On January 20, 2021, Joseph R. Biden was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States. The time when he enters the second part of his mandate – and where rumors are buzzing about his possible candidacy for a second – is also that of a first and provisional assessment of his foreign policy, like that of the crystallization of a doctrine for the years to come.
Unsurprisingly, Jake Sullivan, his national security adviser, gave a thumbs up to American foreign policy. The president would have already achieved the three national security objectives he had set himself. Rebuild America’s economy and support the middle class. Revitalize NATO and rely on alliances across the globe. Finally, withdraw the troops from Afghanistan.
The first two points are consistent with what Joe Biden himself announced when he took office, proclaiming that “there is no longer a dividing line between domestic policy and foreign policy” and that Washington must “carrying out a foreign policy for the middle class”. They are also consistent with the 2020 Democratic Party platform, which sought to reconcile the legacy of the Obama years with the party’s growing left wing.
This strategy has therefore resulted in the return of the state, in addition to the market, to the United States. In addition to massive investments in the defense sector (after falling in the early 2010s, the defense budget has been skyrocketing for several years and will be well over $800 billion in 2023), this return is illustrated by equally massive investments in civilian life: Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (2021): $550 billion; CHIPS and Science Act (2022): $280 billion for microelectronics; Inflation Reduction Act (2022): 391 billion dollars, with in particular massive investments in clean energies.
“Narrow Lattice of Strong Relationships”
A first characteristic of the Biden doctrine is therefore a distancing, however relative, from the neoliberal doctrine, also illustrated by the agreement on the minimum 15% taxation of multinationals, concluded in October 2021 within the framework of the OECD. . A second characteristic is the return to multilateralism. “America is back”, was Biden’s campaign slogan. Back, yes, but where? Certainly, in international forums and alliances, as was illustrated by the reintegration of the United States into the Paris Agreements on climate or their return to the World Health Organization (WHO). In addition, the United States has embarked on the creation of a “narrow lattice of strong relations” that spans the planet. The page of globalization seems to have been turned, in the sense that the United States now wishes to go beyond the classic free trade agreements in favor of models like the IPEF, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity. Launched in May 2022 by President Biden, it brings together fourteen countries in the Indo-Pacific region (but not China) and 40% of global GNP. The Indo-Pacific region is considered the main strategic challenge for the United States. IPEF is based on four pillars: international trade; supply chains; clean energy and infrastructure; taxation and the fight against corruption. The United States also relies on a myriad of alliances or forums: the QUAD (Australia, India, Japan, United States); AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, United States, 2021); the European Union-United States Trade and Technology Council, 2021) or the I2U2 group (India, Israel, United Arab Emirates, United States, 2022).
As for the third point mentioned by Jake Sullivan, and presented as a success, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, it is certainly in line with the platform of the Democratic Party which intended to put an end to “endless wars”. Was it really a success? Yes, in the sense that the United States could not find a way out of the longest war in which it had ever participated. No, given the disastrous situation in the country and because the withdrawal undoubtedly contributed to encouraging Russia to intervene in Ukraine, like China to pursue an increasingly aggressive policy.
With regard to Ukraine, Biden’s position of firmness since February 24, 2022 has enabled him to restore his image, without however being able to hide the fact that he did not manage to dissuade Vladimir Putin from intervening, if only by clearly ruling out the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO. The Russian intervention in Ukraine, like its alliance with Iran, has also derailed the strategy set out by Joseph Biden, namely the return of the United States to the Iranian nuclear agreement. While Barack Obama, rare enough to note, beat his neck for not having supported the Iranian opposition enough in 2009 on the occasion of the Green Movement, Joseph Biden is today forced to increase the sanctions against the Iran, and not to fall back into the same trap, and to support Ukraine.
Conflicting goals
The crystallization of the Biden doctrine resulted in the publication of a report on the National Security Strategy (National Security StrategyNSS) at the end of 2022. In the vast “strategic competition” to define the “post-post-Cold War” world, the United States faces first and foremost the People’s Republic of China and to Russia (and in the alternative to Iran or North Korea): “The People’s Republic of China displays the intention, and increasingly the ability, to reshape the international order in a way that favors him.”
The NSS distinguishes two major strategic challenges. In addition to the one mentioned by President Biden in his preface, namely the competition to know what the world will be like now that the three decades of the post-Cold War era are closing, there is a second category, called the “shared challenges”. . These are essentially transnational problems, which require cooperation between all to tackle them: climate change; food insecurity; pandemics; terrorism; energy crises or even inflation.
How to meet the “shared challenges” by cooperating with increasingly powerful autocracies and with which the United States clash for the definition of the world of tomorrow? In an attempt to overcome this aporia, the United States proposes a “two-track” strategy (dual track). Way One: Work with any country, including US competitors, to address these shared challenges. Second way: to strengthen the relations of the United States with the democracies, the heart of their alliances, precisely by creating “a tight latticework of relationships that are strong, resilient, mutually reinforcing and which prove all that democracies can bring to their people and in the world”.
The ace ! The way to take the first path is very little explained. There lies one of the weak points of the Biden doctrine. One could even say that the goals of the United States are contradictory. In the case of China, the United States intends to deny it the means to obtain a whole series of so-called fundamental technologies, from semi-conductors to artificial intelligence via biotechnologies. It is true that China has lowered a “Silk Curtain” (Carl Delfeld) over the Indo-Pacific, from the Sea of Japan to the Strait of Malacca, passing through that of Taiwan. Unlike the Iron Curtain, it is a line that is both moving with events and permeable to cyberattacks and international trade, for example. It is no less dangerous, quite the contrary, because it is strewn with potential points of serious crisis, the perfect example of which is Taiwan.
Yet the Biden Doctrine asserts that the United States will succeed in meeting the two challenges before it: beating its rivals in the “strategic competition” which opposes it, while working with them on the “shared challenges”. It remains to be seen whether they will manage to move forward in these two ways by convincing their rivals to work with them while competing with them… The equation seems difficult to solve.
To succeed, the Biden administration intends, finally, to rely on a doctrine of “integrated deterrence”. In order to dissuade China, Russia, or any other country from entering into a conflict or even from reaching its threshold by stirring up tensions, the United States intends to no longer rely solely on its conventional or nuclear forces. “Integrated deterrence”, which covers all regions of the globe, all degrees of tension or conflict intensity, all areas, whether military, economic or otherwise, all United States allies and all resources of the latter, aims to make the potential adversaries of the United States understand that hostile action on their part, in any field whatsoever, would trigger consequences “at any time and in all fields”.
The post-Cold War era is therefore over. That of “integrated deterrence” begins.
*Historian, professor at Paul-Valéry University in Montpellier and author of Richard Nixon (Fayard).