I encourage you to read Thomas Wright’s piece at The Atlantic in which he attempts to outline a prospective Biden foreign policy. He starts by comsidering the stakes:
Biden cannot simply rely on competent technocratic management in foreign policy. His presidency may be the establishment’s last best chance to demonstrate that liberal internationalism is a superior strategy to populist nationalism. He must consider the strategic options generated by an ideologically diverse team, and he has to make big choices that are attuned to the politics of the moment, in the United States and around the world. Such a bold path is not one that a newly elected president with no foreign-policy experience could take. But he can.
The challenge that the Biden Administration faces is that, while liberal internationalism has been a roaring success for countries like Germany and China who advocate it for others without adopting it themselves and for the handful of people in the U. S. who are positioned to garner benefits for themselves and their families from it, it’s been a complete flop for most Americans who find themselves increasingly burdened with educational debt and confronted by a dearth of jobs that pay enough to pay off that debt. He continues by outlining the contours of the debate:
Within Biden’s team, an ongoing, but largely overlooked, debate has been brewing among Democratic centrists about the future of U.S. foreign policy. One group, which I call “restorationist,†favors a foreign policy broadly consistent with that of President Barack Obama. They believe in careful management of the post–Cold War order. They are cautious and incrementalist. They will stand up to China but will not want to define their strategy as a great power competition. They maintain high hopes for bilateral cooperation with Beijing on climate change, global public health, and other issues. They support Biden’s idea for a summit of democracies, aimed at repairing democracy and encouraging cooperation, but are wary of an ideological competition between democracy and authoritarianism. They favor a return to the Iran nuclear deal and intend to continue to play America’s traditional role in the Middle East. They generally support free-trade deals and embrace globalization.
A second group, which I call “reformist,†challenges key orthodoxies from the Obama era. Philosophically, these advisers believe that U.S. foreign policy needs to fundamentally change if it is to deal with the underlying forces of Trumpism and nationalist populism. They are more willing than restorationists to take calculated risks and more comfortable tolerating friction with rivals and problematic allies. They see China as the administration’s defining challenge and favor a more competitive approach than Obama’s. They view cooperation with other free societies as a central component of U.S. foreign policy, even if those partnerships result in clashes with authoritarian allies that are not particularly vital. They want less Middle East involvement overall and are more willing to use leverage against Iran and Gulf Arab states in the hopes of securing an agreement to replace the Iran nuclear deal. They favor significant changes to foreign economic policy, focusing on international tax, cybersecurity and data sharing, industrial policy, and technology, rather than traditional free-trade agreements.
This comment puzzled me somewhat:
Cooperation with China on shared interests should occur, but we need to be realistic about the limits.
I understand the limits; what I don’t understand is what the shared interests are. It might have been helpful had he outlined what he expects from agreements with China on the two issues he mentioned: climate change and global public health. To date the Chinese have been the biggest offenders in both areas and very little has materialized from their previous agreements other than press releases. He makes no mention of China’s violation of the human rights of its own citizens, traditionally a focus of Democratic administrations.
I also think that he fails to understand the zero-sum approach to foreign policy that China has taken. It is not enough for them to win; we must also lose. How liberal internationalism addresses that is beyond me.
