President Biden’s foreign policy priorities

The flurry of appointments following the swearing-in of Joseph Robinette Biden Jr as the 46th President of the United States of America provides enough cues of the new administration’s foreign policy orientations. There will be less shrill rhetoric and more space for diplomacy, though a complete reversal on many issues is impossible due to the structural limitations of the domestic and international systems.

There is enough literature, including articles by President Biden and his team — as many were in think tanks, fellows in various academic institutions or working for various lobbying firms in the past four years — to parse through, to make an assessment of the US foreign policy. In terms of appointments, there is a broad premium on experience, domain expertise, familiarity with the President and the expectation that the appointees will hit the ground running.

Among the heads of 15 executive departments who are Cabinet members, the most important name for the outside world is that of Antony John Blinken, who had served as the Deputy Secretary of State from 2015 to 2017 under President Barack Obama and has now been given the charge of Secretary of State. Closely affiliated to the Democratic establishment through his biological father, who was the US ambassador to Hungary, Blinken grew up in New York and Paris, where his stepfather reportedly had deep connections with the French political elite. Born to Jewish parents with native fluency in French, he has repeatedly affirmed his strong belief in transatlantic relationships that the US crafted after World War II through NATO and other arrangements.

Nowhere is there greater relief than in France and Germany, the two countries whose political leaderships had frequent disagreements with President Trump on a host of issues. The combined power of the US-Europe alliance gives a crucial leverage to the two on tricky global issues, like the multi-faceted China challenge, Russia or engaging with various aspects of the Middle East’s peace and security issues.

At a practical level, both France and Germany have considerable weight because of different reasons. Germany, apart from being the economic power of Europe, is the fourth largest spender in the UN. It works in unison with the US in various parts of the world, particularly on Afghanistan. France is known for its diplomatic and military capabilities in its erstwhile colonies in Africa as well as some countries in the Middle East.

The selection of former US ambassador to the UN and journalist Samantha Power, who shares an Irish Catholic background with Biden, as the head of USAID — responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance — is a recognition of her passion and also demonstrates a strong push to renew the US commitment to international aid, particularly in Africa. Those who have followed her role as the US ambassador to the UN, including Security Council briefings on issues in Africa and the violence perpetuated against the Rohingya in Myanmar, know that her respect for human rights is a strong component of her diplomacy and there is little beating around the bush in her crispy delivery.

The appointment of the US ambassador to UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a known expert on Africa with more than three decades as a career

diplomat, makes her one of the most qualified leaders in that role. According to the New York-based International Peace Institute, in 2018, over 50 per cent of the Security Council meetings, 60 per cent of its outcome documents, and 70 per cent of its resolutions with Chapter VII mandates concerned African peace and security issues.

The Middle East and Asia are the two foreign policy theatres which will immediately test President Biden. Bringing back Iran to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) will involve a number of steps, including rebuilding the trust with the Iranian leadership that got severely hit after the decision taken by the Trump administration to withdraw from the nuclear deal which was followed by the 2020 assassination of Qasem Soleimani.

Though there is little scope for a complete revision in the overall Middle East strategy, a withdrawal of support for

the Saudi-led war in Yemen is expected as the situation has caused a

humanitarian crisis and embarrassment to the US. Facilitated by the Trump administration, the accords between Israel and Bahrain, and Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) carry some weight, but there is little expectation of a major breakthrough on thorny issues like Israel-Palestine. Internal détente within the relatively richer Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries has already taken place as Saudi Arabia decided to end the 2017 blockade of Qatar.

Coming to Asia, President Biden mentioned in his 2020 March-April article in Foreign Affairs that “China can’t afford to ignore more than half the global economy. That gives us substantial leverage to shape the rules of the road on everything from the environment to labour, trade, technology and transparency, so they continue to reflect democratic interests and values.”

The China policy seems to be predicated on acknowledgment that China’s economic and even population size cannot be ignored and decoupling from China is impossible. At the same time, the Indo-Pacific strategy, firmed up during the Trump era, enjoys a bipartisan consensus with the knowledge pool in Australia, Japan, India and the US already at work on how to continue to make this a functional, multi-dimensional deterrence mechanism against China’s overzealous militaristic designs.

Overriding all this will be an inter-play of domestic factors that will continue to impact President Biden’s foreign policy orientations. The progressive component of the Democratic Party’s base dominated by millennials and Generation Z will be keen that the human rights component of the US diplomacy is more visible. This will be counterpoised by the fact that 74 million Americans voted for former President Trump and are more insular on issues of foreign policy.

Several issues, like the much-needed immigration reforms that could quickly give citizenship to about 11 million people without legal status, majority of whom are from different countries in Central Asia, will be pursued with caution to avoid backlash from the Conservatives in the mid-term elections that are two years from now. The political priority will be to have Democratic Party’s control of Congress and Senate, given the present 50-50 balance in the Senate and the razor-thin, six-vote Democratic Party majority in the House, and this reality will directly impact the foreign policy impulses.