Policy Alert #229 | April 30, 2021

The ongoing pressure of the global pandemic has not slowed down President Joe Biden’s foreign policy during his first 100 days in office. Fulfilling the promise of tackling global issues through enhanced engagements with U.S. allies and like-minded partners, the Biden administration took swift actions in several critical areas of U.S. foreign policy.

On addressing the “extreme competition” with China, the first meeting of American and Chinese top diplomats in Alaska led to heated exchanges but the two sides were able to find common ground on confronting climate change. On the advancement of a free and open Indo-Pacific, President Biden strengthened multi-faceted cooperation of the Quad countries through the group’s first leaders’ summit. While President Biden promised to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, his administration bolstered the alliance with Japan during Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s first visit to Washington and established closer defense ties with India during Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s visit in New Delhi. Despite the criticism of Washington’s initial lack of response, the Biden administration quickly changed course and provided extensive support for India’s deadly second wave of COVID.

In this Policy Alert, we examine how the Rising Powers are responding to the President Biden’s foreign policy during his first 100 days.

China

An editorial from the state-run China Daily views Biden’s foreign policy as essentially a continuation of his predecessor. Despite the new emphasis on multilateralism, Washington’s goal is to maintain the U.S. hegemony at the expense of others:

• “Biden is seeking to do what his predecessor sought to do, which is to bend the international system to serve the US hegemony. Despite sounding different, the Biden administration and its predecessor are birds of a feather. The only difference is, while Trump wanted the US to go it alone, Biden wants the US allies to help. In other words, how the Biden administration has been dealing with its allies only shows how earnestly it wants to make them pawns in its games, and how it has approached non-allies such as Russia and China only expose the extent to which it is willing to sacrifice the interests of its allies and the collective interests of the world for the US’ narrow ends.”

An editorial from South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong-based newspaper, argues that the Biden administration’s China policy needs to emphasize cooperation over confrontation:

• “Blinken has said relations with Beijing will be based on confrontation, competition and cooperation on issues of shared interest. But so far, the focus has been mostly on confrontation, with stepped-up engagement with Taiwan and action over alleged human rights violations in Hong Kong and Xinjiang… Asian nations being courted by Biden to push his agenda are not willing to choose sides, being only too aware of the importance of China to their economies… Given the risks, it would make more sense for Biden to set aside confrontation in favor of cooperation.”

In an op-ed for South China Morning Post, Andrew Sheng, former Deputy Chief Executive at the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and a distinguished fellow of the Asia Global Institute at the University of Hong Kong, suggests that Washington’s leadership in tackling global climate change could be the greatest foreign policy achievement of Biden’s new multilateralism, but it remains unclear whether Biden is willing to provide concrete climate change support to the rest of the world:

• “Practically, [Biden’s climate policy is] all about delivery – whether the US can lead the world out of global warming in action and not just words… the strategy behind Biden’s global climate summit is clearly to regain the moral high ground Trump ceded… the US’ climate funding commitment to the rest of the world is minimal. US international climate finance, doubled from US$2.5 billion a year to US$5.7 billion by 2024, would be a mere 0.03 per cent of 2020 gross domestic product… US$5.7 billion is just a small fraction of the US$175 billion in US weapons exports in fiscal 2020, or the US$3 trillion in quantitative easing funding created by the Federal Reserve last year.”

India

In an op-ed for the liberal Indian Express, Arun Sahni, a former commander of the Indian Army, cautions that as mutual interests have led to the current positive trajectory in U.S.-India bilateral relations, New Delhi must prioritize its own interests and not become dependent:

• “[New Delhi] seem to have forgotten the ‘trust deficit’ that had earlier impeded a closer relationship between the two like-minded democracies. This was exacerbated by the US’s continued support of Pakistan despite its despicable proxy war with India and meddling in Afghanistan… It is imperative that India take appropriate action to safeguard its future interests and so, has willingly partnered with the US to form a collaborative grouping of like-minded countries… Concurrently, urgent structural reforms are required in international multilateral institutions to address the aspirations of the majority from Asia and Africa, instead of only pandering to the whims of the developed world or being a puppet of China. India will require US support to become a part of these rule-making institutions.”

In an op-ed for the liberal Hindustan Times, Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, a Senior Advisor at Rhodium Group, the foreign editor of Hindustan Times, and the head of strategic affairs of the Ananta Aspen Centre of India, proposes that to confront India’s climate crisis, New Delhi needs to establish closer cooperation and attract more investments in energy infrastructure from Washington and its allies:

• “India was more than willing to take a deep green path. Modi’s commitment to renewables and his concern about the climate crisis were second to none… Things will be much easier if the funding and knowhow for such moves is on tap, including for handouts and re-skilling to minimize the social costs… [India] could also become a partner to the US, Japan and others in all the relevant technologies. There is an obvious geopolitical undercurrent. India would automatically align with the standards and supply chains of the West rather than China.”

A commentary article on the center-right Times of India concludes that with the exception of the lack of initial support to India’s virulent second wave of COVID, New Delhi has been mostly satisfied with the advancing bilateral relations between the U.S. and India:

• “It wasn’t a Chinese invasion, but an India desperate for help during a humanitarian crisis that caught the US napping… That apart, the world has collectively heaved a sigh of relief in the past three months, as the Biden administration brought a measure of stability and predictability to the White House… ‘America is back’ is the driving motto of the Biden administration’s foreign policy, as it front loads a large number of initiatives… For those who believed Biden didn’t much care for the Indo-Pacific and might dial down US involvement because it was a Trump thing, he placed US strategic policy squarely in the Indo-Pacific.”

Japan

An editorial from the center-right The Japan Times suggests that despite the recent advancements of U.S.-Japan alliance, there remains several challenges in security ties between the two countries:

• “The new leadership in Washington is reportedly considering a ‘sole purpose’ doctrine policy that could limit the effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. We urge the two governments to consult to assess the meaning, significance and impact of any such shift…Japanese governments have preferred to argue in private and to create space for diplomacy, a view that sometimes conflicts with that of U.S. or other Western governments, which prefer public pressure campaigns [toward China]… Among those differences, few are as glaring as Taiwan. There has been considerable attention to the seeming gap between Tokyo and Washington on this issue… Successive Japanese governments have refused for a variety of reasons to state specifically what they would do in a military contingency.”

In an op-ed for The Japan Times, Brad Glosserman, the Deputy Director of and a visiting professor at the Center for Rule-Making Strategies at Tama University, argues that amid the rising influence of China, shared economic interests between the U.S. and Japan would serve as the cornerstone of bilateral cooperation:

• “Japan’s national economic statecraft will make economic issues – once a source of bitter contention in the alliance – become instead a source of strength… This logic was first evident in the Quad leaders’ virtual summit, held last month, that produced a vaccine partnership, along with working groups on climate and critical and emerging technologies… The Japan-U.S. Competitiveness and Resilience (CoRe) Partnership is another dimension of economic statecraft, one that seeks to ensure that our two countries remain at the frontier of innovation, science and technology.”

A commentary article in the conservative Yomiuri Shimbun warns that President Biden’s economic policy toward China is likely to prioritize the interests of the U.S. over the interests of Japan:

• “Among important strategic goods, Japan imports from China a much higher percentage of semiconductor components, pharmaceuticals and batteries than the United States. There is no objection to rebuilding supply chains, but if the United States escalates its demands and asks Japan to decouple from China, it will be difficult to do so… In the U.S. strategy toward China, Washington’s notion that its own interests come first can be sensed…There are concerns within the Japanese government that Washington will make excessive demands on Tokyo, then eventually compromise with Beijing to prioritize the U.S. economy, thereby placing Japan in an isolated position.”

Russia

In an interview with state-owned Sputnik News, Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Treasury Secretary under President Ronald Reagan, comments that U.S.-Russia relations has dramatically worsened under President Biden and is unlikely to improve in the future:

• “Biden said on national TV that President Putin is ‘a killer.’ A US-backed coup was foiled in Belarus. Biden also gave a military guarantee to Ukraine against Russian intervention if Ukraine renewed its invasion of the Donbass republics. US military equipment arrived in Ukraine. Biden issued new sanctions against Russia. NATO and the EU supported the sanctions… The US foreign policy establishment regards Russia as a barrier to American hegemony. This means that there is no chance for normal relations.”

A commentary in the government-funded RT concludes that similar to his predecessor, the threat of China remains the driving force of U.S. foreign policy, which is Biden’s only policy initiative that may gather bipartisan support, yet the bipartisanship is likely to be limited:

• “The backdrop of China, his protectionist overtones and the repeated emphasis upon ‘US competitiveness’ are all familiar staples of the American political lexicon, and it is hard not to conclude that Biden’s ideas are built upon a repackaged version of ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA), but with Democrat characteristics… But the bipartisan consensus on being tough on China – at least on matters of foreign policy – does not translate into domestic unity in the way Biden would hope, and this is where the difficulties start… A blue MAGA is not a red one, because the vision of what America ‘should be’ remains inherently different to both sides, even if they can agree on the general concern over China.”