As US president elect, Joe Biden, prepares to take office in January next year, the world waits to see how he will use America’s superpower status to shift geopolitical alliances and redraw diplomatic relations. In order to do this, he will need the help of the Republicans who will most likely hold a majority in the Senate. What can and should the new President do, both at home and abroad in the wake of Trump’s unilateralism and a global pandemic that is still raging? A group of high level experts discussed America in the world in a post-Trump era at a recent online event organised by the Brookings Institute.
Joe Biden’s path to the presidency has been anything but easy. One of the longest serving senators, Biden was vice-president from 2009 to 2017 and twice ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and 2008. On a personal level, Biden was struck by tragedy at a young age when he lost his first wife and one year old daughter in a car accident. He later lost his eldest son to a brain tumor and has himself twice undergone surgery for life-threatening brain aneurysms.
Now, at age 78, Biden is President elect of a country riven by division and ravaged by a pandemic. Biden will need all his resilience and optimism to beginning mending bipartisan divisions, both in government and across the country as a whole. Vital for America, it will also be necessary if he hopes to reinvigorate America’s role as leader of the liberal world order.
Evan Osnan, writer and foreign correspondent based in Washington DC, recently wrote a biography of Joe Biden. He points out that Biden’s half century in politics, at both local and national level, means he has a very wide range of contacts. He is also a past master of working with the opposition. Biden’s approach to diplomacy is; listen first, never tell another person what his/her interests or assume you know what they might be. These skills will definitely be needed as the President elect works to rebuild America in the world.
Biden’s long experience will help him ‘hit the ground running’ – Tamara Cofman Wittes
Tamara Cofman Wittes, former deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, agrees that Biden’s determination and empathy, born of his own suffering, are going to be key in his efforts to rebuild partnerships both in government and with foreign powers. She views his long road to the presidency as evidence of his ability to learn from his mistakes and believes his background will help him to ‘hit the ground running’. However she warns too, that much of the ground has changed since Biden was Vice President.
Biden’s ‘basic belief in the possibility of unification’ will be strongly tested as he reaches out to Republicans in the Senate, asserts Osnan. Divisions within the Republican party have important implications for the new administration’s ability to build bipartisan support on key issues. As Eric Edelman, former US ambassador in both the Clinton and Bush administrations and Vice President Cheney’s principal deputy assistant for national security affairs, bluntly puts it, ‘the Republican party of Ronald Reagan has been shattered beyond recognition’.
Those Republicans who supported Biden are disappointed that Trump didn’t get a bigger repudiation. Edelman fears that many who support Trump will see the election results as a rejection of Trump but not necessarily of Trumpism. He predicts that in the 2024 presidential race, ‘the Trump lane is going to be very crowded’. From this perspective, Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, who Edelman describes as a ‘conservative internationalist’, is going to need Biden’s help to manage Trump supporters within the Republican party.
Biden must demonstrate that he is not merely ‘a second incarnation of Obama’ – Eric Edelman
So where should the new administration start when it comes to foreign policy? Cofman Wittes points to the obvious areas where strong bipartisan agreement already exists. These are China, Russia and Saudi Arabia. Senior Advisor to the Director of Foreign Policy, Ambassador Victoria Nuland, agrees that there will be continued demand for a more rigorous approach when it comes to both China and Russia. But the support of these countries is also needed on wider global goals like the climate crisis, global health issues and nuclear non-proliferation. This is where Biden will have to carve an approach that lies somewhere between the idealism of Obama and the active unilateralism favoured by Trump.
The challenge that Biden will face, asserts Edelman, is demonstrating that he is not merely ‘a second incarnation of Obama’ and that he will take a more active, less idealist approach. In order to do this, Biden will need to persuade Americans that working with rather than against ones allies is in America’s best interests. America in the world will also depend on Biden’s ability to rebuild these important relationships. Will a Republican congress support the kind of funds – $80 billion, that Biden is looking for to re-establish America’s global influence?
Osnan points out that the only recent bill to get 100% agreement in Congress was the US decision to sanction China over Hong Kong. No other issue is able to garner this sort of bipartisan support. Both Edelman and Cofman Wittes agree that Trump’s policies for both China and Iran have, in fact, created a substantial amount of leverage for the incoming administration. If used wisely, this leverage could prove invaluable to the Biden team. The President elect has said that he does not see large cuts in defence spending. But he has mentioned his intention to revisit the Iran nuclear issue.
‘Diplomacy doesn’t work unless it’s backed by strength’ – Ambassador Victoria Nuland.
Nuland and Cofman Wittes agree that the Middle East is going to be one of Biden’s biggest challenges. Middle Eastern expert, Cofman Wittes sees it as both a challenge and an opportunity. ‘Biden is going to have to have some tough and honest conversations with regional partners in the Middle East about things that need to stop happening’ she says. Ambassador Nuland suggests that the lack of a clear end vision for the region, stands in the way of real progress.
Although the challenges facing America’s new President elect are numerous, Nuland is positive about the opportunities that are also inherent in this new era. Together with Europe and the G7 nations, she looks forward to seeing America in the world once more. Together with its allies, she looks forward to the articulation of ‘a clear liberal vision for the world’. Significantly, all these commentators implicitly acknowledge how significantly the world has changed, even since Obama’s time in office.
A tougher, more pragmatic approach from the US on the international stage will be needed. ‘Diplomacy doesn’t work unless it’s backed by strength’, maintains Ambassador Nuland. The Trump administration were certainly not afraid to use this strength and there is general consensus that Biden will benefit from the leverage created by Trump’s heavy-handed approach. More importantly, this leverage should be used strategically in order to facilitate America’s re-entry into a world that is ever more complex and fast-changing.