Biden’s Foreign-Policy Blast From the Past He thinks liberal multilateralism will tame China, Russia and woke Democrats. By Walter Russell Mead
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-foreign-policy-blast-from-the-past-11594680389?mod=opinion_lead_pos10
Optimism is a rare commodity in this difficult year, but I came away from a conversation with Anthony Blinken, Joe Biden’s senior foreign-policy adviser, believing the former vice president’s campaign is confident that the old-time Democratic policy playbook will bring success abroad and at home.
This sort of optimism, the belief that working hard and sticking to your principles will bring results, is a defining characteristics of the American spirit. Pessimists don’t change countries and cultures in hope of building a better life. And a nation of pessimists produces few world-class innovators and entrepreneurs.
In foreign affairs the case for optimism is limited. A nation of pessimists wouldn’t have come up with the Marshall Plan—but neither would it have overthrown Moammar Gadhafi, certain a more peaceful Libya would emerge.
Team Biden’s optimism reflects a faith in the classic pillars of Cold War-era Democratic policy: At home, a regulated market economy and government that attends to the concerns of key Democratic interest groups can produce the middle-class affluence that makes the U.S. model admired and envied around the world. Abroad, the principles of liberal multilateralism—supplemented when absolutely necessary by the American military and a willingness to use it—can bring a critical mass of the world’s powers into broad alignment with core U.S. objectives.
The Blinken—and presumably the Biden—diagnosis of the “new world disorder” that has disrupted the international system is simple. While China’s rise and Russia’s turn to the dark side complicate foreign policy, the ideas and institutions of the liberal internationalist order are failing not because the world is fundamentally changing but because the global liberal system has been starved of a critical ingredient in the Trump years: American support.
The Biden team believes that a renewed and re-engaged U.S. can revitalize the World Trade Organization even as it pushes for higher environmental and labor standards; that American leadership can restore coherence and coordination, conspicuously lacking today, to North Atlantic Treaty Organization and European Union foreign policy; and that the U.S. can develop a position of strength vis-à-vis both China and Russia as it rallies its allies.
Likewise, in this view, by re-entering the Iran nuclear deal America will win the support from its negotiating partners needed to get an even better deal from Tehran. The U.S. can reduce the flows of migrants by improving conditions in their home countries. America can bring reluctant partners like New Delhi and Beijing along on climate change even as it pressures them to become upstanding members of the liberal world order. Washington can make India a core partner in its global coalition to limit China’s geopolitical ambitions even as it pushes New Delhi on human-rights and labor standards.
There is one conspicuous exception to this optimistic outlook: relations with Moscow. A Biden administration won’t be looking for a reset, a grand bargain, or anything more than a businesslike relationship with Vladimir Putin. Democrats haven’t been this hawkish on Russia since the Kennedy administration.
On Israel, Mr. Biden and his advisers are prepared to stiff the woke left. The relationship with Israel, Mr. Blinken told me, is fundamental to U.S. Middle East policy. Annexations on the West Bank will complicate the relationship. A Biden administration would strongly argue against them and press for a two-state solution, but Israel policy will be shaped by establishment Democrats, not by the Squad.
Camp Biden, it seems clear, thinks it can tame woke Democrats without losing their support in November. Overall, it believes a return to Cold War liberal orthodoxies about generous domestic spending targeting key Democratic interest groups can restore party unity. Massive investments in education (in ways that benefit teachers unions), climate policies including huge support for green infrastructure projects, and health-care spending will be offered to satisfy the base, leaving the far left on the sidelines. Those willing to compromise can partake of the bounty of power; the rest can gnash their teeth in the outer darkness.
Optimism at home, optimism abroad. It is an appealing program, especially for many voters tired of the fire and fury of the Trump presidency. But this is a complex agenda with many moving parts. Will it work? Can the old Democratic playbook deliver the required results?
Three big things have to go right for the Biden strategy to succeed. A wave of new business and financial regulations and generous funding of Democratic interest groups combined with higher taxes must ignite economic growth. Leftists must accept a somewhat interventionist and pro-Israel global stance in exchange for domestic largess. And a renewed American commitment to liberal internationalist foreign policy must stabilize a tottering world system.
From a centrist Democratic perspective, this looks less like a riverboat gamble than bedrock party orthodoxy. Team Biden believes that this is how the world works; in 2021 we may learn if that optimism is really based in reality.
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