Should Biden Run Again? From a Foreign Policy Perspective, the Answer Is Clear
Led by a president who places an emphasis on coalitions and alliances, the U.S. has a critical role over the next five years as China seeks to reshape the world order
The last month saw a flurry of diplomatic activity from China as Beijing flexed its geopolitical muscles. First, President Xi Jinping flew to Moscow, meeting with ally-turned-burden Vladimir Putin. That was followed last week by a visit from French President Emmanuel Macron, accompanied by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. And these were preceded by the Chinese-mediated rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
This wasn’t Beijing being cordial and hospitable on the diplomatic stage, but clear evidence of China beginning to implement its ambitions to remodel and reshape the contours of a new world order, a post-Pax Americana order.
On the other side of the Pacific Ocean there’s U.S. President Joe Biden, a man whose formative political years were the Cold War and superpower rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. In the next three to four months, he will need to decide whether he will run for a second term in November 2024. He is indicating that he will, but the election is still a long way away. His decision – and, more pertinently, the outcome of that election – will have critical implications for U.S. foreign policy.
When Biden announced his bid for the 2020 presidential election, he explained that he was doing so because there was a “battle for the soul of the nation.” That fight was and remains a domestic issue revolving around threats to U.S. democracy, but there was a significant foreign policy component to it as well.
Biden succeeded President Donald Trump, an embarrassing “America First” ignoramus on all things foreign policy-related who conducted self-aggrandizing policy on Twitter. Trump capitalized on American fatigue and disillusionment over international affairs. The price of being a global 911 first responder seemed too expensive for many Americans and not cost-efficient. Alliances were neglected and dismissed, security commitments constantly questioned and abrogated, agreements violated and allies derided or ignored, while Trump-like authoritarian bullies were sycophantly courted.
The February 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia provided Biden with the perfect opportunity to execute traditional U.S. foreign policy: forge, manage and nurture alliances, restore credibility and stature to the United States, stand resolute against the aggressor, stay the course and revert to the America that allies look up to.
However, the prolonged war in Ukraine also confirmed to Biden that there is no “Back to the Future” mechanism in foreign policy. There is China.
Last week, at the Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston, CIA Director Bill Burns said that the U.S. is seeing a time of change that only comes along “a couple of times a century.” America still has “a better hand to play than any of our rivals,” he added, but it is “no longer the only big kid on the geopolitical block and our position at the head of the table isn’t guaranteed.”
China, he continued, was trying “to run the table, while Putin’s Russia, full of twisted ambition of a fading power, wants to smash the table completely.”
America’s rivalry with China has been developing for the past 20 years, with increased levels of animosity and mutual anxieties. In the last decade, the Chinese “challenge” has metamorphosed into a rivalry verging on open hostility.
While the Biden administration is cognizant of the dangers of miscalculation – over Taiwan, over North Korea or over maritime routes in the South China Sea, and how quickly they can lead to an inadvertent flare-up – it is equally aware that the next decade or two will be critical in defining the world order.
China has valid strategic claims against the status quo of the “American Order.”
First, the post-1945 Pax Americana reflects 1945 realities – a time when China was poor, backward, underdeveloped, reeling from Japanese occupation and diplomatically weak, toeing the Moscow line. Pax Americana means the era of U.S. hegemony; international institutions (the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund); an American rules-based system; security-based alliances that form a discernible security architecture in which priorities are set in Washington, with the Americans being almost inevitably the final arbiter of international disputes. This perpetuates an order that is unfavorable to China.
Second, the American Order does not take into account China’s ascendancy, huge economic gains, wealth and now geopolitical ambitions based on years of either isolation or humiliation. In fact, the United States has become an ossified, conservative, cherish-the-status-quo power, while China is the one introducing change and opportunity.
Third, since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the United States no longer adheres to a “spheres of influence” international regime, while China’s empowerment demands that such a demarcation be made. The Americans cannot control the Strait of Malacca, expand alliances with Japan and South Korea and forge new Indo-Pacific alliances with Australia and India, and expect China to consent quietly. This order, the Chinese argue, needs to be amended – not necessarily by some “Pax Sinica,” but by informally dividing the world.
This presents a major challenge to the United States, because it pits a values-based approach against an economic and utilitarian approach. Furthermore, notwithstanding U.S. use of force and brutality in conflicts since 1945, America has always had a parallel, idealistic foundation underlying its foreign policy. In exchange for security commitments or loans and financial aide via international institutions, it often demanded democratization, human and civil rights improvements, fair elections and transparency. For many, this was perceived as patronizing and condescending, while China is willing to build and develop in exchange for profits and presence.
Between Xi’s “Belt and Road Initiative,” recent diplomatic activity, an expansion of economy-centric foreign policy into security areas (e.g., Iran-Saudi Arabia and Russia-Ukraine) and an increasing willingness to conduct large-scale military exercises, primarily around Taiwan, there is clear evidence that China is intent on challenging the American Order and balance of power.
The exact contours are blurry, and whether China will confine the challenge to East and Southeast Asia remains to be seen. But the combination of economic and diplomatic initiatives forms a foreign policy narrative that presents a very real challenge to Biden’s “democracy versus autocracy” theme. Even if the stated Chinese goal for the foreseeable future is “spheres of influence,” in the longer run the American and Chinese world order models are incompatible.
China’s strategy will be twofold: Winning over the Global South, which has conspicuously refused to stand by the United States against Russia after the latter’s invasion of Ukraine; and sowing discord among America’s closest allies such as France, whose President Macron warned in Beijing that Europe must be careful not to follow America’s lead and dictates on China.
This does not mean a U.S.-Chinese conflict is inevitable, and nor should it. The United States and China have a diverse agenda of issues they can and should cooperate on, from climate change and space to nuclear proliferation. But it does mean the U.S. cannot abdicate commitments and presence if it seeks to remain the dominant power.
The United States is still the only global superpower, with an economy of $22 trillion (compared to China’s $15 trillion), and a far superior military and global outreach. In 50 years, the world will likely see a tripolar structure of the United States-China-India. But American exclusivity is being eroded. A president embracing an “America First” brand of isolationism – or, conversely, open enmity with China – will make the world far more dangerous.
It is Biden’s adherence to an adjusted and agile American Order that can balance these dangers. His emphasis on coalitions and alliances is the critical ingredient for stability over the next five years.