America is at that juncture, when its global standing and its ability to shape outcomes in the international system is under critical scrutiny. When President Joe Biden took office after the disruptive four years of the Trump presidency, he promised to ¡°restore¡± and ¡°bring back¡± America¡¯s moral and material status in the world.?
A year later, the United States continues to battle challenges that are much deeper and structural, than the impact of Trump. It is that phase in the life of a great power, when it can no longer ignore the tectonic forces of a changing balance of power, not only in terms of its competition with the nearest peer, but in its capability to affect regional outcomes to its favour. From the Afghanistan withdrawal to the Taiwan flashpoint and the emerging crisis over Ukraine, the plate is full for President Biden for the remainder of his term.?
Biden¡¯s team started by recalling the often-used rhetoric that foreign policy starts at home, and asking for foreign policy decisions to be primarily based on the metric of how it best served the American people. President Biden inherited a deeply polarised American electorate, and racial tensions soaring new heights in American society.?
Early last year, the violence and chaos that engulfed the U.S. Capitol Hill and the uncertainty over peaceful power transfer to President Biden severely dented America¡¯s image globally. From economic regeneration, battling COVID-19, dealing with climate change, building new-age infrastructure and ending the war in Afghanistan, Biden had his eyes set on making decisions that would ultimately be in the interest of the American people.?
However, one year into the job, a hard reality now stares Biden, that foreign policy may begin at home, but it does not end at home. Setting the American house in order, does not come at the expense of America¡¯s image as a global power and the credibility of being a security guarantor to a number of countries across the world.?
America¡¯s hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan, overnight changed the dynamics of power there. That Washington was withdrawing was a foregone conclusion but the lack of strategy in a 20-year-old war left many questioning the credibility of American commitments and guarantees in other geopolitical hotspots.?
It has been an uphill task for the Biden administration to reassure allies and partners that America¡¯s withdrawal from Afghanistan and the fall of Kabul to the Taliban should not be automatically construed as Washington¡¯s willingness to surrender its security commitments elsewhere. From the Taiwan flashpoint to the Ukraine crisis, Biden¡¯s presidency has had to contend with old and new geopolitical currents.?
The complexity of holding on to its old allies and building new strategic partners has thrown upon a challenge of new foreign policy dexterity that Washington may not be accustomed to. The way Washington handled the AUKUS deal while understandable from the point of countering Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific, opened new wounds in its transatlantic ties with France.?
As the United States builds new strategic arrangements like the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), the developments over Ukraine and the shape of things to come in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) throws open the question of handling the equally significant U.S.-Russia equation.?
No doubt the U.S.-China strategic competition will remain the primary occupation of the Biden presidency or for that matter any succeeding one in the near future. Restoring U.S. credibility and global influence, requires asking what was lost in the Trump era and what was gained, and not just a blanket assumption that it was all zero and minus during those four years.?
Watchers of American foreign policy still see a sizeable gap in the trade competition with China, and the absence of any pragmatic American led alternative to Beijing¡¯s economic restructuring of the international system. Infrastructure and connectivity projects remains a major component that needs urgent attention.?
There is a lot on paper and in vision, but any real time answer to the China¡¯s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) remains desired but not delivered. The very point of deterring Chinese aggression not only requires a recalibration of American responses, but also a clearer view of how to diplomatically and materially support like-minded partners in the same pursuit.?
Is Russia a secondary question, and a secondary player in America¡¯s calculations of the new strategic competition? NATO and any prospect of new members in the group from the post-Soviet space is a major boiling point for Moscow, and a future assessment of European geopolitics has to include one of Russia¡¯s perception of its own sphere of influence and its willingness for assertive actions.?
It is a double whammy of sorts for the Biden presidency to battle the China and Russia challenge, or for that matter, the outcomes of a China-Russia alliance. Unlike in the Cold War, when differences between the Soviet Union and China, presented an opportunity of U.S.-China rapprochement, there does not seem any immediate prospect of love lost between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, which could present Washington with such a strategic gambit.?
Therefore, manoeuvring new geopolitical tides across the Atlantic and Pacific theatres and engineering strategic stability will remain a primary challenge for Biden¡¯s presidency, and a longer-term challenge for future presidencies. The Biden administration needs to re-evaluate and build on its interim national security strategic guidance to exude a clearer strategic outlook, and a pragmatic sense of mutual expectations between Washington and its allies or partners.
*The Author currently teaches at the Amity Institute of International Studies (AIIS), Amity University, Noida. He is a regular commentator on international affairs and India¡¯s foreign policy. The views expressed in the article are author's own.