Category Archives: US Leadership

“What Can We Expect?”: A Second Look At America’s Political Transition

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Well, hello, we’re back! I do hope the holidays proved to be a warm time and filled with family and friends. Now, I was ‘chomping at the bit’ to return to Alan’s Newsletter before the end of the Biden administration and the return of Donald J Trump. We are looking at the transition of administrations – focusing on foreign policy.

So where we left Alan’s Newsletter at this first Post of ‘What Can We Expect’ – the last Post of the year 2024, was me actually looking at the end of the Biden administration – and, as I said: “… trying to focus on the end of the Biden administration: what folks conclude about the Biden initiatives and where that then leads, possibly,  for the upcoming Trump administration”, especially targeting US-China policy. 

In this earlier Post I looked primarily at trade and technology policies – and there seemed to be much to be desired – though it was interesting to get Biden’s last words on his own assessment of his administration’s efforts. But now I want to extend the analysis by turning to national security. Interestingly, and as I noted in the earlier Post I was keen to review, none other than Senator McConnell, a dominant Republican figure over several decades in Congress and the Republican majority leader from 2015 to 2021, making him the longest-serving Senate party leader in U.S. history. And for the moment he remains in the Senate and an influence on some at least. But to get there – to McConnell that is,  I thought it worthwhile to first look at Fareed Zakaria’s early 2024 FA article, “The Self-Doubting Superpower: America Shouldn’t Give Up on the World It Made” Fareed has a large public role in assessing US international politics as the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS and he also writes a weekly column for The Washington Post. Fareed starts out acknowledging the Biden administration’s turn – and not for the better – in international economic policy making: 

“And yet, much of his governing strategy has been predicated on the notion that the country has been following the wrong course, even under Democratic presidents, even during the Obama-Biden administration. In an April 2023 speech, Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, criticized “much of the international economic policy of the last few decades,” blaming globalization and liberalization for hollowing out the country’s industrial base, exporting American jobs, and weakening some core industries.”

Now, I remain rather sceptical of the consequences these folks assign to trade policy but it continues to be a ‘warm blanket’ for many analysts and politicians. Fareed acknowledges it, it but then situates the US in the global order as still a dominant presence: 

“On measure after measure, the United States remains in a commanding position compared with its major competitors and rivals. Yet it does confront a very different international landscape. Many powers across the globe have risen in strength and confidence. They will not meekly assent to American directives. Some of them actively seek to challenge the United States’ dominant position and the order that has been built around it. … The challenge for Washington is to run fast but not run scared. Today, however, it remains gripped by panic and self doubt.” 

Fareed raises the real prospect that the US will quail from continued leadership in the global economy but in fact even beyond that to global order and national security relations as well: 

“The most worrying challenge to the rules-based international order does not come from China, Russia, or Iran. It comes from the United States. If America, consumed by exaggerated fears of its own decline, retreats from its leading role in world affairs, it will open up power vacuums across the globe and encourage a variety of powers and players to try to step into the disarray.” 

 

“Since 1945, America has debated the nature of its engagement with the world, but not whether it should be engaged to begin with. Were the country to truly turn inward, it would mark a retreat for the forces of order and progress. Washington can still set the agenda, build alliances, help solve global problems, and deter aggression while using limited resources—well below the levels that it spent during the Cold War. It would have to pay a far higher price if order collapsed, rogue powers rose, and the open world economy fractured or closed.”

Now the actions by the departing Biden administration may have already done some real damage to relations with allies – this the determination by Biden to kill the Nippon-US Steel deal. As Alan Beattie described it in his FT ‘Trade Secrets’ column:

“Still, some of us were also moderately hopeful that Biden’s long history as an alliance-builder in international relations might weigh reasonably heavily in the balance. That’s where we were largely wrong. When it came down to it, steelmakers were prioritised above all. As a unionised industry located in electoral swing states (Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) with tariff protection inherited from Donald Trump and national security and environmental rationales, however specious, they ticked too many boxes to ignore.” 

 

“All politics is local, including trade politics, but the politics here is quite weird. It’s surreal that the geopolitically important practice of friendshoring is being sabotaged by a USTR with no specialism in national security and a union leader both acting in defiance of colleagues who are closer to the issues at hand. Tai’s obsession with the steel industry has extended to sending groups of USTR officials on tourist trips to do photo-ops with steelworkers. This is vibes-based trade policy backed up by show-and-tell.” 

So, the focus on allies and partners in firming trade relations and building resilient supply chains with them is, in this instance, revealed as hollow: 

“When it came to it, it wasn’t the substance but the vibe of protecting the steel industry that prevented the Biden administration giving friendshoring a fair go. It’s a sad end for a respectable but ultimately unloved idea.” 

And, it suggests that the US under Biden is not ‘walking the walk’ when it comes to friendshoring but also undermining trust with, in this case, one of its closest allies in the Indo-Pacific, Japan.

All right then, focusing more directly on national security, let me turn to Rush Doshi who is a colleague – an assistant professor of security studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He is also senior fellow for China and director of the Initiative on China Strategy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and importantly he served the Biden White House at the National Security Council (NSC) as the Director and later Deputy Senior Director for China and Taiwan from 2021 to March 2024. So involved with Biden national security. Having just emerged from the Biden administration, how does he now view the requirements of US national security policy today? Well, Rush assists us in a FA article produced in late November. There he wrote: 

“Without corrective action, the United States faced a growing risk of being surpassed by China technologically, dependent on it economically, and defeated militarily in the South China Sea or Taiwan Strait.” 

 

“The Biden administration focused on rebuilding American strength by focusing on its foundations at home and its relationships with partners abroad, an approach summed up in its “invest, align, compete” tagline.

 

“That formula can also serve as a way to fulfill the Trump administration’s vision of “peace through strength.” But rebuilding American power will require the Trump administration to undertake new efforts, too, that depend on bipartisan congressional support and the buy in of the American public.”

 

“But the foundations of that strength have atrophied, especially since the end of the Cold War. The administration will need to undertake significant structural reforms to remedy these weaknesses.”

 

“The United States needs to fix its defense industrial base to rapidly deter China and, if necessary, defeat it in a potential conflict. At present, the United States would expend all its munitions within a week of sustained fighting and would struggle to rebuild surface vessels after they were sunk, with a national shipbuilding capacity less than that of one of China’s larger shipyards.”

 

“Washington also needs to protect its critical infrastructure from cyberattack. China has compromised U.S. critical infrastructure upon which millions of Americans rely, including water and gas, transportation, and telecommunications systems, with the aim of inciting chaos, sowing panic, and reducing U.S. will in a conflict scenario.” 

 

“Finally, the United States needs to invest in reindustrialization and technological leadership. China already accounts for more than 30 percent of global manufacturing, can innovate successfully, increasingly leads in the sectors of tomorrow, and is redirecting massive amounts of capital into manufacturing as its housing market stagnates. The result, a second “China shock” akin to the one that flooded U.S. markets with cheap Chinese goods at the beginning of this century, will threaten the United States’ future as an industrial power and leave it more dependent on China than China is on the United States. 

 

“National security is not just about foreign policy. Trump’s team should remember that the key to this decisive decade is not just what the United States does abroad. What it does at home to improve its competitive position may be even more important.” 

What is more than interesting is that Rush urges these major efforts after just emerging from several years at the Biden administration. Now what does that say about the Biden years. 

So, finally, let’s turn to what I promised you above Mitch McConnell. Now McConnell is more than willing to attack the Biden administration for what he describes as a weak national security effort. But it also urges Trump to avoid just focusing on China and in doing so ignore the real threat to Europe – and to the US obviously, from Russia’s Ukraine efforts. As McConnell describes:

“Trump would be wise to build his foreign policy on the enduring cornerstone of U.S. leadership: hard power.” 

 

“To pretend that the United States can focus on just one threat at a time, that its credibility is divisible, or that it can afford to shrug off faraway chaos as irrelevant is to ignore its global interests and its adversaries’ global designs.”

 

“China poses the gravest long-term challenge to U.S. interests. But although successive presidents have acknowledged this reality, their actual policies have been inconsistent.”

 

“In so doing, it [Trump] must not repeat the mistakes of President Barack Obama’s so-called pivot to Asia. The Obama administration failed to back up its policy with sufficient investments in U.S. military power.” 

Against the grain I suspect of many of the MAGA Republicans including, possibly Donald Trump, McConnell urges: 

“The United States needs a military that can handle multiple increasingly coordinated threats at once. Without one, a president will likely hesitate to expend limited resources on one threat at the expense of others, thereby ceding initiative or victory to an adversary.The United States must get back to budgets that are informed by strategy and a force-planning construct that imagines fighting more than one war at once.”

 

“The United States’ security and prosperity are rooted in military primacy. Preserving that decisive superiority is costly, but neglecting it comes with far steeper costs.”

For McConnell, then, there is a real need to underpin current US economic strength with policy initiatives: 

“I am not naive about the downsides of international trade, but there is no question that free markets and free trade have been responsible for much of the United States’ prosperity.”

 

“That’s why the United States and like-minded free-market economies must work together to reform the international trading system to protect U.S. interests from predatory trade practices—not abandon the system entirely.  Without U.S. leadership in this area, there is little question that Beijing will be able to rewrite the rules of trade on its own terms.”

Finally, there is a real abiding requirement, from this side of the Republican Congressional majority – directed to the MAGA Republicans and urging  this critical need for the incoming Trump administration:

“Trump will no doubt hear from some that he should prioritize a single theater and downgrade U.S. interests and commitments elsewhere. Most of these voices will argue for focusing on Asia at the expense of interests in Europe or the Middle East.  Such thinking is commonplace among both isolationist conservatives who indulge the fantasy of “Fortress America” and progressive liberals who mistake internationalism for an end in itself.”

 

“Neither camp has committed to maintaining the military superiority or sustaining the alliances needed to contest revisionist powers.” 

So, there you are. McConnell is urging ‘a full court press’ to maintain a dominant US military position and global leadership. Will Trump and his MAGA Republicans in Congress follow through. I have my doubts. 

Image Credit: Getty Images

This Post first appeared as a Substack Post at Alan’s Newsletter –

https://open.substack.com/pub/globalsummitryproject/p/what-can-we-expect-a-second-look?r=bj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

“What Can We Expect?”: In the First Instance

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Now you might think, with that title, that I’d be delving into Trump 2.0. Well, not exactly in the first instance. Instead, I am trying to focus on the end of the Biden administration: what folks conclude about the Biden initiatives and where that then leads, possibly, for the upcoming Trump administration. Now, to be clear, I’m not trying to guess where the Trump administration is likely to take us. Not with the inconsistent Trump at the helm again; but it would be good if the incoming administration might choose to take a hard look at what the Biden administration hoped to achieve with its policy initiatives and where, in fact, it found itself in the increasing disorder in the international system. We are particularly interested, not surprisingly, in the state of US-China relations in the face of four years of Biden strategy and policy. What has China done in reaction to Biden strategic competition? And what does the United States do now in the face of today’s US-China competition?

Just the other day, Tom Friedman from the NYT gave us a peek of what he saw in a recent visit to Beijing and Shanghai. Where is China today in the face of the challenging US relations: the end of US engagement, the rise in tensions with Trump 1.0 and the Biden strategic competitive policy. Friedman in an opinion article titled, “How Elon Musk and Taylor Swift Can Resolve U.S.-China Relations” makes “no bones about it” and early in the opinion piece he writes:

I just spent a week in Beijing and Shanghai, meeting with Chinese officials, economists and entrepreneurs, and let me get right to the point: While we were sleeping China took a great leap forward in high-tech manufacturing of everything.

And he starts with Trump 1.0:

If no one has told Donald Trump, then I will: His nickname on Chinese social media today is “Chuan Jianguo” — meaning “Trump the (Chinese) Nation Builder” — because of how his relentless China bashing and tariffs during his first term as president lit a fire under Beijing to double down on its efforts to gain global supremacy in electric cars, robots and rare materials, and to become as independent of America’s markets and tools as possible.

What Trump 2.0 now faces in today’s China that he helped to create is, according to Tom:

The China that Trump will encounter is a much more formidable export engine. Its advanced manufacturing muscles have exploded in size, sophistication and quantity in the last eight years, even while consumption by its people remains puny.

 

China’s export machine is so strong now that only very high tariffs might really slow it down, and China’s response to very high tariffs could be to start cutting off American industries from crucial supplies that are now available almost nowhere else. That kind of supply-chain warfare is not what anyone, anywhere needs.

Further, Tom signals what a Trump administration must now do in the face of much more evident competitor:

But if we don’t use this time to respond to China the way we did to the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, with our own comprehensive scientific, innovative and industrial push, we will be toast.

So for Tom what it requires is a ‘full court press’ – ‘A Sputnik Moment’ by the US under a second Trump administration. Hmm, if really required one has to wonder if given today’s US politics there is anything even somewhat similar to that much earlier, “all hands on deck” type US strategy.

Tom Friedman, however, is not the only one calling for a concerted US national effort to deal with a charging China that the US helped to create. More focused on the technology/science/innovation front is the examination by my good colleague Scott Kennedy from CSIS. Scott is senior adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies at CSIS and recently he examined the US-China technology competition in Foreign Affairs, in an article titled, “How America’s War on Chinese Tech Backfired And Why Trump’s Plans Would Make Things Even Worse.

But just before going there I thought it was worth setting up that examination by focusing on probably one of Joe Biden’s last public talks as President, this at Brookings in Washington, just a few days ago on December 10th. The remarks were titled by the White House as, “His Middle-Out, Bottom-Up Economic Playbook”. There was a fair bit of coughing and missing words in the transcript but the message was clear enough:

Today, here at Brookings Institution, I would like to talk about pivotal actions we’ve taken to rebuild the economy for the long haul, you know, and how we’re — how we’re at a critical, in my view, moment in the direction the economy is going to take.

 

After decades of trickle-down economics that primarily benefited those at the very top, we — we’ve written a new book that’s growing the economy — the middle-out and the bottom-up — that benefits, thus far, everyone. And that’s going to be the test with go- — going forward.

 

I was determined to restore U.S. leadership in industries of the future.

 

We understood we needed long-term investments for the future. Investing in America agenda, which includes my Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act — together, they mark the most significant investment in America since the New Deal. And that’s a fact. I mean, whether it’s good or bad, that’s the fact.

 

We not only — we not only beat the pandemic; we broke from the economic orthodoxy that has failed this nation, in my view, for a long time — a theory that led to fewer jobs, less economic growth, and bigger deficits.

 

And the best way to build that in America was to invest in America, invest in American products and invest in the American people — not by handing out tax breaks to those at the top.

But the tools employed by the Biden administration, as described by the President, barely touched the protections initiated by Trump 1.0 and advanced further in some cases by the Biden administration. But Scott targets exactly those initiatives by the Biden administration, particularly in the technology innovation sectors. As he describes:

Washington’s array of tools is highly expansive: export controls, tariffs, product bans, inbound and outbound investment screening, constraints on data flows, incentives to shift supply chains, limits on scholarly exchange and research collaboration, industrial policy expenditures, and buy-America incentives.

 

The goals of these measures are equally diverse: slow China’s progress in the most advanced technologies that have dual-use potential, reduce overdependence on China as a source of inputs and as a market for Western goods, deny China access to sensitive data, protect critical infrastructure, push back against economic coercion, protect the United States’ industrial competitiveness, and boost its manufacturing employment.

And he concludes by arguing:

Beijing’s shift toward a more expansive and assertive form of mercantilist techno-nationalism poses genuine risks to the prosperity and economic security of the United States and others. Something must be done, to be sure, but Washington’s increasingly restrictive policies have yielded highly mixed results.

So it’s not that China doesn’t pose a challenge but the solutions chosen by the Biden administration, in part built on the earlier Trump years, raise serious concerns and pose real questions in the face of Trump 2.0:

As President-elect Donald Trump returns to power, his administration would be wise to reflect on the fact that existing restrictions on Chinese technology have yielded decidedly mixed results. The Biden administration has described its strategy as a “small yard, high fence,” or placing high restrictions on a small number of critical technologies. That yard is already growing, with negative unintended consequences for the United States.

What then can be done, according to Scott. It seems to be in several parts. First, according to him:

Washington needs to set clear priorities, identifying the most urgent threats that deserve a response. Otherwise, the United States will be dragged into a game of whack-a-mole or, more worryingly, try to block all commercial ties with China. To the extent that the United States attempts to deny technologies to China, the only sustainable approach involves working with allies and other countries so that the United States will not be outflanked by China and lose technology leadership in the rest of the world. If the Trump administration pursues extensive decoupling from China, the result will most likely be an isolated, poorer, and weaker United States.

And additionally Scott targets international organizations and multilateral initiatives:

The Trump administration would also be unwise to ignore global institutions, such as the World Trade Organization, as doing so would dramatically raise the likelihood of unbounded conflict. Instead, Washington should intensify multilateral cooperation to set new rules for global economic activity in order to avoid a race to the bottom.

 

The United States may in some instances need to take unilateral steps to maintain its relative technology superiority, but excessive economic security measures will mean less innovation, slower economic growth, reduced profits, and fewer jobs. With a combination of wise domestic policies, collaboration with allies, and investment in international institutions, the United States can achieve both prosperity and security.

This latter focus is welcome, it seems to me. As bad as some of the Biden tariff and sanction approaches have been, certainly the dismantling of the WTO trade and investment policies stand out, in particular, because earlier administrations were vital to the creation of the multilateral trade framework. While it was, and is imperfect, as any multilateral instrument is, it is a ‘damn sight better’ than where we are today. Geneva at the moment is dead.

But it is not just the economy/technology front that demands apparently a concerted Trump administration effort. There is also national security. The message, it seems, is being delivered by one of the key figures over decades, that is none other than Senator Mitch McConnell.

I plan to return to Senator McConnell, and a number of others on national security, after the holiday break. But it is holiday time and I plan to put down my pen for the holidays. Look for me back here at Alan’s Newsletter in the week of January 6th – 2025, if not earlier. Have a great Holiday time!

This Post first appeared as a Substack Post at Alan’s Newsletter.

https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/what-can-we-expect-in-the-first-instance

All comments and Subscriptions are welcome.

Image Credit: USNews.com

Informal global leadership can help steady the ship – from EAF November 26, 2024

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Happy Thanksgiving Weekend – Enjoy!

This piece forst appeared at EAF – https://eastasiaforum.org/2024/11/26/informal-global-leadership-can-help-steady-the-ship/

“All evidence suggested that Brazil’s G20 Summit was going to bean exceptionally difficult summit for the United States and its departing President Joe Biden — and it proved to be so with the USPresident appearing as all too evidently a ‘lame duck’ and the shadow of Biden’s successor, Donald Trump, all too evident in leaders’ discussions.

It has been a busy period for the informal international forums(‘Informals’). The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) met inPeru on 15–16 November, followed immediately by the G20Leaders’ Summit in Brazil on 18–19 November. If these two summits were not enough, the BRICS+ Summit ran in Kazan,Russia on 22–24 October and the East Asia Summit also met inOctober. Leaders and their ministers have had significant opportunities to engage with other heads of government and state.

The question is whether these summits advanced globalgovernance policies or handled the current international context rifewith geopolitical tensions built on the back of conflicts in the Middle East and in Europe, US–China strategic competition and the growing populist and illiberal governments challenging the liberal order? The influence of Informals — especially the G20 but tovarying degrees the G7, BRICS, APEC and the many minilaterals such as the US–Japan–South Korea and China–Japan–South Korea trilateral frameworks — may grow in the increasingly fragmented global order.

The role of Informals has evolved before. Following the eruption of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, there was discussion among experts about whether the just created G20 Leaders’ Summit was a‘crisis committee’ or a ‘steering committee’. In either case, it was presumed to be a capable of generating collective efforts of these key countries. There was strong approval of the G20 efforts to tackle the financial crisis and most observers would agree that their collective efforts aided at the time in getting past the financial crisis.

There was a tendency, naturally, to hone in on the collective G20 leaders’ efforts in the years that followed. The G20 announced efforts to coordinate among its 19 countries and the European Union — and now the African Union — with statements of implementation and agreed coordinated efforts expressed in verylengthy leaders’ communiques or declarations. Yet there was limited implementation by national governments and the international organisations.

The hope was then that the annual gatherings of G20 leaders would allow leaders to finalise collective efforts to make globalisation work for all and to provide a setting where advances could be secured for critical global issues like institutional financial reform, debt management and climate financing. These meetings also sought to achieve collective agreement to press forward on theSustainable Development Goals unanimously approved at the United Nations in 2015. But little of any of this was concluded.

The annual leaders gatherings, especially the G20, have provided at least valuable opportunities for leaders to reach beyond the collective gathering and arrange highly helpful bilateral meetings.For example, the 2023 APEC Summit in San Francisco enabled Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden to meet on the margins. This bilateral meeting is widely recognised as stabilising US–China relations and reopening various lines of communication, including military-to-military communication that had been suspended following the visit to Taiwan by then speakerof the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi.

At the 2024 Peru APEC Summit, the two leaders met again. In thefading days of his presidency, Biden hoped to advance US–China relations. While the leaders were able to publicly express the hope for further cooperation, and there was agreement to maintain human control over nuclear weapons, the shadow of incumbent US president Donald Trump’s return clearly cooled the opportunities for further advancing efforts and left Xi warning over Taiwanese independence and other ‘red lines’.

Besides serving as the setting for leaders of the two leading powers to talk, the Peru APEC meeting also provided the setting for other leaders to hold critical meetings. One clear instance was Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and South Korean President YoonSuk-yeol. The two leaders held their second meeting in just over a month and enabled the two leaders to discuss the threat posed by recent North Korean efforts. They also pledged to continue ‘shuttle diplomacy’. Given the fraught relations between the two countries the meetings proved quite valuable.

The annual informals have created it seems numerous instances of leaders ‘huddling’ together, which has aided diplomacy. These diplomatic instances should not be underestimated, with the G20 representing two-thirds of the world’s global population and 85 percent of global GDP. Further, the G20 gathering in Brazil will have created space for various leader discussions on the eve of Trump’s return. Future gatherings at these summits may prove to be evenmore critical as opportunities to collaborate on trade, finance or climate in the face of Trumpian chaos will be difficult to come by otherwise.

While the Informals’ value for the global order it seems is largely inthe opportunity for leaders to connect and make diplomatic and security progress, the collective efforts of these gatherings cannot be completely dismissed. They may not support collective policy implementation as was once hoped but these summits do enable leaders — often the host country leaders — to amplify critical policy initiatives.

This has proven the case for the Brazil G20 Summit whereBrazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva used his G20 presidency to highlight the need for a global wealth tax on billionaires in a larger effort to support middle- and low-income countries. And the Declaration did at least create the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty. The Alliance is an initiative of Brazil that aims to create instruments to combat hunger and inequality at a global level. The Brazilian wealth tax on billionaires proposal could have raised hundreds of billions of dollars but such a commitment failed to make the Rio de Janeiro Declaration.Nevertheless, the collective expression in the Declaration and the Alliance that was created did hopefully provide a marker for the future.

The way Informals bring leaders together and foster collective diplomatic action will be increasingly important for upholding therules-based order, protecting international peace and spurring policy progress in an increasingly fragmented global order —especially with Trump’s return on the horizon.

Alan Alexandroff is Director of the Global Summitry Project and Co-Chair of the China-West Dialogue (CWD). When he teaches, he does so at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.

 

Image Credit – G20

 

The Impact of Trump 2.0

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They were obvious moves by Trump, I suspect. Nevertheless, some of the choices by Trump for his senior appointments were startling – and what one might otherwise describe as ‘dismaying’. For many of us not a particular surprise. So we have House of Representative Matt Gaetz nominated as Attorney General. As The Guardian declared:

Donald Trump’s decision to nominate the far-right Republican congressman Matt Gaetz as attorney general has sent shockwaves through Washington, including the president-elect’s own party.

 

Trump on Wednesday announced Gaetz as his pick to be the nation’s chief law enforcement officer in the justice department, a role that directs the government’s legal positions on critical issues, including abortion, civil rights, and first amendment cases.

Michelle Goldberg, writing for the NYT had some choice words for this Trump nomination:

Of all the people Trump was considering for A.G., Gaetz is unique mainly for how much he is hated by other Republicans, and not just moderate ones. In the final months of the last Trump administration, the Justice Department opened an investigation into whether Gaetz had a relationship with an underage girl that violated federal sex trafficking laws.

 

It should go without saying that Gaetz is not, by any normal standards, even a tiny bit qualified to be attorney general. He practiced law for only about two years before running for office, handling small-time civil matters, like suing an old woman for money she owed his father’s caregiving company.

Then, there was the equally startling nomination of Robert F Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic and more that Trump has nominated for the head of Health and Human Services. And then there is Pete Hegseth nominated for Secretary of Defence and Tulsi Gabbard nominated for Director of Intelligence. Each in their own career and experience raising questions over their appointment. And then, finally,  there is the appointment of Elon Musk Trump’s now seemingly close buddy to a Commission to bring efficiency to the US federal government. As Ed Luce at the FT commented:

What you might feel less comfortable in admitting is that Trump is giving utterance to America’s soul. The US is driven by the spirit of limitless resources and surmountable frontiers. Its mission is “To explore strange new worlds . . . to boldly go where no man has gone before”, as James T Kirk put it. On Tuesday Trump promoted Elon Musk, his own Captain Kirk, to Starfleet Admiral. Musk’s USS Enterprise is the department of government efficiency (Doge).

Notwithstanding the name the Musk initiative is unlikely to be a government department as noted by Luce:

It is unclear whether Doge will have any statutory authority, which would require an act of Congress, or simply be a super-advisory body to the Trump administration. Either way, Musk’s goal is to close down regulatory agencies in Washington or drastically pare them back. He recently said he would also cut almost a third from the federal government’s $6.7tn budget.

Government authority or not, Musk will be disruptive, as are likely to be all these recent appointments, and that is the point. Disruption, chaos and controversy  – the Trump modus operandi. As noted again by Luce on the choice of Musk:

But Musk will probably get a lot of his way on deregulation. If you work for the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Justice, the US Federal Reserve, the Bureau of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency, the US Department of Agriculture or the departments of energy and education, be afraid; be very afraid.

For those poor souls who suggested that Trump wouldn’t follow through on some of his crazier actions, often after plaintively admitting that they had voted for him, these appointments seem to put ‘stop’ to that benign view of Trump governing.

And raising the spectre of serious policy steps likely leading to disruption, chaos and controversy, Trump 2.0 will have a significant impact on US foreign policy efforts. Here, it is worth examining the recent comments by my colleague, Susan Thornton. Susan is currently a Senior Fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at the Yale Law School. She also participates in many of the China-West Dialogue (CWD) discussions that we have held over the last few years. Susan retired as a senior diplomat after almost three decades of experience with the U.S. State Department in Eurasia and East Asia. She retired, in fact, as Acting Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the Department of State.

Susan does not underestimate the prospect for a dramatic impact by Trump on American foreign policy driven, as Susan sees it, by an American public that is no longer willing to bear the burden of a leading US role in the global order. As she wrote recently at the East Asian Forum, the US public, from Susan’s view, is determined to stand down the United States:

Americans are no longer confident in the promise and effectiveness of their institutional system, they reject the obligation of answering the world’s fire alarms, they are weary of bearing the cost of global security and they see clearly that other states are free-riding on US largesse. The US electorate has been consistently ahead of its politicians in its rejection of the role of ‘world policeman’.

In Susan’s view the election of Trump satisfies, it seems, a desire among many in public to wind down US entanglements in the global arena:

Trump, and certainly his national security team, does not appreciate that he was put in power to dismantle US global hegemony. But Trump’s bullying transactionalism, his aversion to commitment, his penchant for tariffs and complete indifference to the potential impact that the United States has on other countries can have no other outcome.

 

It is obvious that permanent damage will be done to the United Nations, international economic institutions, multilateral organisations in which the United States is a member and any international effort to combat transnational challenges. The dissolution began during his first term and will be irreversible after the coming four years. The Americans who elected Trump as their standard bearer will cheer their demise.

And, the Trump actions, according to Susan, will only raise the temperature in the key global relationship, the US and China. As Susan suggests:

There will be a further sharp disconnect of the US and Chinese economies. Trump and the Republican Congress are likely to invoke more tariffs, export controls and sanctions leading to global fragmentation, rising costs and slower growth. Businesses will face an ever more complicated picture and are already strategising how to adjust. Many countries in Asia are devising economic hedging strategies and will try to walk a middle line amid deteriorating US–China relations. Whether and how a Trump administration might impose costs for such an approach remains an open question.

Susan further suggests that, in fact, Trump is the instrument of many in the US electorate that are tired with the burden resulting from the US leading role in the global order:

We have already entered the transition to a post-Pax Americana world — Trump is an accelerant. This does not mean that the United States will disappear. It will remain the most powerful and wealthy country in the world. But it does leave a vacuum in the international arena and US partners will hopefully step in to provide leadership and public goods.

My colleague Dan Drezner agrees with Susan at least with the impact of a second Trump administration. Dan is the Distinguished Professor of International Politics and Associate Dean of Research at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and among other things, the author of the Substack, Drezner’s World. In a FA piece entitled, “The End of American Exceptionalism: Trump’s Reelection Will Redefine U.S. Power”, Dan declares:

Trump will navigate world politics with greater confidence this time around. Whether he will have any better luck bending the world to his “America first” brand is another question entirely. What is certain, however, is that the era of American exceptionalism has ended. Under Trump, U.S. foreign policy will cease promoting long-standing American ideals. That, combined with an expected surge of corrupt foreign policy practices, will leave the United States looking like a garden-variety great power.”

 

He [Trump] believes that the U.S.-created liberal international order has, over time, stacked the deck against the United States. To change that imbalance, Trump wants to restrict inward economic flows such as imports and immigrants (although he likes inward foreign direct investment). He wants allies to shoulder more of the burden for their own defense. And he believes that he can cut deals with autocrats, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin or North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, that will reduce tensions in global trouble spots and allow the United States to focus Inward.

For Susan the change in foreign policy is driven by the American public; for Dan the direction comes from Trump and his acolytes but the outcome appears to be the same. The end of American leadership as we’ve understood it for seven decades and more.

So how, or what will provide the leadership that can manage the global order? Who can help shape and critically, who can presumably stabilize the increasingly fractious international environment?  Positively, who can promote international development, energize the efforts to meet the climate crisis, and reform international financial reform and meet the growing debt crises for many? Who will energize the multilateral institutions that can promote peace and security and advance global governance? Where is the leadership?

Here Susan gives us a bit of a hint. As she suggests:

In this more fragmented, disordered world, US partners in Asia should also pursue more networked security cooperation and regional integration to safeguard peace and mitigate the negative effects of deglobalisation for their economies. Such measures are useful on their own merits, no matter who is in the White House, as the world is set to become a more difficult and dangerous place.

We have, at recent gatherings of the China-West Dialogue, been exploring the role of Middle Powers. I hope to turn back to the potential key roles that Middle Powers may bring to the growing threats to the global order. I think that may be a hopeful direction.  I will return to this subject.

Image Credit: ABC News

This Post first appeared as a Substack Post at Alan’s Newsletter. Feel free to comment and subscribe to Alan’s Newsletter.

https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/the-impact-of-trump-20

 

 

 

The ‘Global Order’: ‘Who is on First’

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I was trying very hard to ignore the impending vote for US president upcoming next week. We will have plenty of time to contemplate the action and consequences of the presidential choice on US foreign policy and global leadership.

But then again I was not fully able to ignore the consequences for the international order of this event. I was caught by a very recent Special Report from CIGI on: “Scenarios of Evolving Global Order”. Now CIGI is located in Waterloo Ontario and CIGI stands for the Centre for International Governance Innovation. I have a small soft spot for the think tank as I and a number of close colleagues spent some good years there when it launched as a global affairs outfit and, I think produced some good early work on global governance, among other things.

Anyway, the Report is interesting as it attempts to:

… fill a gap between the analysis of current trends and mapping of potential futures by outlining five possible scenarios for an evolving global order. These five scenarios represent a spectrum from the most modest plausible change (reform of the current system) to the most radical (transformation of the whole system due to a global shock).

There clearly is much current discussion over the evolving global order in the context of significant geopolitical tensions between the two leading powers and the numerous conflicts burdening international relations. So the Report describes 5 different scenarios built on these assumptions:

• The current international system is not working; international institutions, including the United Nations and Bretton Woods institutions, are unable to address most contemporary challenges.

• Responses to contemporary global challenges are siloed, nationally and institutionally.

• The United States’ global leadership is waning due to reduced capacity and internal focus.

• The relative economic power of liberal democracies is diminishing.

• Emerging powers — including, but not limited to, China and India — are increasingly asserting their influence and driving change.

• Finding new pathways of international cooperation on security issues may be more elusive, meaning attention may focus on cooperation on economic issues.

• Deglobalization, and regional integration as an alternative to multilateralism, continues to accelerate by many, but not all, measures.

• Momentum for nationalist and isolationist policies continues to build in many countries.

The result five different scenarios as filled out by the author team:

Scenario 1: Reform of the Existing Global System

Scenario 2: Replacement of the Existing Global System

Scenario 3: The Emergence of a Bloc-Based Global System

Scenario 4: A Case of Disorder

Scenario 5: Transformed Global Order

Each scenario is interesting and for every scenario there are two pathways described by the authors leading to an identified outcome:

The authors’ view is that these five scenarios broadly represent core directions that global order may evolve toward in the coming months and years. They acknowledge that there are numerous potential pathways that the five scenarios could take — by choosing only two for each, many possibilities remain for further exploration.

Now each scenario is worth assessing – and I will try and examine some perghaps at a later date, but I was struck by the perspective the authors identified for the structure and the dynamics for all five scenarios. As the Report suggested:

All of the scenarios explored assume the current and evolving global dynamics are multipolar (rather than other forms such as bipolar, hegemonic or concerted). It is, of course, possible that global order does not continue to evolve in  a multipolar way — for example, that one group of states forms a security and economic coalition in a way that dominates all the rest or that the world devolves into a bipolar world utterly dominated by American and Chinese spheres of control. The world is currently operating with multipolar dynamics on most issues, and this is likely to continue into the future.

Now that assumption of a multipolar system struck me. The reason is I came across an interesting Substack Post from Clarence Gu and Chenghao Sun, ChinAffairs+ describing in the Post titled “Yan Xuetong & John Mearsheimer Conversation: Who Shapes Global Order, and Who Will Win the Competition?”an interesting encounter, the third in fact, between these two experts. Now Yan Xuetong is the Dean of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University, a highly prestigious university in China and John Mearsheimer is, as he describes himself, “the  R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982 and an international relations theorist. More specifically, I am a realist.”

Now I have known John for many years as we were graduate students together at Cornell University with the same adviser, the recently passed Richard N Rosecrance, renowned international relations expert. But we were seldom on the same side of the fence when describing the underlying dynamics of the international system. But that is neither here nor there.

Both Yan Xuetong and John are known for their focus in international relations on ‘realism’, and in fact John’s  writings identify what is known as ‘offensive realism’. And while the two differ to a degree in this encounter at Tsinghua in Beijing they both strongly endorse the notion that the system is driven by the need by states to maintain dominance in a current bipolar not multipolar world (You will note by the way that the quotes that follow have been slightly edited due at times to  imperfect transcription). As John describes the international system:

How do you survive the international system? The system is where there is no higher authority. The answer is very simple. You want to be very powerful. You want to maximize your power, you cannot be certain of the intentions of those other states. It pays to be really powerful, to pay to be a hegemon.

 

If you think more specifically, the argument is that you can only be a regional hegemon, number one. Number two, you want to make sure that no other state is a regional hegemon. The ideal situation is to be the only regional hegemony in the international system.

 

All of this is to say we are involved today, in an intense security competition. It shows no signs going away. And if anything will get worse with the passage of time. This is a tragic situation. It has nothing to do with Chinese culture or American culture. And many people in China blame the United States for this trouble. … So my argument is, it’s the system that has caused this intense security competition.

Yan Xuetong is even more direct. He states:

The new trend of global order is Counter-Globalization. Then certainly today, I think because today’s title is Global Order and US-China relationship, we have to talk about how the relationship between China and US impact the current global order, my understanding is that the China-US relationship just like John argued that it will be intensified in terms of conflicts.You cannot expect China and US suddenly find a way to set down those disputes become the partners. If that happens, it means our theories are wrong. And actually, why the China-US conflicts are increasing and intensifying. It’s because now we’re in a bipolar configuration. The power structure is not multipolar.

 

The power structure is not multipolar. The current power structure is bipolar. And in the IR community, we all agree the situation after the World War One was multipolar, and after World War Two is bipolar.

 

What I mean is that the historic experience tells us, today we still have to understand what the international configuration is. It is not multipolar, not unipolar, it is bipolar, because except China no other major powers have capability or national power that account for 1/3 of the United States. None of them, except China. I don’t know how exactly we can do the measurement, but at least China’s capability is larger than 1/3 of the United States, possibly I would say 2/3 of the US.

Well, I won’t go into the five scenarios at this point though they are worth reviewing. The point here is to raise concern over analyses that are largely driven by structure rather than dynamics generated by policy – security, economic and political. These are the drivers that shape international outcomes. It is difficult at this moment to determine whether the structure is slightly less hegemonic, or is already bipolar, or in fact has become multipolar. The real analytic need, however, is to focus on the leading states and their foreign policy determinations. Structure is there, of course, but it does not drive foreign policy action or outcomes.

This Post first appeared at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter. All comments and free subscriptions are welcome

Image Credit: Clarence Gu

 

Is it Trade Policy or is it Security Policy?

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It is more than passingly odd that a lead spokesperson apparently for Biden, if not Harris’s, global economic policies comes from Jake Sullivan, the National Security Adviser. Now don’t get me wrong. Jake is a very bright fellow who I have known for a number of years. Still, his repeated statements for the current economic policy seem, well, somewhat weird.

In any case Jake just recently returned to the Brookings Institution – in fact just the other day to provide an update on his original talk titled: “Renewing American Economic Leadership”. This original talk was delivered by Jake on April 27, 2023. Now, again in the realm of strange, it seems to me odd to have Jake providing an update when we are less than two weeks out from a Presidential vote. And while the Democrat may win the presidency, it will not be Joe Biden. Yes, the Vice President was part of the preceding administration, but still. And it may be, of course, that Jake might well assume a prominent role in a new Harris administration, if she were to win. Still, I am sure that the next administration will seek to design and announce its own global trade and investment strategy. And that says nothing if the other guy wins.

In any case it was good to listen to Jake review his original proposals. When he spoke in 2023 Jake pointedly framed the changed global landscape. As he said:

After the Second World War, the United States led a fragmented world to build a new international economic order.  It lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.  It sustained thrilling technological revolutions.  And it helped the United States and many other nations around the world achieve new levels of prosperity.

But the last few decades revealed cracks in those foundations.  A shifting global economy left many working Americans and their communities behind. A financial crisis shook the middle class.  A pandemic exposed the fragility of our supply chains.  A changing climate threatened lives and livelihoods.  Russia’s invasion of Ukraine underscored the risks of overdependence.

“So this moment demands that we forge a new consensus.” In broad strokes then, Jake proceeded to describe the changed landscape:

That’s why the United States, under President Biden, is pursuing a modern industrial and innovation strategy—both at home and with partners around the world.  One that invests in the sources of our own economic and technological strength, that promotes diversified and resilient global supply chains, that sets high standards for everything from labor and the environment to trusted technology and good governance, and that deploys capital to deliver on public goods like climate and health.”

And what were the challenges that the early years of the Biden administration faced:

First, America’s industrial base had been hollowed out. …

 

The second challenge we faced was adapting to a new environment defined by geopolitical and security competition, with important economic impacts. …

 

The third challenge we faced was an accelerating climate crisis and the urgent need for a just and efficient energy transition. …

 

Finally, we faced the challenge of inequality and its damage to democracy.

According to Jake the administration knew what it had to do. As he declared:

When President Biden came to office, he knew the solution to each of these challenges was to restore an economic mentality that champions building.  And that is the core of our economic approach. To build.  To build capacity, to build resilience, to build inclusiveness, at home and with partners abroad.  The capacity to produce and innovate, and to deliver public goods like strong physical and digital infrastructure and clean energy at scale.  The resilience to withstand natural disasters and geopolitical shocks. And the inclusiveness to ensure a strong, vibrant American middle class and greater opportunity for working people around the world.

And you’ll not be surprised to hear that in his recently stated update the Biden administration has taken on these challenges and the policy initiatives are achieving results.

Now, I may well come back at a later moment to look at more of the Biden policy initiatives but I did want to examine at this time at least one of the challenges,  the concerted effort to move away from freer trade – reducing tariffs, and instead focusing on targeted actions against a China that in Jake’s words:

The project of the 2020s and the 2030s is different from the project of the 1990s.

 

We know the problems we need to solve today:  Creating diversified and resilient supply chains.   Mobilizing public and private investment for a just clean energy transition and sustainable economic growth.  Creating good jobs along the way, family-supporting jobs.  Ensuring trust, safety, and openness in our digital infrastructure.  Stopping a race-to-the-bottom in corporate taxation.  Enhancing protections for labor and the environment.

So Jake in the update reflects on the Biden administration efforts and their result:

Advancing fairness, creating high quality jobs and revitalizing American communities can’t be an afterthought. Which is why we’ve made them central to our approach. In fact, as a result of the incentives in the IRA to build in traditional energy communities, investment in those communities has doubled under President Joe Biden.

The determination to build out the middle class underlies Biden economic policy. But how has it worked? Well, here, there seems to be some serious doubt notwithstanding the upbeat portrayal by Jake. Why do I say this? Let me turn to Robert Z Lawrence, a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) and the Albert L. Williams Professor of Trade and Investment at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Lawrence recently reviewed Biden administration trade policy in a Report for PIIE: “Is the United States undergoing a manufacturing renaissance that will boost the middle class?”

Lawrence points out the continuing struggle to bring back manufacturing jobs to the United States:

The historic trend of the declining share of jobs in manufacturing in the United States has bedeviled politicians and policymakers over many years. Elected in 2020 in the wake of an economic downturn aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. made the goal of his economic policies to “build back better” and restore the middle class by reviving industrial jobs, especially in the Midwest, which he labeled “growing the economy from the bottom up and the middle out.

The emphasis on manufacturing was reinforced by an economic nationalist goal of returning jobs supposedly sent overseas back to US shores—“making and building it in America,” as the administration proclaimed.

Now Lawrence goes into some detail on Biden administration efforts that are probably worth reviewing:

This emphasis is reflected in the special incentives for US manufacturing in President Biden’s programs. He raised the threshold local content requirement for procurement by the US government. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (also referred to as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law) requires that all iron, steel, manufactured products, and construction materials used in its projects be made in America. The CHIPS and Science Act appropriates $24 billion in tax credits for manufacturing semiconductors in the United States and another $39 billion to provide incentives for investment in chip facilities and equipment in the United States. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provides tax credits for clean energy investments and production and the purchase of electric vehicles (EVs) that are assembled in North America and have batteries that use minerals that are mined and refined in the United States or a country with which the United States has a free trade agreement.

Lawrence’s conclusion is stark and suggests an administration optimism that fails to match the desired growth hoped for:

The administration’s policies have expanded the base of manufacturing employment on the margins in recent years. But despite their appeal, these policies are unlikely to be the key to achieving middle class growth, because manufacturing no longer plays the role it played in the past in providing opportunities for workers without college degrees to join the middle class. Manufacturing can still help achieve other goals, such as providing hardware for the digital revolution; weapons for national security; and the EVs, wind turbines, and solar panels that are vital for decarbonization. But the sector is now too small to play a major role in reviving America’s depressed regions and providing significant opportunities for American workers.

The final conclusion is sobering:

Although it will spur rapid manufacturing employment growth in nontraditional locations, the Biden programs have not created a broad renaissance in US manufacturing, and they are unlikely to do so in the future. The effects of the programs on the Rust Belt states that experienced large manufacturing employment losses since 2000 are likely to be modest, and the impact will not significantly change the sectoral composition of the US labor market.

 

Manufacturing still has an important role to play in providing the goods necessary to rebuild US infrastructure, promote the digital revolution, and ease the transition to a decarbonized US economy. But because of its relatively small overall employment share—and the growing bias toward hiring more educated workers—the sector no longer provides non college workers with the opportunities it used to.

 

Although the Biden programs may achieve important social objectives, they are therefore unlikely to improve the opportunities for most workers without college degrees or help most of the country’s disadvantaged places.

To achieve a broad renaissance, obviously desired by the current administration, other tools are required. Greater targeted financial support and a concerted focus on training workers that in the past have proven difficult to develop in the US political and administrative context are required. It is a steep ask and difficult to achieve.

This Post originally appeared at my Substack Alan’s Newsletter – https://substack.com/home/post/p-150726560

Image Credit: Brookings Institution

 

 

Reshaping the US Global Order Role

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It is not a surprise with a month to go till the US election that ‘folks’ are assessing where the US global order role is, where it should be, or needs or can be, as we look towards a new administration. I have no crystal ball to tell me who is about to win the election and I am not about to contemplate the return of Trump. But I will look, however, at a possible Harris administration and it appears evident that observers and experts are with a month to go reflecting on what’s next for US global leadership.

Let’s start with one who has had responsibility in the near past for US foreign policy. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently penned an assessment of ‘his’ foreign policy in FA, titled, “America’s Strategy of Renewal: Rebuilding Leadership for a New World”. Now you’ll not be surprised that the piece is a narrative and strong expression of policy gone right:

President Biden and Vice President Harris pursued a strategy of renewal, pairing historic investments in competitiveness at home with an intensive diplomatic campaign to revitalize partnerships abroad.

This twin-pillared strategy, they believed, was the best way to disabuse competitors of their assumptions that the United States was declining and diffident.

Blinken acknowledges that US leadership and action was required to meet the challenge of these revisionist powers that appeared to be determined to reshape leadership and the principles of the current global order:

A fierce competition is underway to define a new age in international affairs. A small number of countries—principally Russia, with the partnership of Iran and North Korea, as well as China—are determined to alter the foundational principles of the international system. While their forms of governance, ideologies, interests, and capabilities differ, these revisionist powers all want to entrench autocratic rule at home and assert spheres of influence abroad.

 

They all wish to resolve territorial disputes by coercion or force and weaponize other countries’ economic and energy dependence. And they all seek to erode the foundations of the United States’ strength: its military and technological superiority, its dominant currency, and its unmatched network of alliances and partnerships. While these countries are not an axis, and the administration has been clear that it does not seek bloc confrontation, choices these revisionist powers are making mean we need to act decisively to prevent that outcome.

Implicitly and explicitly Blinken describes what he believes to be a very successful competitive policy with these revisionist actors and most particularly China. As Blinken describes Biden administration policy efforts:

The Biden administration’s commitment to compete vigorously yet responsibly along these lines took away the revisionists’ pretext that the United States was the obstacle to maintaining international peace and stability. It also earned the United States greater trust from its friends—and, along with it, stronger partnerships.

 

Second, we infused U.S. alliances and partnerships with new purpose.We elevated the Quad—the partnership with Australia, India, and Japan—and took concrete steps to realize a shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific, from enhancing maritime security to manufacturing safe, effective vaccines. We launched the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council, marshaling the world’s biggest economic partnership to shape global standards for emerging technologies and protect the United States’ and Europe’s most sensitive innovations.

To Blinken the alliances and partnerships that the US renewed or built were the keys to Biden administration success in a highly competitive world:

From day one, President Biden and Vice President Harris made a foundational choice that in a more competitive and combustible world, the United States cannot go it alone. If America wants to protect its security and create opportunities for its people, it must stand with those who have a stake in a free, open, secure, and prosperous world and stand up to those who threaten that world.

Notwithstanding then the revisionist power efforts to alter the global order, the US and its partners have been able to maintain the free and open global order and limit revisionist efforts to undermine the opportunities for the US and its partners:

The choices the United States makes in the second half of this decisive decade will determine whether this moment of testing remains a time of renewal or returns to a time of regression—whether Washington and its allies can continue to outcompete the forces of revisionism or allow their vision to define the twenty-first century.

Clearly Blinken is referencing the possibility of  a return to Trump. Otherwise Blinken seems to show some content with the actions of the Biden administration. That satisfaction is not shared by all. From the outside today but with experience of serving in the Biden administration another distinct point of you is expressed by a colleague, Jessica Chen Weiss. Jessica was from 2021 to 2022 a senior advisor to the policy planning staff at the U.S. Department of State on a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship for Tenured IR Scholars (IAF-TIRS). Jessica just recently took up a new academic appointment as the David M. Lampton Professor of China Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. and a nonresident senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute Center for China Analysis. Once again in FA, Jessica examines Biden administration foreign policy in a piece titled, “The Case Against the China Consensus”. Jessica does not fall in line with Blinken’s description and actions of recent US foreign policy – its successful competition with the revisionist powers, most notably China. As Jessica describes recent Biden administration actions:

Washington faces growing criticism for pursuing open-ended competition with China without defining what success would look like. Even as China’s coercive capabilities and threatening behavior have rightly focused U.S. attention on the risks to American interests, the absence of clear metrics for success leaves the door open for partisan aspersions of the Biden administration’s approach.

With that Jessica strikes out toward an improved US-China relationship. As she describes it:

Yet beneath this charged atmosphere, ample space for debate and discernment remains. The apparent hardening of a U.S. consensus on China is shallower and wobblier than it appears. In this fluid environment, there is an opportunity for the next presidential administration to develop a more affirmative, less reactive approach, one that dials down the heat and focuses on reducing the risks while preserving the benefits of the vast web of ties that connect the United States and China.

Now it is clear from Jessica’s analysis the current administration has taken steps to at least maintain a balance with China:

The Biden administration, by contrast, has rightly invoked a sense of shared purpose, underlining the urgency of defending an international order in which might does not make right and working with governments of different persuasions to tackle problems that respect no borders or walls.

Still the emphasis from the current administration to compete successfully with China is dominant and leads to significant persistent competition with China that can, unfortunately lead to conflict:

But in the broader U.S. public and policy conversation, the impulse to thwart China often overwhelms efforts to work toward common objectives and advance U.S. interests. Rhetoric about winning the twenty first century reinforces the idea that competition is zero-sum, accelerating a rush on both sides of the Pacific to prepare for conflict and making it all too easy for critics in both societies to deride ordinary forms of diplomatic, commercial, and scientific interaction as naive at best and appeasement at worst. This emphasis on preparing for worst-case scenarios prevails in both countries.

For Jessica, then, the current policy posture is inadequate and maintains a dangerous locked in competition:

To halt this spiral, Beijing and Washington will need to identify the outcomes they wish to see, avoiding measures of success that are defined by slowing down or one-upping the other. Pursuing resilience and deterrence, not primacy or hegemony, would set them on a more stable course. Post–Cold War U.S. unipolarity in global politics was the exception, not the rule. Today, neither China nor the United States can aspire to dominance across every sector and every technology.

Resilience and deterrence, then is the goal. And here is some of what the US and presumably China must do:

It is therefore imperative that China and the United States maintain a degree of integration in order to detect and learn from new advances. If the technological leaders in a given sector are Chinese, Washington should want U.S. firms to have access to the latest innovation. Right now, Chinese manufacturers are far in front in solar, battery, and electric vehicle production. Licensing Chinese technology to construct an electric vehicle factory in the United States, for example, would build domestic expertise and help U.S. automakers transition more quickly with top-of-the-line technology.

Yet it is not clear that within the current US-China competition, and the efforts by this administration to stabilize the relationship – high level discussions including military-to-military discussions – that the US  is not seeking to maintain the economic integration that Jessica suggests is vital. There seems to be in her analysis a hint at least that what is required is the end of competition:

Diversification is healthy, but the United States needs to establish limits on decoupling and “derisking.” …

 

Right now, much of the U.S. public and policy conversation is consumed by how to counter China and defend American workers, infrastructure, technology, and intellectual property against foreign threats. This focus downplays the domestic harms that measures ostensibly aimed at strengthening U.S. national security can have on the health and vibrancy of the United States’ democracy, society, and innovation ecosystem. Getting China right is critical to the United States’ success, both under the next president and for years beyond.

Now positively Jessica does prompt a close look at the state of US-China competition. A closer look at the state of global economic competition is needed and worth engaging but for the moment it would not seem likely that a Harris administration, if she were to win the presidency, would abandon, or at least dramatically diminish political and economic competition between the US and China. And without greater understanding of the goals each seeks, the US and China that is, there is not a strong logic to acting unilaterally.

A close examination, and strong dialogue might provide insight in constructing an altered foreign policy that is in part driven by competition but with much greater bilateral and multilateral actions better able to contain the US-China competition and engage in policies that stabilize the relationship. Deterrence for sure but stronger two-way assurances that lowers the heat on several fronts including: Taiwan, the Indo-Pacific, the South China Sea, nuclear policies and more. We all would benefit from that.

This blog first appeared on my Substack at Alan’s Newsletter

https://open.substack.com/pub/globalsummitryproject/p/reshaping-the-us-global-order-role?r=bj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Image Credit: The Standard

 

The Enduring Weakness of Multilateralism: An Aspect

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Though it was heartening to see the Presidential debate this past week with a strong performance by Vice President Kamala Harris, it was disheartening to see that Donald Trump remains a major force in US politics and still a strong contender notwithstanding some of his wild statements and his conspiracy theory assertions. While the event highlighted the ‘weirdness’ of Donald J Trump, the candidate, the game is not yet won. We may yet see him reoccupy the White House. Such an outcome would threaten the alliance(s) system, global trade and continuing US presence in the current multilateral system driven by Trump’s transactional model of US foreign policy behavior.

Trump’s return would likely drive current US foreign policy ‘over the cliff’. But changes have been underway for some time and many of them are weakening the multilateral system built over many decades. Many foreign policy analysts have focused on the structural elements – notably the decline in the international measures of power of the United States and its impact as a result on the global order. I was struck by a letter titled, “Muster Global Majorities”  prepared by Mark Malloch-Brown. This is just one of nine requested by FP to greet a new US president. Now, Malloch-Brown was the former deputy secretary-general of the UN well aware of the multilateral system and he targeted the decline of the US:

But whoever prevails on Nov. 5—and congratulations, by the way—this will not change the much deeper shifts underway in the distribution of global power and values alignment that are now surfacing at the U.N. and its Bretton Woods cousins, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). They have seen an approximate quadrupling of membership since their post-World War II founding; a more than tripling of global population; and a global GDP that is more than 10 times bigger.

 

But you must see there is a global shift underway, and the United States, more than ever, is not an unchallenged No. 1 but rather a precarious first among equals in a multilateral system and which in responding to wider intellectual and political change in the world resents any claim to monopoly leadership. As Shakespeare observed in his great play on succession and power, Henry IV, Part 2: “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”

Malloch-Brown in his letter, in fact, is pointing to two evident declines: the decline in power of the US in the context of the global system, the structural elements with the rise of China and with the emergence of a number of the Large Emerging Powers, the likes of India, Brazil, Indonesia and more.  But the decline is also evident from a diminishment in US leadership in the global order, the behavioral aspect of any analysis.

While there is a relative decline in the power dimensions for the United States, it is the decline in policy leadership that is in some ways most evident. Take trade. As Alan Beattie has written just recently in the FT article entitled, “Can Globalization Survive the US-China Rift”:

Multilateralism is weak. The US is undermining the WTO by citing a national security loophole to break rules at will. The EU won a case against Indonesia over its nickel export ban, but the WTO’s dysfunctional dispute settlement system has delayed compliance.

 

But this does not mean regional or geopolitical trading blocs will start setting the rules of trade instead. The US talks a good game about building alliances, but the political toxicity of trade deals in Washington stops it offering market access to incentivise countries to join. The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, the US’s main initiative in the Asia-Pacific, is widely regarded as all stick and no carrot.

Rather than a continued reliance on the multilateral rules and the WTO, the multilateral trade institution – of which the US is one of the primary creators –  responsible for managing trade and trade friction, the United States has chosen to neuter the global trade rules by collapsing the trade dispute mechanism of the WTO. The US has turned away as well from promoting freer trade and free trade agreements and has come to rely more and more on protectionism. As pointed out by Bob Davis in his FT piece, “How Washington Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace Protectionism”, he described the US turn to protectionism:

… the president [Biden] made a decision that upended decades of Democratic White House rule. He ordered heavy new tariffs on Chinese imports of high-tech items and continued the massive tariffs he inherited from his Republican predecessor.

 

The significance of the moves—and the challenge that it presents to Biden’s successor—was obscured by the roller-coaster news cycle. But it bears noting: The Biden administration is the first since at least President John F. Kennedy’s time to fail to negotiate a major free trade deal, instead embracing tariffs. Even Trump, the self-proclaimed “Tariff Man,” concluded a significant free trade pact when he replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement with a U.S.-Mexico-Canada deal (USMCA), which toughened rules on auto imports but established liberal rules on digital trade. He also negotiated a smaller digital agreement with Japan.

 

The turnabout is emblematic of a broader change in the U.S. economic and political thinking that is unlikely to be reversed under either a President Trump or Harris. The era of hyperglobalization, which began around 1990 and saw global trade jump by 60 percent in 20 years as supply chains spread across the earth like spiderwebs, has come to an end. We are now in an era of growing protectionism, and as trade growth has stalled, the United States and many other advanced economies have hiked tariffs and begun subsidizing industries that they view as critical to their well-being.

The turnabout with an increasing reliance on tariffs and a more full throated rise of US protectionism in fact ties the US, that is US economic policy to its political-security policy and actions. Davis makes the pointed linkage today between the two for US policy action:

Peter Harrell, the White House’s former senior director for international economics, said the change marks a fundamental rethinking of U.S. trade policy. “We are in an era of geopolitical competition with China,” he said. “That means we aren’t going to accord China the same trading privileges and rights” accorded to allies—despite World Trade Organization requirements to treat members equally.

 

It boils down to the fact that the economic juice [from cutting tariffs] was not worth the political squeeze,” said Evan Medeiros, a Georgetown University China expert who had been an official on Obama’s National Security Council.

 

In the second part of its decision, the administration ramped up some tariffs to block Chinese imports in areas where the United States was spending billions of dollars on subsidies to create or strengthen a domestic industry.

Tariffs were quadrupled to 100 percent on Chinese electric vehicles this year, as [Lael] Brainard had advocated, doubled to 50 percent on Chinese semiconductors and solar cells, either this year or next, and tripled to 25 percent on EV batteries this year. Even low-tech Chinese syringes, which had previously been shipped duty-free, now face 50 percent tariffs as a spur to boost domestic production.

 

The primary reason for the U.S. turn to protectionism is the growing economic and military challenge from China. But it also reflects a profound change in ideology: The gains from trade—lower prices, overall improvements in living standards, greater competition—are no longer seen by many political leaders as worth the downsides in the loss of manufacturing jobs, dependence on imports from adversaries such as China and Russia, and political polarization. The Trump administration, packed with anti-free traders, gave a big push to this neo-protectionism; the Biden administration has confirmed and deepened the shift.

The bottom line is that geopolitical tensions, particularly the deep US-China competition, has undermined US commitment to a multilateral system that the US was a principal architect in creating and maintaining over many decades. This outcome to date is deeply troubling.

Image Credit: CNBC

US Tensions Over a Leading Role

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So, I was ruminating a bit on the question of US diplomacy coming off of the previous Substack Post and particularly the Jessica Matthews’s targeting of Biden foreign policy in the upcoming Foreign Affairs article “What Was the Biden Doctrine? Leadership Without Hegemony”. As a reminder, this is what she wrote and I quoted in last week’s Substack:

 

But he [Joe Biden] has carried out a crucial task: shifting the basis of American foreign policy from an unhealthy reliance on military intervention to the active pursuit of diplomacy backed by strength.

 

He has won back the trust of friends and allies, built and begun to institutionalize a deep American presence in Asia, restored the United States’ role in essential multilateral organizations and agreements, and ended the longest of the country’s “forever wars”—a step none of his three predecessors had the courage to take.

 

All of this happened in the face of grievous new threats from China and Russia, two great powers newly allied around the goal of ending American primacy. Biden’s response to the most pressing emergency of his term—Russia’s brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022—has been both skillful and innovative, demonstrating a grasp of the traditional elements of statecraft along with a willingness to take a few unconventional steps. … But he has carried out a crucial task: shifting the basis of American foreign policy from an unhealthy reliance on military intervention to the active pursuit of diplomacy backed by strength.

Now I concluded that analysis with a Matthews’s quote with my concluding remark: “Now it seems to me there are questions over the effective use of diplomacy of this Administration but that is for another day.” Well this is another day and I want to focus a little on the current effectiveness of US diplomatic policy.

There appears to be a growing split over whether the US has had, or should I say, will choose to move forward with sharper diplomatic policies and initiatives rather than, if I can put it bluntly, ‘Reach for the Gun’. In fact, in the end, there are questions of whether the US will involve itself at all in serious but distant conflicts especially in the face of seriously weakened multilateral institutions. The foreign policy question is actually two questions then: will a Harris Administration respond to foreign policy crises with sharp diplomacy or resort to force and even more dramatically not only how the US may engage but whether it will engage at all.

Shortly after Harris and Waltz assumed the mantle of leadership of the Democratic Party that a strong positive view was identified. For instance Mark Hannah and Rachel Rizzo wrote the following in FP:

When applied to foreign policy, it could inform a pragmatic, forward-looking realism that’s all too rare in Washington. This sentiment aligns with a growing expert consensus.

 

A recent Carnegie Endowment for International Peace study concluded that the United States’ current approach to the world is “poorly adapted to the challenges of today and tomorrow.” It also noted a widespread demand among analysts for “a major strategic reorientation.” This reorientation could be from an everything-everywhere-all-at-once approach to a more judicious and strategic use of American might.

Let’s start with what appears to be the positive efforts of the current Biden policy efforts and conjure it  as a likely course of action for a new Harris Administration.  The immediate diplomatic approach is the recent Biden actions focused on its key geopolitical concern – that is its perceived strategic competitor and threat – its biggest rival – China. Notwithstanding the tough back and forth the two have undertaken recent discussions that appear to be designed to stabilize this most difficult bilateral relationship. The evidence for this is the recently concluded visit of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to China. This most recent meeting with Wang Yi who is the chief Chinese foreign affairs official for President Xi was not the first. For Sullivan and Wang this was one of a series of interactions as described by Demetri Sevastopulo in the FT:

It was the first of several secret rendezvous around the world, including Malta and Thailand, now called the “strategic channel”. Sullivan will arrive in Beijing on Tuesday [August 27th] for another round of talks with Wang in what will be his first visit to China as US national security adviser.

 

While the backchannel has not resolved the fundamental issues between the rival superpowers, says Rorry Daniels, a China expert at the Asia Society Policy Institute, it has aided each’s understanding of the other. “It’s been very successful in short-term stabilisation, communicating red lines and previewing actions that might be seen as damaging to the other side,” she says.

The two leading powers do not see ‘eye-to-eye’ on the role of diplomatic interactions.  China in particular does not accept the framework of stabilization in the context of competition – the US view. Still, there does appear to be a certain diplomatic stabilization as described by Sevastopulo leading up to this most recent series of meetings in Beijing:

Sullivan strived to get Wang to understand the new reality — that the nations were in a competition but one that should not preclude co-operation. “That was a really hard jump for the Chinese,” says the second US official. “They wanted to define the relationship neatly [as] we’re either partners or we’re competitors.”

 

The Chinese official said China did not accept the argument. “Wang Yi explained very clearly that you cannot have co-operation, dialogue and communication . . . and at the same time undercut China’s interests.

 

They discussed possible deals for a summit, including a compromise that would involve the US lifting sanctions on a Chinese government forensic science institute in return for China cracking down on the export of chemicals used to make fentanyl. They also talked about resurrecting the military-to-military communication channels China had shut after Pelosi visited Taiwan. And they discussed creating an artificial intelligence dialogue.

 

Rush Doshi, a former NSC official who attended the meetings with Wang, says it was important to explain to China what the US was doing — and not doing. “Diplomacy is how you clear up misperception and avoid escalation and manage competition. It’s actually not at odds with competition but part of any sustainable competitive strategy.

And in this most recent set of meetings in Beijing, Sullivan was able to meet not just President Xi, important in and of itself,  but critically a meeting with General Zhang Youxia:

Mr. Sullivan’s meeting with Gen. Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, was the first in years between a senior American official and a vice chair of the commission, which oversees China’s armed forces and is chaired by Mr. Xi.

The Biden Administration regarded the Beijing meetings, therefore, as important diplomatic effort in stabilizing great power relations:

Sullivan tells the FT that he was under no illusions that the channel would convince China to change its policies, but he stressed that it had played an instrumental role in helping to shift the dynamic in US-China relations.

All you can do is take their policy, our policy, and then try to manage it so that we can take the actions we need to take and maintain stability in the relationship,” Sullivan says. “We have been able to accomplish both of those things.”

If managing great power relations was the US diplomatic goal, that seems to be successfully achieved for the moment. But that positive framing is not replicated in wider global order relations and the US efforts or lack thereof. Thus, the assessment of wider US diplomatic efforts is not nearly as upbeat. This is the message of Alexander Clarkson,  a lecturer in European studies at King’s College London in his analysis of US foreign policy in his WPR article titled: “For Much of the World, the Post-American Order Is Already Here”:

This gradual waning of American influence outside of core areas of strategic focus rarely features in ferocious debates in Washington between those who believe that the U.S. should remain deeply involved in global affairs and the so-called Restrainers on the left and MAGA Republicans on the right who are skeptical of security commitments outside U.S. borders.

 

The limits of the United States’ ability to influence developments on the ground in destabilizing conflicts, or the responses of states engaged in them, have been particularly visible with civil wars in Myanmar and Sudan that barely feature in domestic American news cycles. In both cases, U.S. policymakers distracted by developments elsewhere failed to anticipate emerging escalation dynamics and then failed to develop the strategic leverage needed to rein in brutal armies and militias whose backing from other states rapidly widened devastating wars.

 

Washington’s flailing in the face of conflicts within Myanmar and Sudan that have now become wider geopolitical crises is a product of long-term shifts in the global balance of power. While Washington will continue to play a decisive role in managing conflicts that involve great power competition, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the tensions between Israel and Iran and China’s strategic assertiveness under Xi Jinping, in many other parts of the world the U.S. impact will be limited to diplomatic press releases expressing grave concern.

Clarkson sees US actions and inactions as a reshaping of the global balance of power. But I suspect it is an unwillingness to exercise direct diplomatic action to what is seen to be a distant conflict. It is also an evident result of the undermining, including by the United States, of effective diplomatic action by the UN. The weakening of the formal institutions – the WTO in trade policy and the UN in security and peace efforts – is now ‘coming home to roost’ at the US doorstep. US inaction is matched by the inability of these and other formal institutions to take on, stabilize and hopefully resolve difficult and potentially threatening conflicts.

The Harris Administration, if it wins, needs to address the manner of engagement but in too many instances the likely failure of foreign policy engagement at all. Much is currently wanting in US foreign policy. It is unclear if a Harris Administration is likely to tackle, and if so, how, these difficult foreign policy questions.

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This Post was originally posted at Alan’s Newsletter. Your comments are welcome as well as free subscriptions to Alan’s Newsletter

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Contemplating in these Early Days a Harris Foreign Policy

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With just over 70 days until the US election, and with the certainty now of a new 47th President – either Harris or former President Trump – it is not surprising that analysts are scrambling to assess the current US foreign policy course and eyeing its new possible directions.

Obviously, the impact of a return to Trump freezes one’s mind with its MAGA trumpeting, its distaste for allies, and its cozying up to autocrats whether in Russia or North Korea. I’m not going to go there for the moment: the consequences are too depressing to dwell on at this moment in the election cycle. While we may be driven to come back to this depending, of course, on the course of the next 70 days. But for the moment, and just coming out of the Chicago Convention, let’s focus on where we have recently been with a Biden Administration and what direction we might be pointed toward with a Harris win.

A number of folk, including some former Democratic officials, have put their ‘thinking caps on’ already and are analyzing the Biden foreign policy and extending it to a possible new Democratic Administration. It particularly has resonance as Harris has been involved in this Biden Administration.

We start with the current state of play of globalization. Many examining its immediate health focus in particular on US export controls on technology and the maintenance of tariffs against China by the Biden Administration. Analysts also focus on the dramatic increase in sanctions against Russia and those aiding Russia’s war against Ukraine. My colleague Dan Drezner from Drezner’s World focused in a recent Post on the immediate state of global economic integration:

There comes a point when one has to question the resiliency of globalization as we know it. The question is whether that point is right now. For example, the IMF recently noted that despite widespread perceptions, the current global economy is more globalized than a generation ago: “A global increase in the foreign value-added content of exports from about 19 percent in the mid-1990s to 28 percent in 2022 points to continued deepening of trade integration. Meanwhile, services are able to flow more easily across borders thanks to the rise of digital technology.

 

The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World tends to be more sanguine about globalization persisting despite loud pronouncements that it has come to an end. Great power governments and violent non-state actors have done their darndest to push the world towards economic segmentation, and it just ain’t happening. Improvements in information and communication technologies have lowered the costs of cross-border flows. Even if states are erecting higher cross-border barriers, that has been counteracted by declining costs more generally. … I think analysts have to stop being surprised that global economic flows keep rising despite all the geopolitical shocks. Economic globalization continues to be the Economic Engine that Could.

So globalization is still in place. Now let’s turn to the Biden framing of foreign policy recognizing that the Vice President, and now the Democratic candidate for President has played a role in the foreign policy of this current Biden Administration. I was interested in the article by Ben Rhodes in Foreign Affairs, titled ““A Foreign Policy for the World as It Is: Biden and the Search for a New American Strategy”. Rhodes, by the way, served as U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2017. Ben underscored how difficult it has been to continue to lead, which it seems remained a Biden foreign policy goal:

It also suggested [the start of the Biden presidency] that the United States could reclaim its self-conception as a virtuous hegemon, that it could make the rules-based international order great again. Yet even though a return to competent normalcy was in order, the Biden administration’s mindset of restoration has occasionally struggled against the currents of our disordered times.

The shadow of Trump left this current Administration struggling to maintain a relatively benign leadership. But in addition, as Ben argues:

Second, the old rules-based international order doesn’t really exist anymore. Sure, the laws, structures, and summits remain in place.

 

But core institutions such as the UN Security Council and the World Trade Organization are tied in knots by disagreements among their members. Russia is committed to disrupting U.S.-fortified norms. China is committed to building its own alternative order. On trade and industrial policy, even Washington is moving away from core tenets of post–Cold War globalization.

Possibly most damaging  to the order – and US leadership – is US commitment to the maintenance of the international rule of law. Most pointedly in this regard is the failure of the Biden Administration to more forcefully insist with the current Israeli government that it cease and desist from Israel’s destructive actions against the civilian populations in Gaza in its quest to dismantle Hamas. Such a failure undermines claims to a benign leadership of the global order, if such is in fact possible.

Yet a number of notable analysts remain convinced that the Biden Administration has successfully navigated toward a more stable global order with strong US leadership. Take the example of Jessica Matthews who is currently Distinguished Fellow of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and is the former President of CEIP. In her recent article for Foreign Affairs for its forthcoming September/October issue, titled, “What Was the Biden Doctrine?: Leadership Without Hegemony” Matthew praises US foreign policy action even in the face of major power opposition. And Matthews writes:

But he has carried out a crucial task: shifting the basis of American foreign policy from an unhealthy reliance on military intervention to the active pursuit of diplomacy backed by strength.

 

He has won back the trust of friends and allies, built and begun to institutionalize a deep American presence in Asia, restored the United States’ role in essential multilateral organizations and agreements, and ended the longest of the country’s “forever wars”—a step none of his three predecessors had the courage to take.

 

All of this happened in the face of grievous new threats from China and Russia, two great powers newly allied around the goal of ending American primacy. Biden’s response to the most pressing emergency of his term—Russia’s brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022—has been both skillful and innovative, demonstrating a grasp of the traditional elements of statecraft along with a willingness to take a few unconventional steps.

 

Biden’s approach to Beijing has occasionally reflected a disappointing degree of continuity with that of Trump and has fostered uncertainty over Taiwan, the most sensitive issue in U.S.-Chinese relations. But unlike the former president, Biden has embedded his China policy in a vigorous matrix of new and restored alliances across Asia. He has arguably pulled off the long-sought U.S. “pivot” to the region, without using that term.

 

Yet his legacy to date suggests the lineaments of a new approach well suited to today’s world. Most important among them is a resolve to eschew wars to remake other countries and to restore diplomacy as the central tool of foreign policy.

Matthews is strongly upbeat and concludes with this paean to Biden foreign policy:

No matter the answers, and despite the symptoms of debilitating political polarization at home, Biden has made profound changes in foreign policy—not to accommodate American decline but to reflect the country’s inherent strength.

Now it seems to me there are questions over the effective use of diplomacy of this Administration but that is for another day. In the current moment this upbeat assessment is carried forward by: the early days following the Harris nomination and in light of her initial positioning set out in her acceptance speech at coming out of Chicago. It appears that the general reaction to her speech was positive including her statements on foreign policy that seemed to position her as forceful on human rights but also on defense and the US security alliances.  From folks at Brookings, specifically Elaine Kamarck, a Senior Fellow of Governance Studies and William A. Galston, a Senior Fellow of Governance Studies, came the following analysis:

Surprising some observers, Harris laid out a tough agenda on defense and foreign policy, promising to maintain the strongest and most lethal fighting force in the world, retain our leading position in NATO, defend Ukraine against Russian aggression, stand up against Iran and North Korea, and take democracy’s side in the struggle with tyranny. She articulated a firm pro-Israel stance while mentioning the suffering of Gaza’s inhabitants and endorsing Palestinians’ right to dignity and self-determination.

 

Taken as a whole, Harris’s acceptance speech positioned her as a center-left Democrat in the mold of Joe Biden rather than Bernie Sanders. It embraced what she termed the pride and privilege of being an American. And, as if to show that Republicans have not cornered the market on patriotism and American exceptionalism, she told her audience that together, they had the opportunity to write the next chapter of the most extraordinary story ever told. She ended her speech in the most traditional way imaginable, by asking God to bless the United States of America.

And, finally, there is this slightly surprising insight from Michael Hirsh from FP where he describes a view that Harris brought great understanding of new technologies and the threats that such technologies bring to foreign policy:

There is not much time to know a great deal more about her approach to foreign policy. But it’s also clear that Harris has created her own path on foreign policy—and that she represents the next generation of national security experts steeped in newer, high-tech threats that the Cold War generation represented by Biden is less familiar with. These encompass an array of ​​cyber threats, including election hacking and surveillance from abroad, allegedly including from state-run companies such as China’s Huawei; threats from space, such as reported Russian or Chinese plots to disable GPS systems; and over-the-horizon risks from artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

In her speech at the Democratic National Convention accepting the nomination Thursday night, Harris briefly mentioned the high-tech threat while affirming that she would prove a tough commander in chief who would “ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”

I will make sure that we lead the world into the future on space and artificial intelligence; that America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century, and that we strengthen, not abdicate, our global leadership,” she said.

We may need to wait till she becomes President –  if that occurs – with November 5th. But we will continue to monitor what she says about a Harris foreign policy.

Image Credit: Vox

This Post originally appeared at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter.

https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/contemplating-in-these-early-days