America’s relations with China are the worst since the countries normalized ties four decades ago. America’s allies in Europe are alienated. The most important nuclear antiproliferation treaty is about to expire with Russia. Iran is accumulating enriched nuclear fuel again, and North Korea is brandishing its atomic arsenal.
Not to mention global warming, refugee crises, and looming famines in some of the poorest places in the world, all amplified by the pandemic.
President-elect Joe Biden is inheriting a landscape of challenges and ill-will toward the United States in countries hostile to President Donald Trump’s “America First” mantra, its unpredictability, its acceptance of autocratic leaders, and its resistance to international cooperation. Biden could also face difficulties dealing with governments awaiting Trump’s re-election, particularly Israel and Saudi Arabia, which share the president’s deep antipathy towards Iran.
But Biden’s past as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as vice president of the Obama administration has given him a familiarity with international affairs that could work in his favor, say foreign policy experts in the know.
“President Trump has lowered the bar so low that it wouldn’t take much for Biden to change the perception drastically,” said Robert Malley, executive director of the International Crisis Group and former Obama White House adviser. “Saying some of the things that Trump hasn’t said, to rewind the tape on multilateralism, climate change, human rights, will sound very strong and meaningful.”
These are the most pressing foreign policy areas facing the Biden administration:
The challenge of US-China relations
Nothing is more urgent, in the eyes of many experts, than to reverse the downward trajectory of relations with China, the economic superpower and geopolitical rival with which Trump has engaged in what many call a new Cold War. Disputes over trade, the South China Sea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and technology have metastasized during Trump’s tenure, critics say, exacerbated by the president’s racist remarks that China contaminated the world with coronavirus
and should be held accountable.
“China is kind of the radioactive core of America’s foreign policy problems,” said Orville Schell, director of the Asian Society’s Center for US-China Relations.
Biden hasn’t necessarily helped himself with his own negative portrayal of China and its authoritarian leader, President Xi Jinping, during the 2020 campaign. The two were once seen as having developed a friendly relationship during the Obama years. But Biden, perhaps acting in part to counter Trump’s accusations that he would be lenient on China, recently called Xi a “bully.”
> Middle East: Changes in Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran?
Biden has vowed to reverse what he called the “dangerous failure” of Trump’s Iran policy, which repudiated the 2015 nuclear deal and replaced it with tougher sanctions that have caused profound economic damage in Iran and left the United States in large numbers. isolated part on this topic. Biden has offered to join the agreement, which restricts Iran’s nuclear capabilities if Iran adheres to its provisions and agrees to continue negotiating. He has also pledged to immediately lift Trump’s travel ban that affects Iran and several other Muslim-majority countries.
It is unclear whether Iran’s hierarchy will accept Biden’s approach. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, has said that the United States is not trustworthy, regardless of who is in the White House. At the same time, “Iran is desperate for a deal,” said Cliff Kupchan, president of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy.
Still, Kupchan said, Biden will face enormous difficulties in any negotiations with Iran aimed at tightening restrictions on his nuclear activities – weaknesses that Trump had cited to justify waiving the nuclear deal.
“The substance will be hard; We’ve seen this movie and it’s not easy, ”Kupchan said. “I think Biden’s challenge is that he won’t end up blowing up in his face.”
Biden’s policy on Iran could alienate Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who took advantage of Trump’s confrontational approach to help strengthen Israel’s relations with the Persian Gulf countries, marked by the normalization of diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The way Biden handles relations with Saudi Arabia, which views Iran as an enemy, will also be challenging.
“There’s a very difficult square to get around here,” Kupchan said.
Trump’s extremely favorable treatment of Israel in the protracted conflict with the Palestinians could also prove upsetting as Biden navigates a different path in the Middle East. He has criticized the construction of Israeli settlements on occupied lands that the Palestinians want for a future state. And it is likely to reestablish contacts with the Palestinian leadership.
“Benjamin Netanyahu can expect an uncomfortable period of adjustment,” an Israeli columnist, Yossi Verter, wrote in the Haaretz newspaper on Friday.
At the same time, Biden also has a history of cordial relations with Netanyahu. Biden has said he will not reverse Trump’s transfer of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, a relocation that deeply angered Palestinians.
Repairing relations with Europe and navigating Brexit
While Trump often despised the European Union and strongly encouraged Britain’s departure from the bloc, Biden has expressed the opposite position. Like Obama, he supported the United States’ close relations with EU leaders and opposed Brexit. Biden’s rise could prove especially uncomfortable for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had embraced Trump and counted on striking a trade deal with the United States before his country’s divorce from the EU goes into full effect. Biden may not be in a rush to complete such a deal.
While many Europeans will be happy that Trump is leaving, the damage they say he has done to America’s reliability will not be easily erased.
“We had differences, but there was never a basic mistrust about having common views of the world,” Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway, told The New York Times last month. Over the past four years, he said, European leaders had learned that “they could no longer take for granted that they can trust the United States, even in basic things.”
Facing the nuclear threat from North Korea
Trump has described his friendship and three meetings with Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, as a success that prevented war with the nuclear-armed country. But critics say Trump’s approach not only failed to persuade Kim to give up his arsenal of nuclear weapons and missiles, it also gave Kim time to strengthen them. Last month, North Korea unveiled what appeared to be its largest ICBM in history.
“Under Trump’s supervision, North Korea’s nuclear weapons program has grown rapidly, its missile capabilities have been expanded, and Pyongyang can now target the United States with an ICBM,” said Evans JR Revere, a former NB official. State Department and expert on North Korea. “That is the legacy that Trump will soon pass on to Biden, and it will be a huge burden.”
Biden, who has been described by North Korea’s official news agency as a mad dog that “must be beaten to death with a stick,” has criticized Trump’s approach as appeasing a dictator. Biden has said he will push for denuclearization and “support South Korea” but has not specified how he would deal with North Korean belligerence.
A probably tougher approach from Russia and Putin
Biden has long claimed that he would take a much tougher line with Russia than Trump, who questioned the usefulness of NATO, doubted intelligence warnings about Russia’s interference in the US elections, admired President Vladimir Putin and said that improving America’s relations with the Kremlin would benefit everyone. Biden, who as vice president lobbied for sanctions against Russia for its annexation of the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine in 2014, the largest illegal land seizure in Europe since World War II, may seek to extend those sanctions and take other punitive measures.
While tensions with Russia are likely to rise, gun control is an area in which Biden and Putin share a desire to make progress. Biden is scheduled to be sworn in a few weeks before the scheduled expiration of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. He has said he wants to negotiate an extension of the treaty without preconditions.
Return to the Paris Agreement and international commitments
Biden has said that one of his first acts as president will be to rejoin the Paris climate accord to limit global warming, which the United States officially left under Trump on Wednesday. Biden has also said that he will reestablish America’s membership in the World Health Organization, which Trump repudiated amid the coronavirus pandemic, describing the WHO as a lackey of China.
More generally, Biden is expected to reverse many of the isolationist and anti-immigrant measures taken during the Trump administration, which Trump’s critics generally see as shameful stains on America’s position in the world. Biden has said he would dissolve Trump’s immigration restrictions, halt construction of his border wall with Mexico, expand resources for immigrants and provide a path to citizenship for people living in the United States illegally.
Nonetheless, many of Trump’s policies had considerable support in the United States, and it remains to be seen how quickly or effectively Biden can change them. The upheavals that rocked American democracy and divisive elections have also cast doubt on Biden’s ability to deliver on his promises.
“There is relief in the return to some kind of normalcy, but at the same time, history cannot be erased,” said Jean-Marie Guehenno, a French diplomat who is a member of the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution and a former undersecretary general. . for peacekeeping operations at the United Nations. “The kind of soft power that the United States has enjoyed in the past has largely evaporated.”
Rick Gladstone c.2020 The New York Times Company
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