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(CNN) – The free world will have a new leader.
Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election, defeating the conservative populist Donald Trump, could usher in a dramatic shift in America’s attitude toward the world. But does that mean that things will go back to normal?
The veteran Democratic politician, who will take office in January 2021, has promised to be a safe pair of hands for the world. He promises to be friendlier to America’s allies than Trump, tougher on autocrats, and better for the planet. However, the foreign policy landscape can be much more challenging than he remembers.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) shakes hands with then-US Vice President Joe Biden (left) in Beijing on December 4, 2013. (Photo by Lintao Zhang / Getty Images)
Much has changed since Biden was last in the White House as former President Obama’s vice president. America’s enemies, some incited by Trump, others empowered by him, are more entrenched.
The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin; the president of China, Xi Jinping; North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and others exploited Trump’s vanity and cheated on his ego, while reaping their own profits. Some are now effectively leaders for life.
Biden promises to be different, to reverse some of Trump’s most controversial policies, including climate change, and to work more closely with America’s allies.
On China, he says he will continue Trump’s hard line on trade, intellectual property theft and coercive business practices by co-opting rather than intimidating allies as Trump did.
On Iran, he promises that Tehran will have a way out of sanctions if it complies with the multinational nuclear deal it oversaw with Obama, but which Trump abandoned. And with NATO, it is already trying to rebuild trust by promising to instill fear in the Kremlin.
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These are easy moves to please people for the veteran politician, who for many years chaired the Foreign Relations Committee of the United States Senate. Steeped in the traditions of US global leadership defending democracy and human rights, he was an advocate for US interventions in the Balkans and Darfur, albeit without success; and promoted nuclear non-proliferation.
But executing his foreign policy vision now will not be easy. For four years, countries in Europe, the Middle East, and beyond endured US foreign policy setbacks. One day, Trump was pulling US troops out of Syria to the dismay of allies with troops in distress, only to soon reverse course. Putin, Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, and countless Islamist fighters benefited from the immediate and long-term confusion of the United States’ damaged reputation as a trusted ally.
Biden now runs the risk of running into a wall of friends in need, all eager to correct perceived mistakes. After US allies endured a scattered US foreign policy strategy that undermined traditional alliances and threatened world order, managing their expectations of a new presidency will be key.
The President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will also be a new challenge for Biden. Erdogan is stoking conflicts in Syria, Libya and Armenia, and even escalating tensions with Greece and France, to distract from his failings at home.
Trump’s desire to disengage from the region had indicated to Erdogan that the United States would do nothing to make the allies restrict him. Since then, the Turkish leader has damaged the NATO alliance by buying Russian weapons and backing attacks against the interests of America’s European and Middle Eastern allies in a way that is unlikely to have been tolerated by previous American administrations.
Trump isn’t the only one to blame for the power vacuum that made this possible: The outgoing president only accelerated the drift of the Obama-Biden-era disconnect. Over the next four years, Obama’s own isolationist legacy will also haunt Biden’s relationships with allies, particularly in the Middle East.
During his own tenure, Obama dropped America’s Middle East partners, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, during the 2011 “Arab Spring”, prompting other allies to of the region feared that they too could be abandoned by Washington.
He pulled American troops out of Iraq and was withdrawing them in Afghanistan long before Trump took office. His inability to punish Syrian dictator al-Assad for gassing his own people convinced even allies in Europe that the United States was in retreat and led several Gulf states to spend heavily on their own defense.
Trump’s toughness on Iran, by contrast, has reaffirmed to Gulf allies that he backed them. But concerns that his missteps could spark a war have encouraged allies to seek support elsewhere anyway, deepening ties with Moscow and Beijing. Biden will now have to convince allies that the United States is a stable long-term partner, while juggling the long-term threat posed by China’s rise.
In this, Biden is already behind the eight ball. This year’s significant voter turnout for Trump showed that 2016 was not an aberration: America remains deeply divided, and another future US president could potentially destroy the Biden deals just as Trump destroyed Obama’s. Although the voters have selected a traditional candidate for the White House, the allies feel chills and will not calm down easily.
By the time he takes office next year, the road to further isolation will be well traveled. The new president will have to gauge how far and how fast he needs to backtrack to bring enough allies behind him to put the world on the path he desires.
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To get an idea of how difficult this will be, let’s imagine his plan to contain Iran in a new multinational nuclear deal to replace the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which Trump scrapped.
How will Biden convince the UK, Germany and France, who invested unlimited energy in supporting the US to create the original deal, to join him in making a fresh start? And that’s before we consider the complication of putting Russia and China back on their side, as he and Obama did in 2015. For example, China is unlikely to agree to a new deal with Iran until the United States makes concessions. in the South China Sea and on trade.
Successful foreign policy won’t just be about winning the trust of friends and the acquiescence of enemies again. It will be about building international confidence in America’s unity of purpose, a difficult task for such a divided nation. Biden may find that world order can no longer be restored the way he wants it.
After a few weeks in office, the road to the White House might seem, in hindsight, the easiest part of his journey as president.
