The Deep File: Biden’s Foreign Policy
A Q1 review of the Biden foreign policy: the key figures, challenges, and early moves
This week, I released a podcast on the Biden administration’s Interim National Security Strategy Guidance (INSSG) document, a pre-National Security Strategy document National Security Strategy document, or NSS. Ostensibly, the document is designed to outline what an eventual National Security Strategy will further develop in terms of the Biden administration’s foreign policy priorities and objectives.
So, I thought I’d do a Q1 review of what we’ve seen so far of the Biden foreign policy. Been awhile since I’ve done one of these topical deep dives, but the wider lens it provides should be a nice supplement to my review of the INSSG. Enjoy!
January 22: President Biden’s World
Abroad, Biden’s foreign policy team is going to be faced with several early challenges. While Europeans anticipate a return of a more liberal diplomacy, that may not play well in early talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
In Asia, Biden’s team seems set to stand by the Trump administration’s declaration of China’s approach to its Uighur population as genocide, firing an early warning shot in diplomatic relations on that front.
With its own economic standing tenuous, China may be less than amenable to American overtures to be a responsible stakeholder in the liberal international system.
Promotion of democracy (a major theme in the inaugural speech) will also be challenged as developing democracies like Uganda experience civil unrest and imprisoned opposition leaders call for help.
February 5: Biden’s foreign policy takes amorphous shape
Foreign policy may be one area where the Biden administration has the opportunity to work on largely bipartisan lines, but even here, the effort to undo as much of the Trump administration’s work as possible may only provide short term gains.
The Biden administration moved to end support for the UAE and Saudi Arabia’s offensives in Yemen, a bipartisan decision, and an easy one given the catastrophe that conflict has become.
On most other fronts, though, Biden’s team will need to dig deeper to get foreign policy wins. While Biden has clearly signaled an intent to return to the Iran nuclear deal, France seems eager to lead the effort and bring Israel and Saudi Arabia to the table as well, which makes regional sense, but likely won’t sit well with the Americans.
While Russia factors large in Biden and the Democratic Party’s foreign policy thinking, Biden may find friends hard to come by when it comes to pushing back on Russia as Moscow works to tie itself ever closer to German (and EU) energy markets.
China, too, is promising early challenges. This week, a new Chinese law went into effect that allows Chinese Coast Guard vessels to fire on ships in contested waters. Meanwhile, a damning report by the BBC continues to expose Beijing’s genocidal policy towards the Uighurs, increasing the pressure for a sterner position from the US. A position decidedly lacking in President Biden’s first major, and very general, foreign policy speech this week.
February 19: Biden diplomacy
On the diplomacy front, the Biden administration has put together a rather impressive month in terms of irritating a wide swath of the international community.
The main issue, as Walter Russell Mead puts it, seems to be that America’s allies actually don’t mind an ambivalent America most days out of the week, and Biden made the miscalculation of believing the opposite.
Be that as it may, the Biden team’s soft-pedaling so far on China and Turkey even as it appears to be wanting to move quickly on a new Iran deal (despite Iranian-backed missile attacks on US troops in the region) suggests what many (including myself) feared from the outset: The Biden foreign policy would focus on the wrong things.
For its part, Israel is not impressed by Biden’s renewed interest in Iran and certainly not happy with being waitlisted for a month before Biden had a first phone call with Netanyahu. This may drive Israel to deepen its ties with Arab nations similarly miffed with the idea of a return to an Iran deal, which could create a rather difficult bloc of uncooperative regional partners for the US to work with.
February 26: Biden’s Not-So-Great Game
Cabinet nominations, however, are the least of Biden’s troubles as his foreign policy team seeks to both distance itself from the Trump administration (even as it quietly continues some Trump policies) and hold the line against acknowledged threats like China and Iran. It’s proving a difficult task.
While Biden’s nominee to head the CIA focused on China as the main strategic competitor to the US, Biden’s foreign policy team appears to be fixated (perhaps illegally so) on restarting talks with Iran on a nuclear deal.
This week, Iran announced it had reached new uranium enrichment levels and will reach for more, demanded compensation from the US for economic damage done under the Trump sanctions, and limited IAEA inspector access to nuclear sites.
Biden’s response? A single drone strike on an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq.
At the same time, Biden and Secretary of State Blinken are publishing a damning report on the 2018 killing of Saudi national Jamal Khashoggi that implicates crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman, and are putting pressure on Israel to expand its COVID vaccination efforts for the Palestinian population. Neither of these moves are controversial by themselves, but they do create tension between the US and its two main regional allies at precisely the same time the US is trying to bring Iran to the negotiation table, a move both Israel and Saudi Arabia are deeply skeptical about.
Editor's Note (because I just can’t help myself): I’m sorry, but this is bush league ball, and the Biden administration is demonstrating a failure to prioritize its policy and diplomacy objectives in the Middle East, which will have ripple effects in Asia. While tensions with trans-Atlantic allies stubbornly refuse to subside post Trump, the Biden team can ill afford alienating allies and partners.
March 5: The revenge of “History”
A new report from Freedom House charts a 15th straight year of decline for democracy around the globe, putting another nail in the coffin for the famous “End of History” thesis first popularized by Francis Fukuyama in the 1990s (still a good book worth reading).
With authoritarian regimes on the rise and the erosion of global norms in governance and diplomacy, the Biden administration's fairly strident liberal internationalism seems somewhat anachronistic and may spell difficulties for Biden diplomacy.
Iran is the latest example of this as Tehran effectively slammed the door on a return to US-Iran negotiations anytime soon.
Myanmar and Algeria are both seeing mass protests in the face of tough crackdowns.
Venezuela, too, that perpetual thorn in the side of US diplomacy, remains a strongman conundrum for Biden, even as lawlessness and violence there grow ever more grotesque.
Biden claims “America is back” and that democracy triumphed in the election. But is it a priority?
March 12: China - First Contact
On China, like with stimulus spending and vaccination efforts, Biden has the American people at his back. Increasingly large numbers of Americans now see China as an enemy, which probably gives the Biden administration some domestic cover to push back on China, which they appear to be intending to do along human rights lines.
However, China is not taking kindly to this shift towards what Beijing sees as moral high-handedness. In a cultural context where matters of reputation and preserving face matters, such diplomacy may actually be more damaging to US-China relations than the trade wars or the Trump era.
As China anticipates, perhaps exaggerates, ongoing friction with America, it’s stepping up its cooperation with Russia (another bad guy in Americans’ views) with an announcement this week of plans to establish a joint moon base. So, yeah, they’re getting pretty friendly.
Talks between the US and China will be made the more difficult with indications that China is behind the latest mass cyber attack on American networks.
March 19: “That escalated quickly!”
There is only one image you need to help you understand what happened in Anchorage yesterday:
The first high level meeting between China and America’s top diplomats didn’t end poorly, it started terribly. The Biden administration first sanctioned several Chinese officials, then Secretary of State Tony Blinken gave his Chinese counterparts both barrels, rhetorically speaking, from the jump…. In front of the news crews. The opening barrage prompted a blistering Chinese response and ensuing one-hour back and forth with each side trying to get the last word in.
I’ve said it in earlier newsletters and I’ll say it again, the Biden foreign policy team was built primarily to undo the Trump administration’s foreign policy and picked from the ranks of an Obama administration that was far from effective in its China diplomacy.
Biden’s team, and many American observers, do not help themselves by being more absorbed in their own myth-making on China than in actually dealing with reality. The reality is that China’s rise is not stable or secure, which means Beijing is far more likely to feel threatened with top down harshness from the US making an aggressive China a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Who you callin’ ‘Killer’?”
It wasn’t just China that the Biden administration decided to tick off this week. President Biden upped the ad hominem attacks on Russia President Vladimir Putin this week by referring to him as a “killer.”
The name-calling schoolyard spat escalated with Putin calling Biden the true killer, then triple dog daring him to a debate on…. Something.
If the Biden administration is the adult to the Trump administration’s child in the realm of diplomacy it appears as though the adult still resorts to name calling and bullying, but just with more refined language. “Killer” is so much more civilized than “rocket man.”
Of course, foreign policy is about action as well as rhetoric, but the rhetoric of diplomacy often opens or closes potential avenues of negotiation. Perhaps the Biden administration has concluded that to “speak softly” is useless with China and Russia. That may be true, but is the Biden administration ready to wield the “big stick” when the soft speaking ends?
March 26: China clap back
So that meeting in Anchorage went… not so well. After the public testy exchange between American and Chinese officials last week, the story this week was damage control. Who got worsted? Did the exchange indicate a confident China looking to throw elbows, or is this a sign of panic from Beijing?
The rhetorical row spread beyond diplomacy as America sanctioned more Chinese officials over Beijing’s treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang and was joined by other Western countries in doing so. China’s response has been to bar European officials from China and to start leveraging its market influence by essentially preventing western businesses from doing business in China.
Clearly, the Biden administration disappointed Chinese expectations that the tough line drawn by the Trump administration would be softened. Far from softening the line, the Biden team upped the ante by taking America’s China pushback out of the realm of economics and into the realm of values.
April 2: China’s bloc party
Having spend the last few years building up its formal ties with Russia, China turned its attention to the Middle East, inking a trade and intelligence-sharing deal with Iran and wooing Palestinian leaders. Trying to be a power of influence in the Middle East will be a fairly heavy lift for China, but a deal with Iran is pretty low hanging fruit, given both countries’ tense relations with the US.
With China firmly and formally in its corner, Iran appears ready to welcome America back to the negotiation table on the nuclear deal.
For China’s part, it’s well on its way to solidifying the core countries of its power bloc: Russia, Iran and North Korea. Will it be a match made in heaven or a marriage of convenience? Vastly differing values systems, geopolitical and regional interests, and power disparity point to this being mostly convenient, but if your main concern is making life miserable for the US and its allies, that’s a pretty low bar of commitment.
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