‘America is back’ – maybe not yet

GAITHERSBURG, MD: American President Joe Biden last week added some more flesh to the barebones of his foreign and national security policy unveiled at the U.S. State Department, 4 February 2021, the overarching theme of which was: ‘America is back!’

That he accomplished through addresses to a virtual G-7 meeting hosted in London by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and to the annual Munich Security Conference, hosted by German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, in the southern German city. Incidentally, Biden’s latest expositions on America’s worldview marked his global debut as the American president.

BIDEN WELTANSHAUUNG

Secretary of State Antony Blinken - Biden’s foreign policy adviser for two decades and who, according to the pundits here, arguably enjoys the closest relationship with his political boss since James Baker served under President H. W. Bush - contributed some additional light in an interview to the BBC.

Reiterating that ‘America is back’, Blinken declared that America is fully engaged in helping resolve key issues, including the pandemic, climate change and Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and underlined the importance of worldwide vaccination against Covid-19. Known as a hawk on China, he criticized Beijing for its lack of transparency in uncovering how coronavirus emerged. Much appreciated was Biden’s assurance of giving $ 4 billion to the Covax vaccination scheme, which aims to deliver more than two billion doses to people in 190 countries in less than a year.

To the G-7 virtual summit of the world’s richest industrial states, Biden declared, inter alia: “We are at an inflexion point…Our partnerships have endured and grown through the years because they are rooted in the richness of our shared democratic values…They are not transactional, they are not extractive. They’re built on a vision of a future where every life matters, where the lives of all are protected, and the rule of law upheld.”

While Western leaders generally applauded America’s rejoining the 2015 Paris Accord on Climate and the positive remarks and tone about the transAtlantic relationship – often derided during the Trump Administration – some skepticism seems to have greeted Biden’s sweeping observations on democracy and their policy implications.

In particular, China appears to be a key area of difference between the U.S. and Europe not least with regards to those threats directed at Beijing in the context of Biden’s call to Western allies: “You know, we must prepare together for a longterm strategic competition with China.”

Revealingly, as per the BBC, a European Union (EU) official was quoted as saying: “We believe Europe should be able to have its own agreements… We believe that we should engage with China, and not just talk about China but talk to China.”

Even Richard Haas, President of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations and a well-known person of influence in American government and academic circles, in an interview with CNN, hinted that there was little ‘preparation’ by the Biden team on how such an ambitious objective was to be achieved.

However, to return to Europe, as recounted in this space two weeks ago, despite Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan having requested early consultations with America’s European partners on her current concerns about China’s economic practices, the EU and China quickly signed a Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, as detailed in a Chatham House publication entitled, ‘EU and China seal a deal behind Biden’s back‘.

The following segment of BBC News’ Yalda Hakim’s commentary is, I believe, also noteworthy: “At the centre of the Trump Administration’s approach was great power competition. For Obama it was restraint. For Bush it was the war on terror. I asked Blinken what the Biden Administration’s foreign policy bumper sticker was. He smiled and without hesitation said: ‘America’s engagement, America’s leadership.’ ” An important assertion that the Biden Administration made recently to CNN is that the United States would accept an EU invitation for group talks with Iran. It remains to be seen what develops on this front in the near future; meanwhile, it is worth mentioning that, as per ABC TV news channel, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif asserted: ”We will follow action for action.” In this context, I wish to recall that two weeks ago in my column, I had referred to Zarif’s interview to Fareed Zakaria of CNN regarding the possibility of resumption of Iran-U.S. talks. Among other things, Zarif argued that since it was the U.S. that had turned its back to the negotiated commitments of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, it was only fitting that Washington must first lift sanctions against Iran and return to negotiations.

PERCEPTION NO LESS IMPORTANT

More broadly speaking, since America’s global prestige has steeply plummeted in recent months/years – for no fault of Biden, to be sure – it is hardly in a position to dictate its terms, whether to Iran or China or Russia or anyone else. Since perception, in international relations, has a crucial bearing on how states conduct their relations with one another, America must be first globally perceived to be in vigorous health domestically, before it can truly claim ‘to be back.’ Quite aside from the grim and widespread ramifications of the horrific 6 January 2021 attack and siege of the U.S. Capitol on the fragile state of democracy in America, there is the somber possibility that the cancer on the American body politic, represented by the ferocious assault by farright urban terrorists, may be more deeply embedded that hitherto thought. Credible disclosures that even some serving and former members of the security services have participated in the dastardly attack on the altar of American democracy render such apprehensions less than imaginary.

Indeed, it can now only be hoped that the proposed 9/11-type bipartisan investigation commission on the 6 January assault will, in time, uncover the full extent of such an affliction. Once that happens, the Biden Administration will then be equipped to thoroughly excise that cancer, once and for all, and have America rapidly return to full normalcy.

Not to be forgotten, too, are increasing problems that are emerging from within the ‘liberal’ wing of the Democratic Party itself; issues that have a direct bearing on one of Biden’s agenda priorities: forging effective bilateralism or active cooperation with Republicans, including in matters relating to the enactment of urgent new legislation.

Besides such a roster of grave problems confronting the Biden Administration, there is of course the fact that the Coronavirus has, to date, taken an unimaginable toll of half-a-million lives, not to mention the reality that although vaccinations have now begun in real earnest throughout the nation there is still a long way to go before every American gets a shot in the arm.

And, as if there was not enough on Biden’s plate already, there are presently the humungous problems that have suddenly engulfed Texas in the aftermath of the Big Freeze, and the attendant cruel series of inter-connected crises relating to electricity, water and food supply to Texas and neighbouring regions. Finally, there is Donald Trump and his band of ardent supporters, ever ready to do their utmost to create additional intractable problems for the Biden team, whether they relate to domestic issues or in the foreign policy or national security policy domains. America can – and will – be back but only after the massive problems outlined above are resolved. In the interregnum, it would be sagacious for the United States’ leadership to scale down its global ambitions biding its time, concentrating on getting its house in order, first.

A the time of writing, neither China nor Russia, for instance, seem to have been over-awed despite Biden’s commitment, in his 4 February speech, to use the “muscle of democratic alliances” to deterring Moscow, as also the “growing ambitions of China to rival the United States.”

For that matter neither do Iran, the EU or North Korea seem to be unduly perturbed that ‘America is back!’

JOHN BOLTON’S WORLD

Recently, I finished reading through Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton’s 494-page tome, ‘In the Room Where It Happened’. This is virtually a blow-by-blow account of the unbelievably ad hoc and whimsical manner in which decisions, even the weightiest ones, were made in the Trump White House, including principally by Trump himself.

Though all individuals following U.S. affairs were broadly aware of the most unconventional nature of the Trump Administration, Bolton now graphically depicts for them how an American president addicted to chaos, embraced her enemies, spurned her friends, and who was even deeply suspicious of his own government! Loaded with a staggering amount of detail and heaps of trivia, it is consequently not an easy or enjoyable read.

One simply marvels, page after page, how a man with Trump’s less-than-sterling attributes could ever have become the president of the world’s most prosperous and strongest nation, one that – until most recently – could with some justification also claim to be the world’s greatest democracy.

For the purposes of this column, however, I now wish to direct attention to just some aspects of Bolton’s book. Among other things, it is a stark revelation of how little India figured in the Trump calculus: there is just one passing reference to Modi, who constantly claims for India an international standing no less than that of China’s Great Power status It is, of course, a truism that no Great Power constantly harps on such claims; they simply have no need for such histrionics.

Also worthy of note is Bolton’s explanation of the Indo-Pacific, as appears in this excerpt: “We had a slogan, a good one, calling for a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ region. Conceptually, broadening the strategic environment to include South and Southeast Asia is important showing that not everything revolves around China. But a bumper sticker is not a strategy, and we struggled to elaborate it and being sucked into the black hole of China trade issues, which happened all too often.”

Clearly, then, the core rationale of the ‘Indo-Pacific strategy’ is the containment of China.

Another revealing perspective of America’s ‘Indo-Pacific strategy’ gushes forth from this excerpt from Bolton’s pen: “From America’s perspective, normalizing relations between Tokyo and Seoul, two key allies, was crucial to our efforts in East Asia to deter Russian, North Korean, and Chinese belligerence. We had no NATO counterpart in the Pacific, only a series of ‘hub and spoke’ bilateral alliances, so we always worked for greater South Korean-Japanese cooperation, and to expand it with others like Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. Even in the otherwise indifferent Administration, the “free and open IndoPacific” concept was a way to enhance horizontal ties among like-minded countries.” [Notice, once again, there is no reference to India.]

Finally, changing gears from Trump to Biden, I must confess that I was hardly surprised that the popular blogger Maila Baje dismissed the possibility that, at this stage, the Biden Administration had a Nepal policy.

I also found myself in total agreement with him that the recent changing of the guards in America may have had more than a coincidental or catalytic effect in hastening the process of disengagement of troops between China and India along their Himalayan borders.

While Trump’s exit made little or no difference in Beijing, it probably came as a big shock in New Delhi, for long hitching its stars to what it saw as the Trump bandwagon. Strategically speaking, I think it would be a good thing if Nepal’s immediate neighbours kissed and made up.

India has much to gain by pursuing friendship and cooperation with China, rather than relying on a country at the antipodes with strategic objectives quite contrary to hers, including the containment of China.