America’s Back—Against a Wall Three problems stand athwart Biden’s plans for a rules-based international order. By Walter Russell Mead
https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-backagainst-a-wall-11616452400?mod=opinion_lead_pos9
Anyone who thought international politics would calm down once Donald Trump left center stage has had a rude awakening. After the Alaska confrontation between top U.S. and Chinese officials and the slanging match between Presidents Biden and Vladimir Putin, the world is as fraught as ever. American relations with Russia are at their lowest ebb since the Kennedy administration and U.S.-China relations at their frostiest since Henry Kissinger went to China in 1971, while Beijing and Moscow are more closely aligned than at any time since the death of Stalin.
It is not just the big boys who are testing the Biden team. Officials at Washington’s Fort McNair tightened security after reports of Iranian threats against the facility. North Korea is said to be moving toward new tests of long-range missiles. The Taliban announced that it plans to impose “Islamic rule” on Afghanistan when American forces leave. Meanwhile, U.S. Special Forces have arrived in Mozambique to train local troops in the face of a major offensive by ISIS-aligned militia groups. Authorities in Belarus have largely crushed the democracy movement in that country, and the Burmese military, despite facing unprecedented opposition at home and criticism abroad, shows no sign of relaxing its grip on power.
Relations with allies are also bumpy. The Biden administration threatened sanctions against European companies participating in the Nord Stream 2 project. And on a recent trip to Delhi, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned India against purchasing S-400 missile systems from Russia.
Bad relations with China and Russia and the troubled state of the world can’t be blamed on the Biden team, but the ideas driving this administration’s foreign policy are heading for severe and serious tests. Central to the Biden approach is the belief that the path to global stability involves reinvigoration of American leadership in the service of the “rules-based international order,” sometimes called Rubio. Supporting international institutions, promoting human rights and pushing back against revisionist powers may cause short-term disruptions until adversaries recognize the strength of the U.S. position, but ultimately a principled and forward-looking American stand will prevail.
This would be a happy outcome, and Monday’s announcements of sanctions against Chinese officials and a firm involved in the repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang by the European Union, Canada, the U.S. and United Kingdom offers hope that allied cooperation will grow. But there are three big problems with this strategy, and the administration needs to brace for even more turmoil.
The first is that Russia and China are convinced that the U.S. has sunk into irreversible decline. Despite Russia’s economic problems, Mr. Putin has been gleefully and successfully defying Washington since his 2008 invasion of Georgia. In China a long record of economic progress, capped—as official numbers tell it—by suppressing Covid-19, has ignited a sense of triumphalism. Biden administration evocations of American values sound to Chinese Communist Party ears like 19th-century Qing Dynasty officials bleating obliviously about Chinese superiority as the Middle Kingdom fell helplessly behind the West.
What this means in practical terms is that both countries will take a lot of convincing that “America is back.” Persuading them may require more toughness and risk-taking than Team Biden can live with.
The second problem is Europe. Washington’s Asian allies are for the most part so worried about China that they welcome all the American leadership they can get. Europe is a different matter. China is far away, and Russia poses little direct threat to countries like Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Curious observers should know more after Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s scheduled meetings this week with European officials, but Team Biden’s bet on a robust trans-Atlantic response in defense of the Rubio looks shaky. As the EU sinks into yet another round of economic stagnation and internal wrangling following its shambolic vaccine rollout, it may not be much help beyond imposing the occasional round of largely symbolic sanctions.
The third problem is trade. The part of the Rubio that most foreign countries care most about is access to U.S. markets. During the Cold War, American policy makers believed that opening U.S. markets, even without full reciprocity from trade partners, was vital to the network of alliances Washington was building around the world. Neither Biden Democrats nor Trump Republicans are interested in the kind of economic statesmanship that seeks to build American alliances through nonreciprocal trade liberalization. It remains to be seen how attractive a Rubio without U.S. trade sweeteners will be.
The outlook is not all bad. China’s capacity for self-sabotage in foreign policy is unmatched since Wilhelm II. Russia’s continuing economic stagnation limits Mr. Putin’s reach. America possesses an array of assets that no rival can match. But even if Mr. Biden’s goal of restoring global stability through renewed U.S. leadership is not a mission impossible, achieving it will require a mix of strategic insight, steely will and ideological flexibility that no president has brought to the table since the end of the Cold War.
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