Biden’s Foreign Policy Vision Is Officially Dead
October 29, 2023
Every presidency is an evolution because every presidency subjects the ideas that a leader brings into office to the test of global affairs. Nearly three years into Joe Biden’s tenure, the world keeps breaking his bedrock assumptions. After Hamas’ attack on Israel, Biden’s foreign policy is entering its third phase — one that features crises nearly everywhere and one for which his administration is, intellectually and materially, ill-prepared.
It’s hard to remember now, but Phase One of Biden’s strategy aimed to defuse tensions in two of Eurasia’s three key theaters. The US, Biden believed, must pour its energy into countering the threat from China, the one actor that could challenge America around the globe. This required pursuing mini-detentes with other, presumably less threatening adversaries: a “longer and stronger” nuclear deal with Iran and a “stable and predictable” relationship with Russia. Ruthless prioritization, it seemed, was essential to meeting the challenge that mattered most.
That phase lasted until February 2022, when Russian President Vladimir Putin — who had little interest in “stable and predictable” — tried to rupture the European equilibrium by invading Ukraine. Confronted with Europe’s gravest crisis in generations, Biden committed to sustaining Ukraine and weakening Russia. He pledged to lead the free world in a new struggle against expansionist autocracies; his administration wisely used the conflict to strengthen US alliances from Europe to the Indo-Pacific.
But the assumption remained that Washington did not need drastically more military power. Russia, the thinking went, would be badly weakened and ultimately vanquished in Ukraine. Tensions in the Middle East could be managed, even without a formal nuclear deal. To that end, Washington and Tehran forged a tacit agreement in which the former went easy on sanctions and the latter limited its uranium enrichment. Detente might be infeasible, but de-escalation was within reach.
“This disciplined approach frees up resources for other global priorities, reduces the risk of new Middle Eastern conflicts, and ensures that US interests are protected on a far more sustainable basis,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan wrote in a now-redacted article. This phase, alas, lasted until Oct. 7, 2023.
Whether or not Iran instigated the Hamas attacks, its strategy of supporting a regional “axis of resistance” set the stage for the current crisis. The Middle East is seething with potential for escalation by Tehran or its proxies. On Friday, the US struck Iranian-backed forces that had carried out drone attacks on its personnel in Syria and Iraq. The longer the Israel-Hamas war goes on, the greater the odds of a regional eruption involving Hezbollah, Iran and the US.
Meanwhile, Russia has mostly weathered Kyiv’s counteroffensive and is fighting a protracted conflict that will likely last through 2024 and perhaps beyond. And far from abating, the Chinese threat is intensifying. According to a recent Pentagon report, Beijing is rapidly expanding its nuclear forces, bolstering its air force and navy, and otherwise enhancing its ability to “fight and win wars” against a “strong enemy” — the US.
“What its actual intentions may be, I could not say,” Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall warned in September. “But China is preparing for a war and specifically for a war with the United States.”
Phase Three of Biden’s strategy thus sees the US confronting severe, simultaneous challenges in three crucial theaters. It’s not clear that this administration, or this country, is ready for the test.
The US defense industrial base was already straining under the weight of war in Ukraine and preparations for conflict in the Western Pacific. Now it must support Israel in another major regional showdown as well. The US is struggling to keep its aging nuclear arsenal viable, let alone to handle the approaching challenge of deterring two nuclear peer rivals, Russia and China, at once.
More broadly, US defense strategy hinges on the assumption that the Pentagon will face only one major war at a time — a view that seems utterly at odds with the three-theater challenge in evidence today. Defense spending as a percentage of GDP is nearly as low as at any time since World War II. And as is often the case, military shortfalls are rooted in intellectual shortfalls.
For all Biden’s success in strengthening America’s coalitions, his fundamental failing has been the tendency to underestimate the malevolence — and risk acceptance — of the country’s enemies and thus to under-resource its ability to respond to the threats they pose. He’s not alone: For years, a chasm has been emerging between America’s commitments and its capabilities because leaders of both political parties have struggled to comprehend how badly the international system is eroding on multiple fronts.
The task for Biden, in the next — and possibly the last — phase of his grand strategy, is to start correcting that mistake by putting America on the prewar footing the moment demands.
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