Of all of the hard work facing the Biden Admiistation, none is as formidable as, the pandemic aside, as the arena of foreign relations whose path was wrecked by President Trump’s anti globalist and scattershot approach that hampered the work of career diplomats and their staffs, and the notable exit from the Paris Climate Accord, and the fragmentation of the Iran Nuclear Disarmament agreement that, while imperfect, held that country to a standard of near compliance; an achievement in and of itself.
Relations between old allies such as England and Germany, and even older with France, has been riddled with misunderstanding and rife with damaging rhetoric that has caused their leaders to question the reliability of the United States, still the wer, just short of China.
The near euphoria that was felt across the ocean was summed up neatly in a tweet to Biden on his election victory, by President Macron of France, “Welcome back!”
Without being stated this feeling was the same for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, of the United Kingdom, and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, despite the fact that Johnson had expressed admiration for Trump; and with a well established penchant for hyperbolic praise, and estimation, this may prove just as true with his evaluation of the newly elected American president.
To establish what is even normal, tensions aside, with the rest of the world, will require the talents of an experienced mind, as well as a detailed resume, and someone with the skill of a rear admiral, and energy galore, as Biden’s secretary of state; and, the name of Susan Rice as the presumptive nominee would be an apt choice, but in the end Biden chose a former staffer and close associate, Antony Blinken, who began his tenure in higher office in the Clinton administration, and who later from 2009 to 2013 became Deputy Assistant to the President, and also his National Security Adviser when Biden was vice-president.
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| Antony Blinken |
Putting that aside, for a moment, and taking a wider look at the last four years of withdrawal, and even name calling, the debacle, and this is not too strong of a word of American foreign policy is important to neglect, and especially as joint cooperation is needed to fight the pandemic.
Decades of experience
As president, Joe Biden brings not only nearly 50 years of experience as a lawmaker, but also two terms on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and as vice president under Barack Obama, represented him in a number of key areas, one with the admittance of China to the World Trade Organization, and also dealing with the Balkan conflicts.
As France 24 noted, “Biden has said his foreign agenda would "place the United States back at the head of the table, in a position to work with its allies and partners to mobilise collective action on global threats". The operative word there may be "table"—Biden recognises there should be one. After four years of "America First", with the erratic Trump toppling proverbial roundtables with an iconoclastic flourish, Biden will be conspicuous about putting the pieces back together.”
While a iot has been debated, over the past few decades, about the role of America in foreign relations, either as policeman, or partner, the path of history has shown the military might and the intervention, whether it was as the new colossus, as Winston Churchill put it, entering the Great War, or later in World War II, the hand of the president backed by creativity, with the Lend Lease of fighter airplanes to England, his power has solved, and in less than glorious ways, created clamor, as what was done with Vietnam.
Over the past decades, we have also seen that the increased partisanship has not only intensified, but also has diverged in how Americans view foreign relations, and policy, itself, with allegiances, and while not paramount to a presidential election it has shown, in this year’s election some startling differences.
Partisanship divide affects how Americans view foreign policy
Ivo Daalder, a former US ambassador to NATO and now president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, noted in a recent op ed piece, for the Chicago Tribune, that Democrats favor international approaches that include the US participating in international organizations (63%) the provision of humanitarian aid (59%) and favor the increased use of the United Nations (68%) and the World Trade Organization (53%).
By contrast, Republicans, nearly half, believed that the United states is “rich and powerful enough to go it alone, (48%), the imposition of sanctions on other countries (43%) and that the UN, World Health Organization, and WTO should be “less involved” 34%, 39% and 30%, respectively.
Bridging this divide will require some high wire maneuvers for the new administration and especially for Rice should she be confirmed as secretary of state.
Also taking prime place will be the Biden team’s definitive focus: should it, or will it be part of the centrist approach taken by the prior Obama administration? If so, one thing remains the same: an ongoing globalist focus that capitalizes on the relationships that Biden has built over the past decades.
There is also what Matthew Vallieres, of the University of Toronto, sees as necessary, emotions, or rather the inclusion, rather than the exclusion of them, and he says, “No foreign policy maker should dismiss emotions, and no policy maker is ever above emotion.”
Despite a past reputation of being pragmatic, Biden has, has become less hawkish, over the years, and as “Brett McGurk, a former senior State Department official for the campaign against the Islamic State, said Mr. Biden had been an effective diplomat by practicing “strategic empathy,” to The New York TImes.
A different approach?
“It is an approach grounded in a belief that understanding another leader — “what they want and what they need,” in the words of James Rubin, a former Biden aide who later served as the State Department spokesman — is as important as understanding his or her nation,” they added.
He is not without his critics, and Sen. Bernie Sanders has previously criticized him for not being progressive enough, and some have insisted that, “his emphasis on the personal is not effective at all, that it covers for flawed judgment and a lack of principle. “It’s little wonder that he claims world leaders have told him they support his election — they want to get back to eating America’s lunch again,” said Tim Murtaugh, a Trump campaign spokesman. He pointed out that Mr. Biden had voted to authorize the Iraq war and said he favored “appeasing” Cuba.”
Some have also said that he carried the water for Obama and company, and we have this, also from the Times: “As a senator, he produced no landmark foreign-policy legislation or defining doctrines. As vice president, he was largely a facilitator and adviser to Mr. Obama, often overshadowed by the secretaries of state, Hillary Clinton and then John Kerry.”
This of course belies the fact that in his role as vice president, he was not to create policy, but to carry it out; and, it seems that this in no sense will change with Kamala Harris, but should be amplified by future collaboration with Blinken.
China, China, China
The greatest challenge, among many will be dealing with China, not only for its attempts to become a dominant economic power, but also a militant one, in the example of the independence of Hong Kong, and dealing with the slow erosion of its post colonial autonomy, but also with its “legalization” of taking American intellectual property, as a condition of doing business with them.
While State Department officials are not predicting a future without illusion, the intensity of future relations are certainly to be felt, with a redevelopment not only of policy, but approach and seeking cooperation and not confrontation.
That arena also contains mutually conflicting areas such as economic security, human rights, tariffs on Chinese imports along with the other elements of the Belt and Road Initiative, (connecting and expanding an infrastructure with aspirations to recreate, and connect a new Silk Road)t will require skill and also cooperation with Western Europe whose countries have also been picked off by China, in attempts to do business.
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| President Xi |
Biden has said that “the most effective way to meet that challenge is to build a united front of friends . . to confront China’s abusive behavior,” and ““even as we seek to cooperate with Beijing on issues where our interests converge, such as climate change, nonproliferation, and global health security.”
“Such a “united front” is what Beijing fears most, said Willy Lam, professor of history and China studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, according to the Los Angeles TImes.
“America’s return to multilateralism is welcome as a stabilizing force and important player in global issues such as climate change, said Wang Yong, professor of international studies at Peking University.”
“But if some people in the U.S. use ideological standards to politicize these supposedly international organizations and make alliances against China because China’s ideology is different, then this is a big mistake,” he said. “This is what some people are worried about, “they added.
Getting things done
On the other hand, as The Nation wrote last April, “In what is perhaps the best-case scenario, two increasingly nationalistic superpowers with immense militaries and overextended economies might be content to maintain their own spheres of influence. But China wants to expand its sphere, and the United States is reluctant to give up either its Pacific presence or its global ambitions.”
The changes, or rather the Trumpian aggression has melted away, yet what remains is a playbook, or what some are calling a reset, for China, that might involve a smaller case scenario that involves cooperation.
Looking at this level of engagement and what lies ahead, might be one of 2019, where cooperation was not off the table, but had its adherents.
“Our policy should be cooperative partnership that engages China on every level as we seek to work with China to solve problems,” argues the US Naval War College’s Goldstein. “They are a status-quo power that we can work with on various fronts: North Korea, Myanmar, pandemics, Belt and Road, climate change.”
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