Biden transform US foreign policy? Don’t count on it

Joe Biden’s greatest contribution to US foreign policy may well be simply to restore some dignity to the tarnished image of the US presidency. We must hope that this will not be his only contribution. But fewer concrete measures may follow than one might think—or hope.

The most important step that his administration will take is rejoining the Paris Agreement on climate change, from which Donald Trump withdrew. Quite apart from the threat of global catastrophe, the future damage to the US itself from unchecked climate change will dwarf anything that China or Russia could do, short of nuclear war.

Yet in itself, signing this agreement does little except restore some US global prestige. Countries around the world have signed the Paris Accords and then failed to meet their commitments. The point is to do something.

Of critical importance will be the question of whether the Democrats can win a majority in the Senate—something that will probably not be clear until the Georgia run-off in January. Otherwise, assuming that Republicans Senators continue their strategy of blocking every single Democratic measure, the Biden administration will be incapable of passing new laws or raising new taxes.

Furthermore, the need to get cabinet appointees through the Senate will strengthen the instincts of the Democratic establishment and its business backers (so disastrously displayed under Obama) to tack towards the centre and appoint moderate Republicans. This strategy has always failed, while helping to prevent the Democrats from adopting much-needed economic reforms. It may well reduce Biden's wiggle room on foreign policy as well.

If the Democrats fail to win the Senate, then Biden will be reduced to doing what he can through executive orders. As both Obama and Trump showed, it is possible to achieve quite a lot this way; but it will fall very far short indeed of the Democrats’ promised “Green New Deal.” Biden’s affirmation of the Paris Accords may therefore prove simultaneously his most symbolically important and least practically meaningful foreign policy decision.

On other issues of key foreign policy action—as opposed to atmospherics—very little will change under a Biden administration. The figures who are generally tipped for senior positions come from the heart of the Washington foreign policy and security establishment, dubbed “The Blob” by Obama adviser Ben Rhodes for its uncanny ability to ingest anyone who tries to change its basic approach to the world.

Moreover, under all his hysterical bluster, on some key issues Trump did nothing to change previous US strategies. He made some positive statements about Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-Un, but actual US policy towards Russia and North Korea did not change at all. And where Trump did implement serious changes, these have to a great extent been accepted by the Democrats. This applies above all to policy towards China and to the avoidance of new wars.

Growing US hostility to China’s rise dates back at least to Obama and Hillary Clinton’s “Pivot to Asia” (lightly veiled diplomatic language for “Contain China”) of 2011. The deployment of new US military forces to East Asia, the development of new weapons systems for use in China’s coastal waters and the fostering of a partnership with India were all Obama administration policies.

On the various territorial disputes involving China, it may well be that Beijing would reject any compromise with the US and its own neighbours. But there has also been not the slightest indication from the Democratic establishment of a desire to seek compromise, or to make any legal distinction between the different disputes (legally speaking, China is right in about half its claims against Vietnam, Japan, the Philippines and India).

Trump did introduce massive new US tariffs on Chinese goods, and measures to check China’s rise in global information technology. Here, the Biden administration will be subject to conflicting pressures. It will desire a return to Obama’s strategy of promoting free-trade zones with allies that exclude China; but free trade is now deeply unpopular with a majority of Democratic voters.

Moreover, Trump’s anti-Chinese trade policy appears to have failed, except perhaps in the area of Huawei and 5G. So far during the pandemic’s economic crisis the Chinese economy has continued to grow (albeit more slowly) while the US economy has declined. As a result, China has strengthened still further its role as an engine of growth for East Asian and European economies, thereby limiting their ability to take action against Beijing. The dependence of other major states on trade with China has greatly hampered the Trump administration’s search for economic allies against Beijing, and will continue to hamper the Biden administration in this regard.

Another area where Trump and Biden will probably prove to be at one is in the avoidance of further wars. Both have learned the lessons of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya; both have read the opinion polls showing the deep aversion of a large majority of the US public to further military interventions; and both have listened to the Pentagon’s advice that new wars would be a gift to China. Once again, under all his bluster, Trump did not initiate a single new military campaign. He did assassinate the Iranian General Soleimani, but then the Obama administration assassinated Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mansour. Biden will continue with Trump’s strategy of trying to withdraw from Afghanistan, and will face the same obstacles to withdrawal.

On the Iran nuclear deal, from which Trump withdrew, Biden and his team have declared their desire to return to it. Some of his leading advisers have however expressed their intention of negotiating a new and tougher version of the deal. Tehran has stated that this is absolutely unacceptable.

It may be that a combination of US sanctions, the pandemic crisis and clever diplomacy will bring about a new treaty; but on the other hand, Iran now has a real alternative in Chinese investment and aid. If the US pushes China too hard in the Far East, it seems likely that Beijing will turn Tehran into a full ally, with drastic consequences for the military and political balance in the Middle East.

The Democrats detest Russia and will seek to harm it as much as possible. For this, however, Biden will have to persuade the Europeans to impose new sanctions. To do so at a time when tensions with Turkey are rising steeply would be the height of geopolitical folly—but wholly in keeping with European behaviour over the past generation. The west’s strategy is also crippled by the fact that its governments have no viable plan for a settlement of the Ukraine crisis. They could of course massively arm the Ukrainians, but that risks the Georgia scenario of 2008: a Ukrainian-Russian war, a crushing Ukrainian defeat, and a scuttling US retreat. It seems likely therefore that US-Russian hostility will remain largely at the level of shadowboxing.

Finally, Biden’s team has made great play with the hoary old idea of a global “league of democracies” to isolate and pressure China and Russia. This will not change the actual balance of power one bit, and since the US will undoubtedly go on working closely with both authoritarian allies and illiberal democracies like India, it will strengthen perceptions of US hypocrisy.

Nonetheless, this idea has a dangerous side. Seen from China and Russia (not just from the perspective of the regimes, but many ordinary people as well), US promotion of democracy is in fact aimed at the weakening or even destruction of their existing states. Threaten the vital interests of a powerful country, and it will do everything in its power to threaten your vital interests in return. This is a lesson that the Washington establishment should have learned from 25 years of failed strategy towards Russia; but it seems that they need more than one lesson; and I fear that they are going to get more than one.

Anatol Lieven is a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar and author among other books of Climate Change and the Nation State: The Realist Case (Allen Lane)