Biden’s foreign policy may be better than it sounds

President Biden and his national security team have come a long way in recognizing the growing danger presented by a risen China and a resurgent Russia. Despite earlier instincts, they now seem willing to confront the reality of a clear anti-Western strategic alliance between those two powers, including mutual support for open aggression in their respective regions.

The Interim National Security Strategic Guidance in March 2021 mostly reflected the priorities that prevailed during the eight years of the Obama-Biden administration. “Pandemics and other biological risks, the escalating climate crisis, cyber and digital threats, international economic disruptions, protracted humanitarian crises, violent extremism and terrorism, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction all pose profound and, in some cases, existential dangers,” it warned.

This document also mentioned, almost in passing, “We face a world of rising nationalism, receding democracy, growing rivalry with China, Russia, and other authoritarian states.”  

Use of the anodyne “rivalry” — which could apply equally to economic relations with U.S. friends and allies such as Canada or France — obscured the reality that with Russia and China, the interaction is potentially nuclear war.

The rivalry included earlier armed standoffs in Syria over Russia’s support for Bashar al-Assad, a proclaimed enemy of America. President Obama’s “red line” on Assad’s use of chemical weapons and his declaration that Assad “must go” were stymied by Vladimir Putin’s deployment of Russian forces.

Putin also triumphed with his invasion of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea in early 2014 when Obama and NATO chose not to enforce the security guarantees given to Ukraine in exchange for surrendering its nuclear weapons. (During the Bush administration, Putin already had gotten away with his 2008 invasion of Georgia — also “protected” by Western assurances.)

The 2021 Interim National Security Strategic Guidance did not mention Russia’s illegal occupation of the two NATO aspirants, nor that Putin’s expansionist appetite remained unsated.  It said only, “Russia remains determined to enhance its global influence and play a disruptive role on the world stage.” 

It described China as “rapidly becom[ing] more assertive. It is the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system.” 

Of both countries, it said, “Our task is to ensure [America’s] advantages endure by … reinvigorating our leadership abroad.” 

One other passage proved tragically unprophetic: “We will work to responsibly end America’s longest war in Afghanistan while ensuring that Afghanistan does not again become a safe haven for terrorist attacks against the United States.”

Before the administration was ready to release its final document, three major international events heavily influenced the report’s content and direction. 

First was the badly botched withdrawal — i.e., abandonment — of Afghanistan in August 2021 that was anything but responsible and deeply damaged America’s reputation for reliability on the world stage. Biden belatedly recognized the urgent need to restore U.S. credibility elsewhere. 

Two months later, during a CNN town hall, he unequivocally committed the U.S. to defend Taiwan. Over the next year, he repeated the pledge three more times. (On all four occasions, his staff said afterward that nothing had changed substantively in the U.S-Taiwan relationship or the U.S. policy of strategic ambiguity.)

Second was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which loomed in late 2021. The Biden administration was unable to deter Putin by warning of punishing economic sanctions, and unwilling to threaten direct U.S. military intervention with a no-fly zone. Biden exclaimed, “That would be World War III.”

Instead, the administration provided Ukraine with a halting delivery of weapons, gradually increasing them in quality and quantity. While suffering great human and infrastructure costs, Ukraine’s bravery and skill using Western arms enabled it to hold its own — and even reverse Russia’s control of large parts of territory. Putin’s reckless threats to use nuclear weapons have not deterred Biden from continuing that level of support for Ukraine, though he continues to withhold long-range systems that could hasten the war’s end but might further “provoke” Putin.

Third, the visit to Taiwan by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), over the objections of both Beijing and Biden, precipitated the Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis. China conducted its largest ever naval, air and missile exercises over and around Taiwan, effectively constituting a two-week blockade of the island. The only U.S. operational response, after the exercise concluded, was to send a Navy cruiser through the Taiwan Strait as a demonstration of freedom of navigation.

By last week, the administration was ready to release its 2022 National Security Strategy (NSS). It repeats Biden’s statement that “the world is at an inflection point,” noting that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “shattered the peace of Europe and impacted stability everywhere,” and that China “harbors the intention and, increasingly, the capacity to reshape the international order in [its] favor.” 

Says the NSS: “This strategy recognizes that the [People’s Republic of China] presents America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge. Although the Indo-Pacific is where its outcomes will be most acutely shaped, there are significant global dimensions to this challenge.” Nevertheless, it pledges, “the United States remains committed to managing the competition between our countries responsibly.”

The document is replete with references to “competition,” which might suggest an even milder interaction than that between “rivals” mentioned in the 2021 interim guidance. But the document’s nuances are more than semantic.

On the one hand, the NSS declares, “We will build the strongest and broadest possible coalition of nations that seek to cooperate with each other, while competing with those powers that offer a darker vision and thwarting their efforts to threaten our interests.”

But, to alleviate the concerns of those countries “uneasy with the competition between the United States and the world’s largest autocracies,” it states: “We also want to avoid a world in which competition escalates into a world of rigid blocs. We do not seek conflict or a new Cold War.”

Yet, the confrontational nature of the relationship between the U.S. and the West on one side and the two leading autocratic powers seeking to destroy them is unavoidable. “The United States is a global power with global interests. … If one region descends into chaos or is dominated by a hostile power, it will detrimentally impact our interests in the others,” the NSS says.

In announcing the new strategy approach, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said, “The post-Cold War era is definitively over.” The NSS favors, instead, “The era of competition.”  Eventually, if actual conflict does not erupt first, they will have to recognize that, for China and Russia, we have long been in Cold War II. What Mark Twain said of Wagner’s music may now apply to Biden’s foreign policy: It is better than it sounds.

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He served in the Pentagon when Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia and was involved in Department of Defense discussions about the U.S. response. Follow him on Twitter @BoscoJosephA.