Biden Trade Protectionism

There is a continuing interest in capturing the state of the current global political economy and the global economic policymaking of the major states – the US, China, India, Brazil, Europe, Japan, Korea, and others. Not surprisingly the debate is most active in the US. Experts and officials alike are intent in describing current Biden Administration policy. Most recently some experts have been labeling the global economic framework as ‘post- neoliberalism’, defining it, apparently, in contradistinction to the previous dominant policy framework – ‘neoliberalism’.  The dilemma of course is a definitional one as much as anything else  – the terms are well known, their meaning not so much. 

Recently, colleagues of mine have kicked off a discussion. One, Dan Drezner, from the Fletcher School and the Substack ‘Drezner’s World’ has waded into the policy mix, actually in an article from Reason titled, “The Post-Neoliberalism Moment”. As Dan early in the piece thought to frame first neoliberalism he suggested the following: 

The term neoliberal has been stigmatized far more successfully than it has been defined. For our purposes, it refers to a set of policy ideas that became strongly associated with the so-called Washington Consensus: a mix of deregulation, trade liberalization, and macroeconomic prudence that the United States encouraged countries across the globe to embrace. These policies contributed to the hyperglobalization that defined the post–Cold War era from the fall of the Berlin Wall to Brexit.

Dan made it clear, however, that this economic model no longer dominates: 

In the 16 years since the 2008 financial crisis, neoliberalism has taken a rhetorical beating; New Yorker essayist Louis Menand characterized it as “a political swear word.” Until recently, no coherent alternative set of ideas had been put forward in mainstream circles—but that has been changing. 

And what has been the replacement, well Dan suggests that its the politicians and officials that have been most active in leaving neoliberalism behind:

These ideas are being shaped by powerful officials. The primary difference between Biden and Trump in this area is that Trump’s opposition to globalization was based on gut instincts and implemented as such. The Biden administration has been more sophisticated. Policy principals ranging from U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan have been explicit in criticizing “oversimplified market efficiency” and proposing an alternative centered far more on resilience.

For elements of this policy transformation one need only look to recent Biden Administration policies including the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. As Dan concludes, the totality of these policy initiatives is: “all represent a pivot to industrial policy—a focus on domestic production.” 

In constructing this post-neoliberalism model, folks argue that there is a necessary trade-off between resilience and efficiency. As Dan suggests: “A key assumption behind post-neoliberalism is that policy makers can implement the right policies in the right way to nudge markets in the right direction.” 

Now another colleague of mine, Henry Farrell from Johns Hopkins, tries his hand at a definition in a recent Substack Post at his ‘Programmable Mutter’, titled, “If Post-Neoliberalism is in Trouble, We’re all in Trouble”. The Post partly responds to Dan, and further articulates Henry’s view of post-neoliberalism. As he describes it: 

A key assumption behind post-neoliberalism is that policy makers can implement the right policies in the right way to nudge markets in the right direction. … I see post-neoliberalism less as a coherent alternative body of thought, than as the claim, variously articulated by a very loosely associated cluster of intellectuals and policy makers, that markets should not be the default solution. … More generally, post-neoliberalism isn’t and shouldn’t be a simple reverse image of the system that it has to remake. It can’t be, not least because it has to build in part on what is already there.

The dilemma, as I see it, for understanding any of these  post-neoliberalism models, and also, though less intensely – neoliberalism, is pretty much all definitional. The base of the problem is not really understanding what ‘resilience’ and ‘efficiency’ really mean. And that in turn causes confusion over trying to then understand ‘globalization’.  And that unfortunately builds vagueness into our understanding of these economic models especially over what we are to understand to be – post-neoliberalism. 

But what isn’t so difficult to understand is the problem that has been created in this post-neoliberal period by current trade policy especially as seen in the United States. Layer it as much as you can but the Biden Administration policy is ‘protectionist’ and the Trump Administration, was, and will in all likelihood be, even more protectionist if Trump is returned to office in late 2024. As Inu Manak has written in a recent piece for the Hinrich Foundation in Australia – a foundation focused on global trade: 

Trade has become toxic, not just on the campaign trail, but in the way that it is discussed by both Democrats and Republicans. “Traditional” US trade policy, which began to form its nearly century-old roots under the leadership of President Franklin Roosevelt and his Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, has been described by US Trade Representative Katherine Tai as “trickle-down economics,” where “maximum tariff liberalization…contributed to the hollowing out of our industrial heartland. … The current US approach to trade, if it can be called an approach at all, risks weakening US influence abroad and economically disadvantaging Americans at home. It rests on the false belief that retrenchment of “traditional” US trade policy—by putting America First or catering to a select group of US workers and branding such efforts as “worker-centric trade policy”—will somehow restore the United States to a position of hegemonic dominance with no peer competitor. 

The Biden Administration’s allergy to new trade policy initiatives can be seen in its Indo-Pacific economic strategy – the IPEF – the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity. This framework is intended to advance resilience, sustainability, inclusiveness, economic growth, fairness, and competitiveness for the fourteen countries negotiating the IPEF. The countries included are: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Fiji India, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam with the United States. The IPEF partners represent 40 percent of global GDP and 28 percent of global goods and services trade. Negotiations have proceeded well for three of the four pillars including supply chains, clean economy, and fair economy pillars but the Biden Administration has decided not to proceed in negotiating for fair and resilient trade. As William Reinsch at CSIS described the situation: 

The commentariat is busy these days debating the future of the Biden administration’s trade policy in the wake of its effective abandonment of the trade pillar in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) negotiations. (The administration says the talks will continue, and I imagine they will, but I don’t see a conclusion, at least before the election.) The policy is clearly a failure at this point, …

As colleague Ryan Haas of the Brookings Institution, and a former US official – from 2013 to 2017, Hass served as the director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia at the National Security Council (NSC) staff – underscored in his examination of trade policy in the Indo-Pacific: 

These constraints will be most visible on trade. The absence of a credible trade and economic agenda for Asia has been the Biden administration’s greatest weakness. Political and national security imperatives will continue to drive the United States’ approach to trade. Do not expect any outbreak of creativity or boldness on trade by the Biden administration in 2024.

The Biden Administration failed to roll back the tariffs imposed by the Trump trade folk. It is a major failure of US trade policy and an expression of the Biden SAdministration’s trade protectionism. It bodes ill for growing the global economy and achieving productivity gains for the United States and others.

Image Credit: E-International Relations

This Post originally appeared at my Substack Post Alan’s Newsletter – https://open.substack.com/pub/globalsummitryproject/p/biden-trade-protectionism?r=bj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcome=true

 

The Troubling Aggressiveness of the House Select Committee on China

This is an effort to unpack the US-China relationship and its impact on the current global order following the Xi-Biden Summit at the margins of the APEC Summit last month in San Francisco. It is difficult to assess the consequences of the very real US-China competition and the potential for not just competition but confrontation and conflict. As Fareed Zakaria describes it in an opinion piece in the Washington Post:

China is the largest of the challenges and the one that, in the long run, will shape the international order — determining whether the open international system collapses into a second Cold War with arms races in nuclear weapons, space and artificial intelligence.

But that nuanced assessment is not found everywhere. We’ve made passing reference in the past in this Substack posts to the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition  Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (Select Committee).  With the most recent Select Committee Report the grim clarity of the Select Committee’s view is on full display.

This Committee, it seems to me, is the cutting edge of the reaction against decades-long ‘engagement’ strategy in US-China foreign policy. The ‘death of engagement’ came with the Trump years but has continued with some in the Biden Administration. From a position that argued that economic interdependence between the United States and China would encourage  peace and stability between the two and in the more extreme view that such engagement would even be a force for political  liberalization in China, that view is ‘dead and buried’. While the latter view of political liberalization was clearly ‘over the top’, the notion of economic interdependence promoting economic growth and prosperity and encouraging continuing focus on societal wellbeing was not then and is not now. But not for the Select Committee.

The Select Committee was created on January 10, 2023 at the beginning of the 118th Congress to, according to the recent Select Committee Report, to: “investigate and submit policy recommendations on the status of the Chinese Communist Party’s economic, technological, and security progress and its competition with the United States.” At that time, it was then Speaker Kevin McCarthy – yes the same guy who was fired from Speaker and has now left Congress –  who appointed Mike Gallagher its Chair.  Gallagher was first elected to the US House of Represenattives in 2016 and is a Marine veteran who was deployed twice to Iraq as a commander of intelligence teams, and was on now-retired Army Gen. David Petraeus’s Central Command Assessment Team.

Gallagher has been vocal about what he sees as the Biden Administration’s failure to understand the threat posed by China. In an early set of remarks as Chair Gallagher made clear what he believed to be the necessary course correction in US policy toward China. In an interview in the spring Gallagher laid out his vision:

I think there should be three pillars to our grand strategy vis-a-vis China. One is traditional military competition, hard power, and there we need multiyear appropriations for critical munition systems that need to be prepositioned in the Indo-Pacific. … The second line of effort involves ideological competition. Human rights go in this bucket. One of the things we can do in this area is make sure that the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is fully implemented and that companies aren’t exploiting any loopholes. … The third line of effort is the most complex. It’s what I call economic statecraft, or what others refer to as “selective economic decoupling.

From early on, indeed from his opening remarks at the Select Committee’s first hearing in February, Gallagher has been explicit that he views the competition and rivalry with China as an “existential struggle”:

We may call this a “strategic competition,” but this is not a polite tennis match. This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century — and the most fundamental freedoms are at stake.

The Select Committee is made up of the following members:

Chair: Mike Gallagher WI-08

Republican Members

Robert J. Wittman VA-01

Blaine Luetkemeyer MO-03

Andy Barr KY-06

Dan Newhouse WA-04

John R. Moolenaar MI-02

Darin LaHood IL-16

Neal P. Dunn FL-02

Jim Banks IN-03

Dusty Johnson SD-

Michelle Steel CA-45

Ashley Hinson IA-02

Carlos A. Gimenez FL-28

Ranking Member: Raja Krishnamoorthi IL-08

Democratic Members

Kathy Castor FL-14

André Carson IN-07

Seth Moulton MA-06

Ro Khanna CA-17

Andy Kim NJ-03

Mikie Sherrill NJ-11

Haley M. Stevens MI-11

Jake Auchincloss MA-04

Ritchie Torres NY-15

Shontel M. Brown OH-11

It is notable that all members of the Committee, Republican and Democrat, with the  exception of Representative Auchincloss, a Democrat, signed this most recent recent Report by the Select Committee. It underscores the growing negative  shift in Congress over the relationship with China. As pointed out recently in the NYTimes:

… that ties to China could be weaponized in the event of a conflict. It could be catastrophic for the U.S. economy or the military, for example, if the Chinese government cut off its shipments to the United States of pharmaceuticals, minerals or components for weapons systems.

Beijing’s subsidization of Chinese firms and incidents of intellectual property theft have also become an increasing source of friction. In some cases, China has allowed foreign firms to operate in the country only if they form partnerships that transfer valuable technology to local companies.

The report said that the United States had never before faced a geopolitical adversary with which it was so economically interconnected, and that the full extent of the risk of relying on a strategic competitor remained unknown. The country lacks a contingency plan in the case of further conflict, it said.

And, it reflects what is today described as ‘bipartisanship’ in US-China relations.

The current Report, titled ‘Reset, Prevent, Build: A strategy to win America’s economic competition with the Chinese Communist Party’ was intended to address, what the Report describes as an “equally critical concern: America’s economic and technological competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC)” – one of three pillars identified by the Select Committee. The central narrative of US-China relations, according to the Select Committee was, and is:

For a generation, the United States made a bipartisan bet that robust engagement with the PRC would lead the PRC to open its economy and financial markets, which would in turn lead to reforms in the political system, greater freedom for the Chinese people, and peace and stability in the region. That bet has failed. The PRC, led by the CCP, has abandoned the path of economic and political reform, doubled down on repressive activities at home, and engaged in destabilizing activities in the region. In the decades since its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the PRC has consistently broken its promises, which ranged from commitments to allow wholly foreign-owned internal combustion engine vehicle manufacturing licenses in the PRC to pledges to reduce market-distorting agricultural subsidies. It committed to these reforms dozens of times and reneged each time.

At the same time, the CCP has pursued a multidecade campaign of economic aggression, fulfilling General Secretary Xi Jinping’s directive to be the “gravediggers of capitalism.” It has employed extensive mercantilist and coercive policies to hollow out the American economy and displace American workers and has wielded extensive subsidies at unprecedented levels and market access restrictions to strengthen indigenous industries and decrease the PRC’s reliance on foreign partners. At the same time, it has sought access to U.S. technology, expertise, and capital. It has often done so illegally, stealing as much as $600 billion per year of intellectual property (IP) and technology—in what the former director of the National Security Agency called “the greatest transfer of wealth” in history.

This Select Committee Report presents findings from the Committee hearings and it outlines recommendations for a strategy for the economic and technological dimensions of the competition with China. Once again there are three pillars to the described strategy with the intent to “…reset the terms of economic and technological competition and shape a strategic environment that favors the national and economic security of the United States and its allies while upholding our values.” The pillars include:

  • First, the United States must reset the terms of our economic relationship with the PRC and recognize the serious risks of economically relying on a strategic competitor;
  • Second, the United States must immediately stem the flow of U.S. technology and capital that is fueling the PRC’s military modernization and human rights abuses.
  • Third, the United States must invest in technological leadership and build collective economic resilience in concert with its allies.”

Identifying just these three pillars fails to do justice to the rather ‘breathtaking’ list of recommendations – some 150 recommendations – that covers a multitude of issues from AI to rare earth production and manufacturing. As described in the Washington Post:

The report, released Tuesday by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, contains a broad legislative blueprint that — if followed — could ratchet up duties on Chinese goods, significantly curtail certain U.S. investments in China and further restrict or ban U.S. market access for companies including TikTok, as well as drone makers, chip manufacturers and telecommunications groups.”

Though the Select Committee Report describes something less than full throttled decoupling it is hard not to see the rising barriers to US-China trade and investment and the rising protectionism and the costs for the United States and its allies and partners from such a severe strategy as outlined in the Report.

Reading the Select Committee Report one could be forgiven if one presumed that the US-China competition was just a ‘hair’s breadth’ from a dramatic confrontation.

It leaves one unnerved and more than slightly depressed.

This was posted earlier at my Substack Post, Alan’s Newsletter – https://substack.com/@globalsummitryproject

Image Credit: Asia Freedom Institute

Troubles with Global Summitry

We are definitely in the midst of Global Summitry gatherings. With the BRICS Summit just recently ended, we are deep into the G20 weekend gathering in New Delhi. So much commentary has accompanied these summitry gatherings. But I caution casual observers and readers: there are way too many assessments and conclusions drawn by all those folks that unfortunately barely pay attention to Global Summitry through much of the year. You can see this in the various ‘hair on fire’ commentaries in the assessments and consequences of the actions of key players in both the BRICS and now especially with the G20. Too many declarations of the G20 demise; firm conclusions that China and Russia would block any consensus statement that sought to condemn Russia’s aggression against Ukraine; the fragmentation of global summitry with the rise of the BRICS plus and the demise of the G20 with leaders from Russia and China choosing to absent themselves from summit.

Now don’t get me wrong, the geopolitical pressures, particularly rising US-China competition and opposition and condemnation of Russia for its unprovoked aggression on Ukraine are impactful. The geopolitics has seemingly hindered the G20 in advancing global governance policies. Yet the global governance agenda and goals remain. Look at the G20 agenda as described by Damien Cave in the NYT:

The agenda in New Delhi includes climate change, economic development and debt burdens in low-income countries, as well as inflation spurred by Russia’s war in Ukraine. If members can reach consensus on any or all of these subjects, they will produce an official joint declaration at the end.

In the ‘hair on  fire’ camp here is a piece by Alec Russell in the FT

The countdown to the talks was dominated by news that Xi was not going to attend. This was widely seen as a major blow to the G20, and an acceleration of the shift to a world in which a China-led bloc is facing off against a US-led one, with many countries hovering in the middle.

But the collective global governance effort has not been stymied. Indian efforts to reach consensus have proven successful. The G20, thanks to India, has released the Declaration a day early. Our good fortune. As described by the Indian Sherpa the Declaration was:

… a complete statement with 100% unanimity” that highlights India’s “great ability to bring all developing countries, all the emerging markets, China, Russia, everybody together at the same table and bring consensus.

He went on:

Urging adherence to the United Nations Charter, the New Delhi statement says: “All states must refrain from the threat or use of force to seek territorial acquisition against the territorial integrity and sovereignty or political independence of any state. The use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible.

So there we are, a consensus statement has been issued. As often is the case, the document was not short, some 29 pages of declaration plus pages of annex.  Nevertheless it ended on a ‘high note’:

81. We reiterate our commitment to the G20 as the premier forum for global economic cooperation and its continued operation in the spirit of multilateralism, on the basis of consensus, with all members participating on an equal footing in all its events including Summits. We look forward to meeting again in Brazil in 2024 and in South Africa in 2025, as well as in the United States in 2026 at the beginning of the next cycle. We welcome Saudi Arabia’s ambition to advance its turn for hosting the G20 Presidency in the next cycle. We also look forward to the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2024 as a symbol of peace, dialogue amongst nations and inclusivity, with participation of all.

But a reading of the Declaration raises again the question: what success has in fact been achieved? As Caves points out:

But how much progress has the G20 made toward its ambitions? And what can be expected from this year’s meeting in India on Saturday and Sunday? … Then what? Often, not much, when it comes to real-world results. Most of the grouping’s joint statements since it formed in 1999 have been dominated by resolutions as solid as gas fumes, with no clear consequences when nations underperform.

‘Solid as gas fumes’. Well, in many respects the Declaration is no more than a statement of collective progress – what have we collectively identified as worthy of committing to and implementing. And, I did note, in an earlier Substack Post, Not Simply the Pace of Summitry that Leaders and their official are working toward commitment but:

So, let me at least raise in this Post, what I believe is the ‘continuum of action and commitment’ available to leaders in these various Leaders’ Summits. This continuum identifies the extent to which global governance policies have been secured. We move from the aspirational, often set out in the leaders’ declarations or communiques all the way to implementation by a country. What is evident from the continuum is that these folks are governmental leaders. And, as a result no matter what the communique announces, individual leaders’ may, or may not, actually implement a collective wish set out in a declaration.  This is well beyond just the aspirational.

The continuum, as I see it, is:  Consultation/ Cooperation/ Coordination/ Collaboration – the 4Cs of global governance progress, as I see it. Distinguishing between these concepts can be quite difficult. And of course, beyond this is, collectively achieving the actions, proposals and policies that are set out in the communiques, or announced at the Leaders’ gatherings.

And that is paydirt. Collectively achieving the actions set out in all these Summit Declarations – implementing policy in other words – is global governance success. Such implementation lies generally at the national political level, although there are instances where international organizations do in fact implement.

Bottom line: it requires a lot more than a statement in a Leaders’ Declaration to achieve global governance progress. But a number of us are watching including my colleagues at the CWD process.

This Post was originally uploaded to my Substack – Alan’s Newsletter. Feel free to subscribe.

Image Credit: Al Jazeera

 

 

‘The Decline of US Hegemony and its Consequences for the Global Order’ – A Roundtable at the International Studies Association

ISA 2023: Exhibit, Advertise, and SponsorSo, the International Studies Association (ISA) just concluded in Montreal  after a visibly energetic in-person gathering following several years of virtual meetings only.

I was fortunate enough to chair the roundtable. All sorts of good folk attended including panelists: Arthur Stein, UCLA, Lou Pauly, University of Toronto, Yves Tiberghien, University of British Columbia, and Kyle Lascurettes, Lewis and Clark College. Unfortunately, our colleagues, Janice Stein could not join but I was fortunate enough to receive her speaking note and I have tried to reflect some of her thinking with the notes from other colleagues.

What didn’t surprise me, of course, during the session was the recognition from all that we have a fraught period of transition in the international system. There is the obvious Russian aggression against Ukraine and the challenge by Russia to some of the basic tenets of the current order – most notably territorial integrity and national sovereignty. There is also the obvious growing leading power tensions between the US and China and the growing threat of confrontation and conflict especially over Taiwan that currently stock the relationship. There was the obvious attention to US determination to sustain dominance even in the face of a dramatic power transition with the emergence of China and more broadly the Global South – India and other Indo-Pacific nations including Indonesia, etc. and other Southeast Asian states and then, of course, the return of Lula to Brazil.

But raw geopolitics did not dominate the discourse of the Roundtable. Equally significant in our discussions was the acknowledgement of the continuance of the intergovernmental institutions and collective actions of states to advance global order and achieve collective action within the framework of the current and evolving Order. While some decried the faltering of the global institutions, nevertheless, there was general acceptance that regional and other informal order-based institutions continued advance policies in various ways. AS one of my colleagues Kyle Lascurettes noted: “There is a truly global rules-based order that stands a good chance of outliving American hegemonic decline. But the so called “liberal” or “Western” rules-based order is and will be in trouble.” Indeed, the liberal order or the Liberal International Order (LIO) disappeared, I’d argue with the Global Financial Crisis” in 2008 but the Global Order does indeed remain. And, as Yves Tiberghien focusing on the dramatic power transition suggested: “today is a time of disruption and transition – a special phase. Major shocks, change, crises, innovation will take place over the next 1-2 decades … Also shift in awareness. Western dominated order was an anomaly of last 200 years, with a rise phase for 300 years before that. Return of multiple voices all over the world. Return to a diverse, polymorphic, poly polarity.” As Jagannath Panda recently wrote in an EAF blog on March 20, 2023:  “Obituaries of the US-led liberal international order may be exaggerated, but the shift towards multipolarity is in motion.”

And what then do we have as the Global Order, and how will it advance. Arthur Stein recalled the fragile nature of the Order, which he described for me in his opening chapter of my 2008 edited volume – Can the World be Governed? The global order, he wrote then, and repeated at our Roundtable was:  ‘a weakly confederal world’. As he said at the time (2008, 52) : ”In fact, one could argue not only that multilateralism is an existential reality but that weak confederalism is the nature of modern reality.”

So the LIO has faded,  and what remains is the global RBIO (rules-based international order). Weaker and less collaborative – indeed as Arthur pointed out, the low hanging fruit of cooperation has passed and it is and will be increasingly difficult to reach collaborative solutions . But as Yves points out that there is continuing support for aspects of the Order including with China where Yves notes the significant China support for COP15 the Conference on  Biodiversity where the multilateral conference came together to agree on a new set of goals to guide global action through 2030 and to halt and reverse nature loss and the recently concluded agreement on the text for the critical High Seas Treaty. The challenge for the leading powers is to maintain a forward collaborative thrust, and as Lou Pauly warned, it is critical for the US to accept: “The challenge is to overcome perennial tendencies toward either insularity or spasmodic over-extension, toward temporizing on necessary decisions, toward shifting the costs of adjustment to the relatively poor internally, and toward exporting the rest of those costs to other countries.” It will not be easy; and Arthur reminded us that American domestic politics has been a problem since 1919 and continues today with the failure to approve through the US Senate, international agreements and the often strained effort to use executive power.

As Janice Stein alludes to in her notes: “Plurilateral and minilateral institutions – from AUKUS to IPEF to Trade and Technology Councils will be the principal sites of innovation. I have called this process “taking it offsite.” New institutions are being stood up, led by the willing, who set rules and invite others to join if they wish. One could argue that we are entering a period of start-up innovation in the creation of new, smaller, more flexible, and more focused institutions.

Although Janice may be a touch pessimistic over multilateral collaborative action, the Global Order has its worked cut out for it to avoid great power conflict and achieve critical global governance policies in climate, global finance, global health and much more.

 

Image Credit: ISA

Competing and Collaborating – Dealing with Today’s Geopolitics and Global Governance

It is an eventful several weeks. Most dramatically the 20th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party has launched – indeed it is approaching its conclusion. There is little doubt that Xi Jinping will claim a third term ending the effort by earlier leaders to limit leadership to two terms. His statements will likely be our best guide to Chinese foreign policy for the immediate future. But more on that in a future blog post.

And then there’s the Biden Administration’s release of the National Security Strategy (NSS). The NSS explains the security priorities of the administration to both Congress and the American public and is a legislatively mandated document.This strategic document was about to be released in February of this year but was delayed as the Russia-Ukraine war loomed. With its release just a few days ago, we get some big picture framing for Biden Administration security and foreign policy. Indeed, the advance press call held by Jake Sullivan, the United States National Security Advisor to President Joe Biden, on the day of the document’s release provides an interesting summary and insight of current US policy. Jake sets it out:

The fundamental premise of the strategy is that we have entered a decisive decade with respect to two fundamental strategic challenges. The first is the competition between the major powers to shape the future of the international order. And the second is that while this competition is underway, we need to deal with a set of transnational challenges that are affecting people everywhere, including here in the United States — from climate change to food insecurity, to communicable diseases, to terrorism, to the energy transition, to inflation.

 

And this strategy makes clear that these shared challenges are not marginal issues, they are not secondary to geopolitics, but they operate on a plane alongside the competition — the geopolitical competition with major powers.

 

Now, of course, there are tensions between trying to rally cooperation to solve these shared challenges and trying to position ourselves effectively to prevail in strategic competition. But there are also ways in which these are reinforcing. And we believe fundamentally that the core elements of what the United States must do in the years ahead is — are the same for both sets of challenges.

 

Specifically, we need to invest in the underlying sources and tools of American power and influence, especially our strength here at home, both for the purpose of effective competition and for the purpose of being set up to rally the world to solve shared challenges.

 

Second, we need to build the strongest possible coalition of nations to enhance our collective influence, both to shape the global strategic environment and to address these transnational threats that require cooperation to succeed. And finally, we need to set the rules of the road for the 21st century in critical areas — from emerging technologies in cyberspace, to trade, economics, investment, and more — both so that the international order continues to reflect our values and our interests and so that the international order is better designed to be able to take on the challenges ahead.

 

So this decisive decade is critical both for defining the terms of competition, particularly with the PRC, and for getting ahead of massive challenges that if we lose the time in this decade, we will not be able to keep pace with most notably the climate crisis, but other challenges as well.

 

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Constructing an Inclusive Order: Avoiding Fragmentation and Worse – Disorder

Two summits completed and another off in the distance, but impacted by these just completed summits. A crowded summit schedule has begun.

The statements were voiced and the Leaders’ Communique issued by the G7 at Schloss Elmau to be followed by more speeches and statements and the issuing of the “Strategic Concept”  a once ever ten year statement by NATO at Madrid.

What have we learned from this G7 and the NATO gatherings? Let me first focus on the G7 Summit. Well, first it is relevant that we take into account the position expressed by one of the longstanding observers of the summit process, Sheffield’s Hugo Dobson. As he concluded, along with his colleague Greg Stiles in Global Policy , reflecting their review of the German G7 and in particular the Leaders’ Communique:

In summary, and despite what we have tried to do here, beware reading too much either positively or negatively into a single summit document. Rather, this communiqué should be placed in the context of a network of summits – most immediately the NATO Summit in Madrid later this week and looking further ahead to the Indonesian-hosted G20 Summit later this year.

And it is a summary and caution well worth heeding. Nevertheless, the tone is worth further comment. The G7 took the time and the Communique to underscore their self characterization as a democratic forum. In their Communique opening the G7 declared:

 As open democracies adhering to the rule of law, we are driven by shared values and bound by our commitment to the rules-based multilateral order and to universal human rights. As outlined in our Statement on support for Ukraine, standing in unity to support the government and people of Ukraine in their fight for a peaceful, prosperous and democratic future, we will continue to impose severe and immediate economic costs on President Putin’s regime for its unjustifiable war of aggression against Ukraine, while stepping up our efforts to counter its adverse and harmful regional and global impacts, including with a view to helping secure global energy and food security as well as stabilising the economic recovery. 

 

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The Strategic Aspects of Biden Trade Engagement in the Asia Pacific

The US foreign policy lexicon has changed. It used to be Asia-Pacific. Now for the Biden Administration it is all about Indo-Pacific. Initially I started this post in the following way: “Please, enough of the Indo-Pacific. Listen to the Biden Administration and it seems that that is all there seems to be in Asia.” Well, that is where the Biden Administration seems to be. Do I think US strategic actions really ‘sucks in India’, one of the world’s most elusive allies, probably not. But I’ll leave the Biden officials to figure that out. So, they will continue to trumpet, ‘Indo-Pacific’. Many of us will continue to use, ‘Asia-Pacific’.

More importantly, however, let’s turn our attention to the substance of Biden strategic policy in this key, if not the key, region in the international system. Our Brookings colleague, Ryan Hass at EAF briefly described Biden foreign policy efforts in the region over the last year – hard to believe that it is only a year and a bit:

America is back’, Joe Biden proclaimed in his first address as president to a global audience. Over the year that followed, the Biden administration delivered a mixed bag in its approach to the Indo-Pacific — several bold strategic strokes, greater than expected continuity with the Trump administration on China policy and timidity on trade policy.

 

A larger challenge for the Biden administration will be its absence of an economic agenda. They have announced plans to release an Indo-Pacific economic framework in 2022. Given that the framework reportedly will be non-binding and will not include trade or investment liberalisation, it may not get a lot of uptake, particularly when the region’s focus is on realising benefits from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and expanding the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.

This is the heart of the dilemma in the Biden approach to the Indo-Pacific. Given the growing influence of China, does the Biden policy focus on the geostrategic, or on the regional and global economic. Opinion is clearly divided. Maybe the most surprising is Alan Beattie, the Financial Times trade specialist and opinion columnist. I would have believed, especially given some of his recent trade reviews that he would have strongly urged a focus on the economic but I was wrong. Here he is on February 2nd in an  FT article, titled: “The US doesn’t need CPTPP to assert itself in the Asia-Pacific”:

As for geopolitical clout, recent experience suggests actual firepower is more important than the economic kind.

Trade deals don’t automatically mean political alignment or influence.

 

None of the US’s strategic capabilities — military might, security deals like the Australia-UK-US agreement, cyber security expertise, intelligence-sharing, imposing harsh financial sanctions via the dollar payments system— require CPTPP membership. And all are surely more important in projecting American influence.

 

It’s true that US economic diplomacy over the past decade has been comically weak and inconsistent. It has been undermined by the excessive fear of trade deals among the American public, encouraged by lobbies like organised labour and the steel industry. But its ineptitude over the CPTPP should not lead to a counsel of despair. Trade deals are important, but they are neither necessary nor sufficient for American foreign policy to assert itself in the Asia-Pacific.

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Summit for Democracy – Who and Where is the Threat?

 

So, the Summit for Democracy has come and gone. Much commentary preceded, accompanied, and then followed this December 9th and 10th gathering. Truth be told there is a continuing stream of observations still. Various countries openly applauded the Summit though unsurprisingly those uninvited pushed back starkly including in the case of China holding a conference of many of the uninvited.

The lingering question for the global order and its key participants remain: what does this Summit announced early on by then presidential candidate Joesph Biden tell us about current US foreign policy; what is Biden’s strategic policy framework particularly in relationship to China and Russia – the two most evident rivals and authoritarian states; and what is the conclusion drawn by close US allies and partners? What has been gained; what has been hindered and harmed?

The lack of clarity over the purpose of this Summit is fairly evident. This Administration has left seemingly a variety of presumed goals ‘on the table’. It appears in fact as though  the Administration identified at least three goals: an anti-corruption initiative; a protection of human right and more broadly a protection of democracy; and an autocracy versus democracy foreign policy approach, presumably part of a US democracy promotion goal.

On the democracy protection front the Administration offered a number of policy initiatives, including funding: As President Biden identified these efforts in his opening remarks:

Working with our Congress, we’re planning to commit as much as $224 million[$424 million] in the next year to shore up transparent and accountable governance, including supporting media freedom, fighting international corruption, standing with democratic reformers, promoting technology that advances democracy, and defining and defending what a fair election is. 

This initiative was part of the US effort to encourage all participants to set goals and report back in a follow up on these commitments. As the President expressed it:

… and to make concrete commitments of how — how to strengthen our own democracies and push back on authoritarianism, fight corruption, promote and protect human rights of people everywhere. To act. To act. This summit is a kick-off of a year in action for all of our countries to follow through on our commitments and to report back next year on the progress we’ve made. 

Still the clarity surrounding the Summit was never very evident to most.  Indeed there appears to be no agreement on the nature of the declared initiatives . Observers have taken the above to be democratic promotion and not protection.  This multiplicity of goals and their accompanying confusion have enabled experts, officials and commentators to choose their own goal from the menu of options offered by the Administration. Ben Judah at the New Atlanticist described one view of the Summit: Continue reading

China-West Relations: Reading the Dynamics and Getting the Mix Right

China-US relations are at a critical juncture in fashioning global order relations in the 2020s.  As Joe Biden approaches inauguration day, there is increasing speculation on what approach he will take toward China.  Theories abound.  There are those in foreign policy circles who are seen as “restorationists” (see Thomas Wright at TheAtlantic for these terms) who tend to have a greater focus on the cooperation component of the relationship.  There are “reformists” who have come to the conclusion that competition and rivalry must define the path for US-China relations.  There are those who see China as the culprit in job loss, technology theft, trade imbalances, the pandemic, climate change and other hits on American pre-eminence.  And there are many with cultural, societal and business ties to China who hope for a period of predictability, and hopefully opportunity.

Clear-eyed self-interest and deep understanding of the new political dynamics need to guide Biden foreign policy. For Biden and his team, it is not just a question how to reframe US international relations after Trump, but how to shape them in response to changed circumstances, domestic constraints, and new defining elements in the global landscape. 

For starters, Asia is more pressing than Europe, the Indo-Pacific region more demanding than the trans-Atlantic, China is more important than Russia, social and environmental issues are more compelling than trade and financial policies, and domestic pressures everywhere mean that international policies are now constrained by and tethered to internal conditions affecting ordinary people.  Global inter-connectivity may be vividly evident, but domestic politics are dominant in defining strategic thrusts.

Biden and his team seem to “get” most of these circumstances, constraints and defining elements.  But, it is not clear that the incoming Administration has yet stared down the underlying political dynamics that will define geopolitical relations among leading powers, especially how to approach China in ways that makes sense to the other significant global players, that will be effective with China and with domestic political constraints. For this, the various “schools of thought” contending with each other to define the overall narrative for US relations with China, each by themselves are less helpful than combining them to address the complexity and importance of this most crucial relationship.

The starting point has to be a clear understanding that China does indeed have strategic interests in meeting US dominance in the Pacific. Additionally, China does use the state and public resources to advance its economic dynamism, does use techniques for internal control which violate international norms on human rights, and does have the scale, scope and dynamism to be a challenger to US predominance, a rival in the Pacific and a competitor in the global economy.  There is no doubt that this is the reality of China today.  The hardening of Xi Jinping’s authoritarian rule in the last four years is real and worrisome. 

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Washington’s Unfounded Fear of Biden Collaboration with China

 

The Washington Beltway remains in a ‘tizzy’ over the direction of Biden foreign policy. Will Biden commit to the bipartisan ‘full-throated’ competition with China. Here, Ryan Hass of Brookings describes that continuing nervousness on the part of the foreign policy establishment over a possible Biden strategy : 

 

There are a variety of causes for these concerns. Some security-focused experts worry that the Biden administration will prioritize cooperation with China on climate issues above other strategic concerns. Others fear that by signaling interest in cooperation, the United States will show lack of resolve for long-term great power competition with China. Proponents of viewing the U.S.-China relationship as an entrenched ideological struggle worry that cooperation could dilute the focus on what they describe as each side’s irreconcilable ambitions. Some have shared concerns that Beijing will withhold cooperation on climate issues unless it receives American concessions in other areas of the relationship, for example, on Hong Kong or Xinjiang. Others worry that the Chinese are wily negotiators who will hoodwink their earnest American counterparts if given the opportunity. Still others argue that engaging the Chinese as peers on climate issues provides undeserved validation of China on the world stage and legitimation of the Chinese Communist Party at home.

Besides Ryan Haas at Brookings, concern about Biden’s China policy has also been raised by his colleague,  Thomas Wright. In TheAtlantic. Tom has suggested in a recent article that Biden’s choice of John Kerry as special presidential envoy on climate change may well create problems for the new Administration on the critical China file.  

Competition with China will likely be the most difficult foreign-policy issue that President-elect Joe Biden will face. What he decides to lead with and the precise mix of areas in which he engages and confronts Beijing are critically important. This is why Biden’s choice of John Kerry as a special presidential envoy on climate change might create a problem for the incoming president on China policy.

In discussions with Biden colleagues, Wright comments that they expressed concern over Kerry diplomacy. Kerry’s single-minded focus on climate change could, according to these colleagues, bring climate policy progress but sacrifice other security-related US-China matters. As Tom described his conversations with these Biden folk:

A former Obama administration official told me, “China’s diplomacy is a constant search for leverage, and Kerry will deliver a load of it in a wheelbarrow right to their front door every day.

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