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Among the many crises unleashed by Donald Trump’s presidency, there is one that has been largely overlooked in the 2020 election. It also happens to be the one that Joe Biden has spent his entire career preparing for: the global confidence crisis. in American leadership.
The former vice president spent 34 years on the Senate foreign relations committee and another eight years in the Obama White House with an extensive report on foreign affairs, including the US withdrawal from Iraq. Today he stands as the presidential candidate with the most formidable foreign policy credentials of any candidate since George HW Bush in 1988.
But at a time when respect for American leadership has largely collapsed around the world, Biden’s worldview and the foreign policy he would likely follow is mostly an afterthought in an election dominated by antics and antics. outrages of the incumbent in the White House.
Biden’s team has no illusions about the scale of the diplomatic challenge. According to a recent survey, European confidence in Trump’s leadership is between 40 and 60 points lower than at the same time of the Obama presidency. Even in Russia, confidence in Trump is 16 points lower than that of Obama at the end of his first term.
How can Biden heal the damage? John Kerry, a former secretary of state and longtime confidant of Biden, believes the former vice president’s long relationships with his allies will help.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” he told The Guardian. “I know there are concerns among friends and allies that the United States could simply break treaties and rules if we just ping-pong from one election to another. But I think the presence of Joe Biden is reassuring. I would not speak for the vice president and his team, but it is clear to anyone who has known and worked with him and observed him for many years, how much he values our European alliances. He traveled for decades on the Senate foreign relations committee to learn, listen to, and meet dozens of young parliamentarians who grew up to become prime ministers and foreign ministers.
“I believe his unique credibility and years of relationships in Europe will help restore those alliances on the first day of Biden’s presidency. I know he is respected and he earned those relationships. In 2008, when Russian tanks entered a neighboring country called Georgia, it was Joe Biden who immediately picked up the phone and called an old friend, who happened to be the president of the country. So Joe got on a plane and flew all night and sat on top of a hill in Georgia with the president of our Democratic ally and made it clear that America supports its allies. People remember those moments. “
In a speech in New York in 2019, Biden explained a return to the Obama-era agreements that Trump was determined to destroy: especially the international agreement to stop Iran’s nuclear program and the Paris climate agreement. Biden has promised to host his own climate summit in its first 100 days, setting higher targets for the world’s most carbon-polluting countries.
“Just think of the positive signals an administration could send right away on climate change,” Kerry said. “Obviously, she has said that she will rejoin the Paris climate agreement immediately, but I think she will also send the signal in Glasgow, Scotland, at the next COP. [climate change conference] that the world must increase its ambition. Paris itself was a goal, not a guarantee. “
‘He saw his son deployed in a war zone’
Biden was never fully aligned with Obama’s foreign policy. He backed away from his boss in the White House, especially in deciding to send more American troops to Afghanistan. In the Senate, where Obama was a new member of the foreign relations committee, Biden was particularly aloof.
Over the years, Biden has been difficult to compartmentalize on the use of American force. He voted against the Gulf War in 1990 because it did not advance American national interests. But he voted for the invasion of Iraq 12 years later, after his preferred option of prioritizing diplomacy fell through. Between those two votes, Biden became a liberal hawk in the Senate, pushing hard for military action against Serbia for its wars of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo.
So where is Biden today?
“We have to remove the frame from the hawk-dove. It’s counterproductive, ”Kerry said. What was Joe Biden in the Balkans? He was the guy in the Senate who beat up his colleagues and a Democratic administration to act urgently to stop the genocide. What do you call that? The thread that runs through all of these areas is that Joe Biden struggled with facts and values and questioned people who agreed with him and those who disagreed with him and tested everyone’s assumptions.
“He’s a guy who saw his son deployed in a war zone. You know what it’s like to live with that worry. Therefore, he is impatient with countries that benefit from the sacrifice of our troops but allow politicians to squander those sacrifices. Tell me: is that being a hawk or a dove?
If Biden promises a return to the familiar lines of American foreign policy, he will do so in a world that has changed significantly in the last four years. The Trump presidency has emboldened authoritarian regimes and weakened democratic checks and balances around the world.
Biden says he will host a democracy summit in his first year in office to “strengthen democratic institutions” and “defend himself against authoritarianism.” The Democratic candidate has made it clear that he will take on Russia, where Trump is doing his best to do the opposite. But Biden has been less explicit in explaining that his approach would spell the end of business as usual with Saudi Arabia, as well as continued tension with China.
“I would never praise dictators. But guess that? She knows how to work with people to handle disagreements and still get things done in areas where it is absolutely necessary to cooperate, ”Kerry said. Think of China. The world’s two largest economies have to cooperate on climate change, period. He can do it at the same time that a mature president faces serious problems in that relationship. “
In practice, Biden’s version of American foreign policy can only succeed with higher foreign aid budgets to halt the slide of democracies and confront regimes that seek to accelerate that decline.
Biden’s work in the so-called northern triangle of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras involved $ 420 million in US aid to help stem a new wave of migration by strengthening good governance, the rule of law, and food security.
Those programs were scrapped by the Trump administration, which instead spent $ 11 billion on a partial wall along the Mexican border.
“They must fight the underlying issues that are driving mass migration and caravans, but their leadership must go further, faster,” Kerry said. “It is not easy to fix countries where up to half the population lives in poverty. But everyone can act faster to strengthen the rule of law, fight corruption and reform their judicial systems.
“Guess what? It will never be fixed if there’s no trust and respect at the highest levels. In this great deal, America has a role to play. The biggest house on the block has to help lead the neighborhood watch.” .
