How the U.S. can restore its place on global stage
Biden aims to lead by `power of example'
Joe Biden has a motto for describing how America will see its place on the world stage under his presidency. In a victory speech in Delaware on Saturday, he declared: “We lead not by the example of our power, but by the power of our example.”
He does not have copyright on that pithy catchphrase: it was used by Bill Clinton in support of Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008. That, though, underlines how Biden plans to return the world to “normal” after the Trump years, re-establishing U.S. international l eadership, and hoping others show faith in it.
Biden is an experienced foreign-policy hand. Not only is he a former chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he served as Obama’s global fixer during his two terms as vice-president, tasked with the knottier, more thankless portfolios such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine after Russia’s 2014 invasion.
Biden’s informal foreign policy and national security advisers are to number nearly 2,000 people and 20 working groups. Yet in many areas it is the tone that will change rather than the substance.
CHINA
Biden will end the conf rontational rhetoric of the Trump years, during which the president not only launched a trade war but accused Beijing of spreading a “plague” with coronavirus. But relations will still remain cool. Biden believes the U.S. “does need to get tough with China,” and has accused Beijing of stealing U.S. firms’ intellectual property and giving unfair subsidies to stateowned exporters. He will also take a firm line on human rights violations. In piling pressure on China he will try to get other Western democracies onside, abandoning Trump’s unilateral approach. A diplomatic bloc that includes Europe, he points out, is twice as economically powerful as America alone, and harder for Beijing to ignore.
IRAN
Biden will seek to re-enter Obama’s landmark nuclear control deal, from which Trump withdrew in 2018. Biden claims Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy has backfired dangerously, giving Tehran an excuse to resume its suspected atomic weapons program. But whether Tehran will now respect the terms of any resumed deal is unclear. And even if it does, Biden will still face the problem of Iranian military meddling in the wider Middle East, where Trump’s tough-guy approach did occasionally yield results.
YEMEN
Biden will face a similar dilemma in Yemen, where he has said he will end U.S. support for the Saudi-led war against the Iranian-backed Houthis. While that has won him plaudits from his own Democratic left, it does not solve the question of Tehran’s growing Yemen foothold.
THE “FOREVER
WARS”
On the question of U.S. military interventions, Biden, who backed the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003, accepts America’s role as a world policeman. The Trump years, he believes, prove that if Washington doesn’t do the job, hostile strongmen such as Vladimir Putin fill the void. He plans to maintain a strong military, despite his wish to end “forever wars” in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia. He will, he says, bring the “vast majority” of troops home, leaving small units to help local armies fight al-Qaida and Islamic State. “Those smaller-scale missions are sustainable militarily, economically, and politically, and they advance the national interest,” he says.
RUSSIA
If there is a distinctive strand to a Biden foreign policy, it is to worry less about terrorists, who he says are “not an existential threat,” and more about hostile nuclear-armed states. A Biden presidency will pursue a new era of nuclear arms control arrangements with Russia — although there will be no cozying up to Putin. Biden is expected to ramp up criticism of Russia’s human rights record, and do more to expose corruption among the Kremlin elite.
ISRAEL
In many other f i elds, though, there is little immediate prospect of change. Biden has no plans to undo the achievements of Trump’s Middle East peace plan, which has seen Israel restore diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan. While he wants more safeguarding of Palestinian interests, he will also maintain an “ironclad commitment” to Israeli security. Likewise, he has no plans to reverse Trump’s controversial decision to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
ROGUE STATES
Nor is there likely to be much real change in attitude toward states such as North Korea and Venezuela. While Biden may be more diplomatic than Trump — who nicknamed Kim Jong-un a short, fat “Rocket Man” — his tone will still be harsh because of their poor human rights records. He describes Venezuela’s leader Nicolas Maduro as a “dictator, pure and simple.” In both cases, he may be able to exercise leverage by presenting himself as a more predictable player than his predecessor. Indeed, when it comes to the wider world, playing the “Trump card” may be his most useful asset of all.