Foreign policy reset awaits Biden
JOE Biden’s presidential election victory generated such excitement across the United States that entire cities erupted in jubilation. Yet the celebrations didn’t last long – and rightly so. The president-elect will enter office with a stack of foreign policy business on his desk, some of which will be leftovers from the previous administration.
There will be a temptation in the Biden White House to get the ball rolling with a flashy initiative such as the Summit for Democracy that Biden himself trial-ballooned in a Foreign Affairs article this year. The president-elect, however, would be wise to concentrate what limited resources he has on two objectives his predecessor was unable or uninterested in achieving: de-escalating tensions with Iran; and putting strategic stability at the forefront of the bilateral US-Russia relationship.
Donald Trump’s administration has spent the last three years pursuing a strategy of maximum pressure on Iran that involves an increasingly onerous economic sanctions regime. And as expected, US sanctions have had a severe economic impact on the country.
Iran’s crude oil exports are down by at least 40% from its May 2018 peak. The country’s financial resources overseas have been frozen, it is cut off from the global financial system, and the sanctions have complicated Iran’s ability to import items as basic as food and medicine.
Apart from the economic repercussions, however, maximum pressure has failed to accomplish any of the fanciful objectives secretary of state Mike Pompeo outlined in May 2018. US policymakers assumed that over time, enough financial distress would compel the Iranian leadership to come back to the table for a new round of negotiations on Washington’s terms. Yet those talks are nowhere to be seen.
The Iranians continue to respond to maximum pressure with a campaign of maximum resistance centered on the calculated reversal of its own compliance with the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal. By the International Atomic Energy Agency’s own reporting, Tehran’s stockpile of enriched uranium is more than 10 times larger than it was before Washington implemented its sanctions regime.
The costs have piled up while the security benefits are nonexistent. To put it bluntly: The only thing US policy has produced is a self-destructive cycle of tit-for-tat between Washington and Tehran that almost resulted in a conflict at the beginning of the year. Maximum pressure at its core is a strategy of escalation.
The US-Russia relationship isn’t any better. Despite Trump’s musings about wanting a more constructive relationship with Moscow, bilateral ties today are in a worse state than they were four years ago.
It is difficult to imagine relations with the Russians improving under a Biden presidency – during the campaign, Biden referred to Russia as an “opponent” of the United States.
On Belarus, Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine and human rights, there are simply too many competing national interests to envision the two sides hitting the metaphorical reset button anytime soon.
But while substantive differences between two countries are inevitable, they don’t need to lead to a permanent state of confrontation.
Rejoining the Iran nuclear deal would be the most straightforward way for Washington to pursue a small detente with Tehran. Biden has expressed his intention to do exactly that.
Yet putting this proposition into action may turn out to be more complex than it appears. Iranian officials, for instance, continue to insist on compensation for lost revenue since Washington withdrew from the nuclear deal – a concession a new president would be highly unlikely to concede, regardless of the size of his election victory.
Iran is preparing for its own set of presidential elections in June next year, which makes President Hassan Rouhani’s flexibility limited. Hovering above it all is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who may not even want to countenance a return to diplomacy with the US, given how poisoned the well has become over the last four years.
Ultimately, whether or not Washington re-enters the nuclear deal is less important to American national security than whether the US and Iran can work together to find a path towards de-escalation as a whole.
Biden should not waste any time in reversing his predecessor’s Iran policy. Shortly after his inauguration,
Biden should use a trusted intermediary to send the Iranian government a clear, unequivocal message: While the US is serious about coming back into compliance with the nuclear deal, it is also willing to adopt a more modest arrangement (partial sanctions relief for partial nuclear rollback) if the politics in Tehran are too difficult to navigate.
The common goal would be to ensure the two nations avoid the kind of hostilities that erupted in January this year. Neither the US nor Iran has an interest in stumbling into a conflict – Iran because it is the far weaker power; the US because such a war would likely keep its military bogged down in a region whose strategic importance is minimal.
Fortunately, turning US-Russia dynamics around isn’t nearly as complicated. There is already a nuclear arms control deal on the table that could be re-signed with a stroke of a pen: New START. Biden and Vladimir Putin may disagree on a lot of issues, but both are in favour of extending the New START accord without conditions before it expires in February next year.
For both powers, extending the agreement would have as much to do about elevating pragmatic diplomacy to the forefront of the bilateral relationship as it does about preserving strategic stability and transparency.
Yes, the US and Russia will remain on opposite sides of a variety of national security issues – particularly when those issues touch upon what Moscow has long considered its sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space. But allowing the last US-Russia nuclear accord to expire would be the epitome of carelessness.
Maintaining diplomatic channels and preventing a costly and reckless nuclear arms race is nothing to snub.
Every president in the history of the America enters the White House thinking history can be made quickly and easily. In most cases, the world dumps a bucket of cold water on those hopes and dreams.
Statesmanship is all about the art of the possible, seeking out opportunities when they come and correcting policies when they have failed. Getting relations with Russia and Iran back on a stable track would be a small but significant step on the road to a saner foreign policy. – The Independent