they have to create another crisis of epic proportions, to drive the people into sheeple mode, to instill the deep enough pit of fear so as to wipe out any impulse to self-decide, i.e., self-govern. Climate change has been teed up, but it needs America’s full participation. Too many in America are still not as fearful of weather patterns as the communists would like. “We need a change of mindset,” said World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab, a major architect of the Great Reset movement. And time grows short. Biden is losing political capital and if he loses House and Senate seats ― time grows even shorter. Collectivists know this. Their worst fear is another Donald Trump. With Biden bumbling away and losing favor every day, it’s looking more and more like the global government’s worst fear will become reality.

The secretary-general of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, a man who’s also the former president of Socialist International, said in a set of maniacally madcap-toned remarks that the world is falling, the world is breaking, the world is blowing up in our faces and he’s just the guy “to fix” it all. Meaning, of course, regulating it all. Meaning, of course, Americ-amove over. Stop all this silly free market nonsense. Quit all this individualism crap. Get with the U.N. global government movement. There’s a “Great Reset” going on. It’s also called the One World Order. It’s also called the New World Order. It’s also called the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. It’s also called the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The end goal of the globalists is always the same: mass, worldwide collectivism. Power concentrated in the hands of a very few. And in America, with feckless, fumbling, bumbling, abandon-our-citizens-and-allies-in-Afghanistan Joe Biden, the cooler head atmosphere is steadily creeping into society. Poll after poll shows the growing pushback against Team Biden ? the buyer’s remorse for President Biden. And Biden’s globalist partners at the United Nations and elsewhere are now themselves growing anxious. They’re wondering about coming elections. They’re wondering about changing political party leadership. They’re wondering what happens to global “Great Reset” plans if Biden and Democrats give way to America First, America Best. After all, how to take over the world when America won’t play along with the takeover?