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Lead:
On July 21, United States President Joe Biden announced that he was withdrawing from the 2024 presidential race and backing Vice President Kamala · Harris to replace him as the Democratic nominee. Given her relatively limited experience in foreign affairs, Harris's election as president of United States is expected to continue more of President Joe ·'s policy stance on foreign affairs, which is to strengthen traditional alliances and promote multilateralism. On the other hand, the foreign policy stance of Republican candidate and former United States President Donald Trump still shows strong nationalist and unilateralist tendencies.
On June 18, the website of United States Foreign Affairs magazine published an article by Ben Rhodes, · discussing possible paths for a strategic shift in United States diplomacy. The article analyzes the potential threat of Trump's return and the sharp fluctuations in United States' foreign policy.
The main argument is that the "rules-based international order" no longer exists, and that Washington needs to reassess the existing international order, rethink its post-Cold War foreign policy, break free from the shackles of United States-centrism, and establish policies that respond to changing global realities. A potential shift in United States' diplomatic strategy would have a significant impact on U.S.-China relations.
*Ben Rhodes is co-host of the podcast Pod Save the World and author ·of After the United StatesFall: Being American in the World We've Made. From 2009 to 2017, he served as Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speech Writing in the Obama Administration of United States.
The following is an excerpt from the original translation:
"United States is back." Early in his presidency, Joe · Biden repeated this phrase as a starting point for his foreign policy. This quote provides a stark slogan as a tagline to get rid of Donald · Trump's chaotic leadership. It also shows that United States can restore its self-perception as a good leader and can make the rules-based international order great again. However, while a return to normalcy is a matter of course, the Biden administration's recovery mindset has not always been well-suited to the tide of our chaotic times. Renewing the concept of United States leadership – leadership that is more in line with a world that has moved away from United States dominance and the peculiarities of United States politics – is necessary to minimize enormous risks and pursue new opportunities.
Admittedly, as Trump's presidency comes to an end amid the twin disasters of the pandemic and the unrest of Jan. 6, Biden's initial promise was a consolation to many. However, two major challenges are largely beyond the Biden administration's control, casting a shadow over signals of a superpower resurgence.
Trump had previously been mired in "hush money" and, despite his guilty verdict, his team announced that it had raised a large sum of campaign money in just 24 hours after the verdict. The first is the potential threat of Trump's return. Allies watched nervously as the former president continued to control the Republican Party while Washington was mired in dysfunction. "Authoritarian opponents", especially Russia President Vladimir Putin, are betting on Washington's lack of staying power. Given the volatility of United States foreign policy, it is impossible to establish new multilateral agreements similar to the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris agreement on climate change, or the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Moreover, the old rules-based international order no longer exists. Of course, the law, the organization, and the summit are still there. But core institutions such as the UN Security Council and the World Trade Organization are bogged down by differences among their members. Russia is committed to undermining United States reinforcing norms. China is committed to building its own alternative order. When it comes to trade and industrial policy, even Washington is deviating from the core tenets of post-Cold War globalization. Regional forces such as Brazil, India, Turkey and the Gulf States choose which partners to join based on the issue. Even the highest level of multilateral action in the Biden era – support for Ukraine against Russia – remains largely a Western initiative. As the old order collapses, these overlapping blocs are vying for the power to replace it.
Lula's government believes that systemic competition between China and the United States should not be seen as a zero-sum game, and that Brazil will engage with different countries based on specific common interests. Picture: Xinhua So far, Washington has failed to thoroughly reflect on how its post-Cold War foreign policy has undermined United States leadership. The "war on terror" has emboldened "dictators," misallocated resources, exacerbated the global migration crisis, and led to a series of instability from South Asia to North Africa. The so-called free-market formula of the Washington Consensus, which ended in a financial crisis, opened the door to populists blaming elites who were detached from reality. The excessive use of sanctions has led to an increase in workarounds and has led to global weariness with Washington's weaponization of dollar dominance. Over the past two decades, United States preaching about democracy has been increasingly ignored.
Indeed, in the wake of Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel and Israel's military operation in Gaza, United States' rhetoric about a rules-based international order was seen around the world as hypocritical duplicity, as Washington supplied the Israel government with weapons to bomb Palestinian civilians with impunity. The war poses a policy challenge for the government, which has been criticized by Russia United States government for its equally indiscriminate tactics in Gaza. This is a political challenge for the Democratic Party, whose core constituencies do not understand why the president supports a far-right government that ignores United States proposals. It is also a moral crisis for a country whose foreign policy core is driven by universal values. In short: Gaza should wean Washington off its inherent pattern of behavior that interferes too much in its actions.
If Biden does win a second term (United States President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the presidential race on July 21), he should use it to build a policy system that responds to changing global realities while moving away from political demands, extremism, and Western-centric views that led his administration to make some of the same mistakes as his predecessors. The stakes are high. In the coming years, whoever holds the presidency will have to avoid global war, contend with the escalating climate crisis, and deal with the rise of new technologies such as artificial intelligence. Embracing this phase requires abandoning the United States supremacy mentality and recognizing that the world will continue to be volatile for years to come. Most importantly, it needs to build a bridge to the future, not the past.
According to the latest news from Al Jazeera, relevant polls show that Harris's approval ratings have narrowed the gap with Trump in both the national and key battlefield states.
Trump's threats
To properly describe the danger of Trump's re-election, it is necessary to take Trump's arguments seriously, even if they often take a non-serious form. Much of what Trump said resonated widely. United States people are tired of war; In fact, he could not have taken over the Republican Party without the Iraq War, which Iraq discredited the Republican establishment. United States also no longer trust their elites. Although Trump's rhetoric about the "deep state" quickly turned into baseless conspiracy theories, it resonated with voters, who wondered why so many politicians who promised victories in Afghanistan and Iraq were never held accountable. While Trump's willingness to cut off aid to Ukraine is disgusting to many, there is a strong populist tinge behind it. How long will United States spend tens of billions of dollars to help a country whose stated goal of recovering all the territory of Ukraine seems unattainable? Trump has also exploited the populist resistance to globalization on both the left and the right. Especially since the 2008 financial crisis, large sections of the public in "democracies" have been increasingly dissatisfied with growing inequality, deindustrialization, and a sense of loss of control and meaninglessness. It's no wonder that the post-Cold War model of globalization — free trade agreements, the U.S.-China relationship, and the tools of international economic cooperation itself — has become the target of Trump's attacks.
Multiple episodes of political unrest, as well as polls, have shown that a significant proportion of the public in United States shows anti-elitist tendencies, reflecting broader populist sentiments. When Trump's more punitive approach to rivals, such as the trade war with China, did not trigger the full-blown catastrophe that some predicted, his taboo-breaking approach seemed to be justified. The results show that the United States does have leverage. While Trump's tougher stance on China shows United States influence, the practice is intermittent and lacks coordination with allies. As a result, Beijing has been able to establish itself as a more reliable partner for much of the world, while supply chain disruptions caused by trade disputes and decoupling have created new inefficiencies in the global economy and pushed up costs.
Healing period
In any government, national security policy is the result of a combination of long-term commitments, old political interests, new presidential initiatives, and ad hoc responses to sudden crises. In the turbulent tide of the world, the Biden administration often seems to embody this dynamic contradiction, with one foot in the past, nostalgia for United States' hegemony, and one foot in the future, adapting to the current situation of the emerging world.
Through its supportive policies, the government responds well to changing realities. Biden has linked domestic and foreign policy through his legislative agenda. The CHIPS Act makes significant investments in science and innovation, including domestic semiconductor manufacturing. The bill works in tandem with tightening export and investment controls on China's high-tech industries, which underpins United States' leadership in the development of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Although the story is more complex than the tariff trade war, Biden's policy is actually more coherent: reinvigorate United States's innovative and advanced manufacturing, decouple critical supply chains from China, and maintain United States' corporate leadership in developing new and potentially transformative technologies.
Say goodbye to supremacy
In its more aggressive agenda, the Biden administration is repositioning United States to adapt to a changing world, focusing on its own democracy and economic resilience while restarting alliances in Europe and Asia. To expand this revival into more global and lasting territory, United States should abandon its quest for leadership while adopting an agenda that resonates with more governments and people around the world.
As was the case during the Cold War, the most important foreign policy achievement was the avoidance of World War III. Washington must recognize that the three fault lines of today's global conflict – Russia-Ukraine, Iran-Israel, and Chinese mainland-Taiwan – all span territories that fall beyond United States' treaty obligations. In other words, these are not areas where the people of United States are ready to go to war directly. With little public support and no legal obligation to do so, Washington should not rely on bluffs or military build-ups to address these issues; Instead, it must relentlessly focus on diplomacy and underpin it by reassuring frontline partners that there are other ways to achieve security. This article is compiled by Zhu Yanling, Assistant Researcher, Institute of Public Policy, South China University of Technology
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