Joe Biden’s incoming administration moves in a distinct shift in the U.S. approach to diplomacy and global affairs, analysts have said, just days before the elect a president.
Biden has long been a supporter of multilateralism and has pledged to restore key political, security and trade alliances when he takes office, while also strengthening U.S. ties to international contracts and agreements. -national.
That will be a change from President Donald Trump’s “America First” policies, which removed multilateralism from his early days in the White House and withdrew from a series of multilateral treaties, including including the Paris climate agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Iran nuclear deal.
Trump’s approach to foreign policy was “somewhat similar to the President [Richard] Nixon said, ”said Hillary Mann Leverett, who was on the White House national security council in past Republican and Democratic administrations.
The basic philosophy shared by the two leaders, she told Al Jazeera, is that “nations are friends of each other. Countries have interests; they have no friends. “
“I think Trump had this sense that he could follow Nixon’s playbook, that he could be a real hardliner, and that he would get important contracts like Nixon’s opening to China,” said Leverett, who currently runs the political risk advisory firm Stratega.
During his four years in office, Trump has shown himself as a major trader, an impatient international real estate developer for shaking up the status quo and further U.S. interests.
“At the end of the day, regardless of his intellectual depth, the people around him didn’t need it, or he couldn’t keep an eye on the goal – he couldn’t deliver any of it. those things, ”Leverett said.
Rebuilding relationships
Biden is expected to seek to strengthen ties with many western European leaders, notably German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with whom he had close ties during his vice-presidency – but who the relationship with the US has been under pressure during Trump’s years.
Biden’s relationship with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who shouted at Trump when the United Kingdom withdrew from the European Union, remains more uncertain.
Nonetheless, Biden, who was a ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1997 to 2009, has emerged as a leader who builds personal relationships with his peers.
Drawing on nearly five decades of political experience, Biden has also said he is not afraid to speak directly when needed.
His former leader, former President Barack Obama, has undermined Biden’s ability to pursue specific goals without getting caught up in “broader ideological debates that too often lead to transmission or lack of precision of our intention “.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump walk at the Metropole Hotel during the second North Korean-US conference in Hanoi, Vietnam [File: Leah Millis/Reuters]
Meanwhile, Biden has moved swiftly to fill his administration with prominent diplomas in key positions, including naming Iran’s nuclear treaty negotiator to position number two at the U.S. Department of State. SA.
He has also vowed to take a tougher line on human rights abusers, marking a possible breach of Trump’s close ties to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the longest-serving president. away Brazil Jair Bolsonaro, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, whom Trump named “his favorite dictator” at the G7 summit in 2019.
While Trump “clearly felt a connection to autocrats”, Biden “defines himself as building relationships with small democrats, those with whom he shares interests and values”, PJ Crowley, former U.S. secretary of state for public affairs under Obama, told Al Jazeera.
However, that does not mean that Biden will not work with autocratic-biased leaders if he is responding to a broader goal, Leverett said, citing Biden’s controversial 2011 statement that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would he soon became a “dictator”.
Crowley said Trump took a “commercial” approach with many leaders, including Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who welcomed Trump’s decisions to move the U.S. Ambassador to Jerusalem and recognized Israeli sovereignty over him. Golan Heights Syria.
The approach contributed to what many Trump supporters consider to be his greatest foreign policy achievements: normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.
“Joe Biden is an ingenious politician and I think the people can work in ways that Barack Obama did not,” Crowley said.
‘Profit to be invisible’
In Biden, leaders can also expect a return to a more decisive U.S. foreign policy after Trump, which tended to marvel at one-sided decisions and the use of social media as bully pulpit with misinformation that could leave its own organizers and officials reeling.
In one particular example of that on-the-fly strategy, Trump abruptly withdrew U.S. troops from the Turkish border in Syria in October 2019, giving Turkey a de facto green light to advance militarily and leaving US Kurdish alliances vulnerable.
In a tweet days later, Trump warned Turkish President Recep Erdogan that he would “completely destroy and destroy the Turkish Economy” if the military does whatever it thinks “being off limits”.
Trump was “proud to be invisible and to play up the drama, which is a result of his experience as a television personality,” Crowley said.
“In diplomacy, there can be a ban, but there is a proven value. If you say you are going to do something, if you go ahead, you will establish a record that can be trusted. “
‘Not many go to it’
But such an understanding also has disadvantages, Leverett said, with Biden’s long career meaning “in many ways, he has made his decisions about how he sees countries, people in these countries and the issues ”.
“There’s not much that will affect it,” she said.
That could leave Biden falling behind in old patterns with leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin. Biden has said that he once said to the Russian leader, “I do not think that you have a soul”.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and then Vice President Joe Biden will walk down the red carpet on the tarmac at an arrival ceremony at the Andrews Air Force Base in 2015 [File: Carolyn Kaster/The Associated Press]
Biden’s relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping will be closely monitored after further tensions between the two countries over the past four years. Biden spent a lot of time with Xi in his role as U.S. vice president, but recently called the Chinese leader a “giveaway”.
His approach to Iran, which he and European parties hope to bring back to the multilateral nuclear deal, will also be under close scrutiny.
‘Real world’
Others have argued that Biden’s total diplomatic approach is in keeping with the current era of “massive power competition”, in which emerging powers mock to their influence networks. establish itself.
“We live in a real world, where power is paramount. And countries that are looking to be safe, cheap and prosperous in that world are going to base their political and geopolitical judgments on power relations, ”said James Carafano, national security and foreign policy expert at the Heritage Foundation, Al Jazeera reported.
“I was thinking [Trump’s] foreign policy was largely based on astronomy – and I think people are confused by something like rampant self-interest or loneliness, ”he said.
However, supporters have argued that Biden – and the staff around him – have the experience to advance more pragmatically and effectively U.S. interests.
“I think what you’re going to see in Biden is the backbone of issues and ideas,” said Joel Rubin, deputy secretary of state for legislative affairs under Obama and a volunteer policy adviser on the Biden campaign. to Al Jazeera.
“Recognize that diplomacy is a powerful tool in the arsenal of American communications abroad.”