Biden’s big picture plan to revive the West

If you want to know Joe Biden’s priority on his first overseas trip as President, look at which world leaders were the first through the doors of the White House after his inauguration; Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan, and President Moon Jae-In of South Korea. The priority is the Indo-Pacific region, with the focus on China, but, unlike his predecessor, Biden’s smart enough to know that to tackle the challenges ahead he needs allies.

All US presidents believe in the concept of America First, but most have understood that America thrives best when its foreign policy works with a network of alliances which support international free trade, help keep the sea lanes open, and challenge rising authoritarian powers. Biden is selling this idea back home by linking it to domestic policy. In a Washington Post op-ed this week he wrote that “honing the ability of democracies to compete and protecting our people against unforeseen threats requires us to invest in infrastructure.” Selling it abroad he argues that the democracies need to offer “a high-standard alternative to China”.

To achieve this, he knows the pandemic must be ended and climate change tackled so that the G7 countries (and others) can concentrate on reversing a growing lack of confidence in democracy. So, although Covid and climate will dominate the G7 summit headlines, the deeper theme is about another C. The President spelled it out ahead of boarding Airforce One; the summit will be about “strengthening the alliance, making it clear to Putin and to China that Europe and the United States are tight.”

But are they? Germany hedges its bets re Russia, and many EU members court Chinese investment. On this trip Biden intends to make it clear to the Europeans that not only is “America back”, but that they need to get their act together, especially when it comes to Russia. Washington increasingly sees Russia as a declining power. It is once more, to repeat the old Cold War joke, “Upper Volta with rockets”, but he will say that with the US focussing on China, Europe needs to be more robust when it comes to Russia. He wants to set the tone at the G7 before going on to the NATO summit in Brussels (14 June), the meeting with the European Commission (15June) and then the bilateral with President Putin in Geneva (16 June).

When Biden says Europe, he includes the UK. He’d rather Brexit hadn’t happened, and there are concerns about what is perceived as a cavalier attitude to the Northern Ireland agreement. However, the former is done, and the latter is a secondary issue for the superpower notwithstanding its diplomatic rebuke to Boris Johnson. Biden knows that the current British government is on board for most of his big picture strategy – the timing of the approach of the new UK aircraft carrier to the South China Sea with the G7 summit is no coincidence.

Prime Minister Johnson and President Biden both understand that democracy is under pressure across the globe amid a rise in authoritarian leaders. Both support the idea of a new grouping of the most democratic and technologically advanced nations standing together on values, science, trade, and even defence. The shorthand for the idea is called the D10 and an indication as to who the ten might be is the invitation to the leaders of India, South Korea and Australia to attend the summit as guest countries. More than 60 per cent of people living in democracies are in those ten states.

Biden in particular sees a strategic rivalry between the major democracies and authoritarian states. The Americans will probably push to include a condemnation of Beijing’s treatment of the Uighurs in Xinjiang province in the G7’s final communique. It will be interesting to see if any countries attempt to water down the text for fear of economic reprisals. There will also be discussion about supporting big infrastructure projects in low to middle-income countries in order to try and counter China’s Belt and Road strategic policy which enmeshes countries into the Chinese sphere of influence.

Given the levels of debt in the G7 countries it will be worth looking at what is pledged for various initiatives, and then looking again in a year’s time at what is delivered. It is not unknown for a country to pledge X and deliver Y, given that Japan had a net debt of 150 per cent of GDP in 2019, the UK 75 per cent, and Italy 122 per cent. Prime Ministers Suga, Johnson, and Draghi may find it easier to pledge than to pay.

Biden believes that the defining question of our time is: “Will the democratic alliances and institutions that shaped so much of the last century prove their capacity against modern-day threats and adversaries? I believe the answer is yes. And this week in Europe, we have the chance to prove it.”  For all its many faults the US did create a liberal world order in the aftermath of the Second World War. It won the Cold War and oversaw a relatively peaceful era which in turn helped create a time of unprecedented global prosperity. Militarily and financially, it underwrote those decades.

We are now in a multi-polar era, but probably heading back to another bi-polar world and a form of cold war, this time between the US and China. Biden is asking the old Cold War allies, and now others, to step up and join the Americans for the new struggle. The UK has made its choice, as has Australia and Japan. Others are reluctant to commit. Biden will argue that the alternative to “Pax Americana” will not be a detached “non-aligned” world of benign mutual interest trade deals and respect for international law, but regional chaos and spreading conflict. Around the world those not standing with the group of democracies will find themselves economically subservient to the policies of the one-party state dictatorship ruled from Beijing. Those close to the Middle Kingdom will be militarily dominated to the extent that they will become vassal states.

Biden may not get his way; he’ll make mistakes along the way. Yet when it comes to the big picture of the 21^st century – he’s read the future and is acting. We will see the outlines of his thinking in the coming week. He’s a former chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and a former Vice-President which explains White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s comment this week: “He’s been getting ready for 50 years.”