US credibility at home and abroad

10 February 2022

Twelve months ago, Joe Biden’s claqueurs gushed over how his presidency could go down in history. His “Green New Deal” would make him the heir of Franklin Roosevelt; his commitment to tackling poverty and racial injustice a parallel to Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society”. Abroad, his recommitment to foreign alliances and multilateralism, as opposed to his predecessor Donald Trump’s naked self-interest, would conjure up the legacy of Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman.

Instead, as some have suggested, Biden’s rhyme in history is much closer to the far less momentous Jimmy Carter, the US president between 1977 and 1981. There are certain parallels between America in the 2020s and the 1970s: inflation soaring at home; a threat of economic stagnation; rising crime rates in American cities; an embarrassing retreat from a protracted foreign war; and, a deep sense of unease about America's actual place in world affairs.

The 1970s redux

In July 1979, Carter delivered his infamous “malaise” speech, pointing to “a fundamental threat to American democracy”, which he identified as “a crisis of confidence”. He noted “this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives” and warned that “[t]he erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America”. In his inaugural address, Biden appeared to channel a similar sentiment. “We face an attack on democracy and on truth”, he stated. “A raging virus. Growing inequity. The sting of systemic racism. A climate in crisis. America’s role in the world. Any one of these would be enough to challenge us in profound ways. But the fact is we face them all at once, presenting this nation with the gravest of responsibilities”.

Biden is not alone in seeing crises everywhere he looks. A recent NPR/Ipsos poll found that 64 per cent of Americans believe US democracy is "in crisis and at risk of failing". Only 71 per cent of Americans believed 2022 will be a better year for them than 2021, lower than the global average. Just a fifth of Americans regard democracy promotion as a top foreign policy objective, putting it at the bottom of a list of 20 choices, according to a Pew Research Centre survey published last March. Only 19 per cent reckon their democracy is a good example today for the rest of the world, found another Pew study, published last November. (72 per cent said US democracy used to be a good model.) The same survey found that only 14 per cent of Germans, 18 per cent of French and 20 per cent of Britons thought the US is a good model for democracy today. Asians were even more sceptical. Just 16 per cent of South Koreans and 14 per cent of Japanese said as much.

The rest of the world has had ring-side seats to watch not just the frailties of America’s political system in recent years, but also its own crisis of confidence in its position in the world.

There is some justification for this scepticism. Freedom House’s latest Freedom in the World report gave the US a score of 83 out of 100, worse than Argentina, for instance. The rest of the world has had ring-side seats to watch not just the frailties of America’s political system in recent years, but also its own crisis of confidence in its position in the world. A YouGov poll from last December found that only 10 per cent of Americans want the US to be more engaged in conflicts around the world, and 40 per cent want it to be less engaged. Only 53 per cent of Americans support using troops to defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion of the island, according to a survey conducted last year by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. In comparison, 65 per cent of Taiwanese polled last year said they thought America would protect the island against a Chinese invasion.

A crisis in confidence

What explains all this? It is clear that Americans are increasingly inwards-looking. Surrounding the US retreat from Afghanistan last year, the narrative of “forever wars” appeared to catch the public imagination. Experts were left powerless to point out that no American soldier had actually died there since early 2020 or that US troops have been based in Germany and South Korea for far longer, yet no one is seriously calling for them to be brought home from there. The apparent parochialism of American sentiment about what the US should be doing globally appears to be rubbing off on the establishment. The Biden administration proposes a “Foreign Policy for the Middle Class”, which to critics is a mere repacking of Trump’s “America First” policy only gilded by more liberal and prosaic language. For decades, US foreign policymakers accepted short-term Lose-Wins if it brought about longer-term gains. Now, it appears Biden will have to explain how every action abroad benefits Americans at home, steering US policy a little too close to Beijing’s obsession with 'Win-Win'.

Another explanation is that American foreign policy is simply not up to scratch, despite the early enthusiasm that Biden would manage international relations in a serious, sensible, and adult-like manner. “The era of self-defeating swagger and diplomacy-by-tweet would be over, and responsible public servants would be back in charge”, a Foreign Policy piece put it. “It hasn’t quite worked out that way”, it added. Indeed, 2021 was not a good year for building confidence around the world. Although Donald Trump negotiated the “surrender agreement” in Afghanistan, Biden implemented it. That was bad enough, but in their withdrawal, the Americans failed to properly communicate this to their Afghan and European allies, who had more troops in Kabul than the US. The human loss of the Afghanistan retreat cannot be ignored, but the gravest geopolitical casualty was giving up Bagram Airfield outside Kabul, which had provided the US military and intelligence services easy access to the skies throughout the Middle East and South Asia.

Just weeks later, French authorities were sent into meltdown after Washington thought it wise not to even inform them about the new AUKUS alliance. Nothing progressed last year over North Korea and Iran’s nuclear issues. Biden promised “relentless diplomacy”, but the Economist reminded us last month that his administration still has no ambassadors in key countries, including Britain, Germany, Italy, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. American promises have been made to look cigarette-paper thin following the Afghanistan retreat. If Washington were to now appear to throw Ukraine under the bus to prevent a US conflict with Russia, the outlook would be far more dire. That would be bad enough for US allies, but it would also embolden its enemies. Recall that Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994 on the explicit promise by the US of protection in the event of a Russian invasion. No doubt, some in Kyiv are rethinking this decision, while Iran and North Korea are applauding themselves for not trusting American assurances over what would happen if they gave up their nuclear aspirations.

The New Cold War

However, another explanation is that confusion and pessimism are normal in times of serious global disruption. The ‘New Cold War’ with China began the day Xi Jinping was elected General-Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, yet Washington only seemed to realise it was in a contest around 2017. Last year, China’s current-dollar GDP was around 75 per cent of America’s. Within four years, it will be 89 per cent. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that America’s public debt could exceed 200 per cent of GDP by 2051. Biden’s profuse spending at home is likely to inflame this problem, and military expenditure may be a casualty. It had increased from 3.3 per cent of GDP in 2017 to 3.7 per cent in 2020, according to World Bank data. By one estimate, it may decline to 2.5 per cent in 2031.

Biden’s avowal to refocus on values and multilateralism in foreign policy, which in part was necessary to distinguish himself from Trump, has turned out to be rather difficult to follow in times of greater superpower rivalry. Trump greatly simplified foreign policy concerns by taking democracy and human rights off the agenda and focusing entirely on alliances and trade imbalances. Biden has maintained much of this ethos of alliances, though confusingly re-applied an imprecise layer of values. His “Summit for Democracy” was a case in point, attracting criticism for not inviting some key US allies and for inviting some countries with questionable democratic credentials. As Washington found during the First Cold War, marrying alliances and values is easier to do rhetorically than in practice.

However, amid the self-doubt and introspection, it is important to remember that American power rarely appeared as powerful at the time to contemporaries as it did to future historians. Moreover, perhaps self-doubt is far better than excessive confidence. The disaster of the Iraq invasion could be put down to hubris. Maybe doubt is more productive than the sort of confirmation bias and wishful thinking that convinced Douglas MacArthur, a hero of World War II, and the intelligence establishment to believe China would never intervene in the Korean War — perhaps the gravest mistake in the history of US intelligence. Yet, it is worth considering whether American power in the world appears weak, at home and abroad, or is weak. Lonnie Henley, of the George Washington University, said in congressional testimony in February last year regarding a Chinese invasion of Taiwan: “if we can disable [China’s integrated air defence system], we can win militarily.

If not, we probably cannot”. A wargaming session last October by a US think tank concluded that Washington will have “few credible options” if China launches a sustained attack against Taiwan. Washington was quick to say it would only fight a Russian invasion of Ukraine with sanctions, not its military, yet it is far from clear if sanctions would do much to convince Putin to turn his troops around. An answer to these questions may be soon provided. But if Washington blinks over either one of these potential crises — a Russian invasion of Ukraine or a Chinese invasion of Taiwan — US power in the world would struggle to recover.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Author biography

David Hutt is a political journalist and columnist, a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS), and an associate editor at 9DASHLINE. Follow him @davidhuttjourno. Image credit: Flickr/U.S. Department of the Interior.