The nightmare is over, now the hard work begins

I spent an hour this morning on Zoom with Italian colleagues at the Institute of International Affairs (IAI) talking about the American election and its consequences for foreign policy. Here are the points I prepared for them,
most of them all too obvious I’m afraid:

1. While Biden is better informed and experienced on foreign policy than any president in decades, his most immediate priorities will be domestic: first and foremost stopping Covid-19 infections and moving as quickly as possible to revive the American economy, which is still in bad shape, and fix our social cleavages, which are severe.
2. That said, he is putting in place a formidable foreign policy team: Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Avril Haines and Linda Thomas-Greenfield are among our finest. Janet Yellen at Treasury will make an excellent counterpart on the economic side.
3. Jake and Tony are both strongly committed to a revived domestic economy and solutions to America’s social challenges as prerequisites for a strong international role. You can expect them to be less transactional but just as aggressive as Trump on trade and investment issues, where America will need to satisfy more of the demands of its domestic producers.
4. Missing so far from the Biden team is the Secretary of Defense. I’d still bet on Michele Fluornoy, but I admit I have little idea why she hasn’t been named yet. Defense industry ties may be the reason.
5. Whoever gets Defense, Biden will seek to reinvigorate trans-Atlantic ties. He has a basically positive attitude towards NATO and America’s allies, whom he views as force multipliers whose basic values are aligned with ours.
6. He is not opposed, as Trump was, to the European Union. I doubt he will prioritize a free trade agreement with the UK and might even try to revive the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with Europe, or something like it.
7. Willingness of the US to return to the JCPOA will help his effort to renew the Alliance, but it will require reciprocal Iranian willingness to return to the status quo ante. I’m not convinced Tehran will be willing before the June presidential election, and maybe not even after.
8. Biden will want to cooperate quickly with Europe in responding to Russia’s regional challenges in the Baltics, the Balkans, and especially Ukraine, though he will be hampered on Ukraine by the allegations against his son Hunter.
9. The US will return, likely on Day 1, to the Paris Climate Change Agreement, which I trust will be a welcome move in Europe.
10. The big looming problem for both the US and Europe is how to meet China’s global economic and political challenge. Biden will want to pursue both cooperation and competition with China.
11. He is not interested in a new cold war, but he will be far more committed globally to democratic values and human rights than Trump has been. He will not be sword dancing in Riyadh, encouraging President Xi to imprison Uighurs, or staying silent about repression in Hong Kong.
12. Renewed American support for human rights and democracy will unsettle relations not only with China but also with the Gulf, Israel, Brazil, and possibly with Hungary and Poland.
13. Biden will not be able to restore everything to where things stood four years ago. He’ll need to prioritize.
14. But I think all those who want to see American global leadership based on a rational assessment of both values and interests will feel a lot better about things on January 21 than they did on November 2. The nightmare is over, but the hard work is just beginning.

In addition to foreign policy, the Italians pressed me on the future of the Republican Party and reports that black men and Hispanics shifted towards Trump. I responded more or less this way:

• The numbers are still iffy, but at least some of the shift among Hispanics was due to mostly white Venezuelans and Cubans who fled socialist countries and were frightened when Trump told them Biden was a socialist. Some Latinos in Texas appear to have shifted as well, possibly due to the employment impact of border wall construction.
• The Republican Party now has a choice to make between continuing as a right-wing extremist and racist party or reverting to right-of-center social and economic conservatism. Trump will try to keep the party on the former track and can boast of an enormous turnout of voters, and relative victories in the House races, to help him. So far, only Senator Romney seems courageous enough to point in the direction of more conventional conservatism. We’ll have to wait and see which direction Republicans choose.

On the domestic side, I also emphasized the importance of the January 5 Senate run-off elections in Georgia, which will determine how far Biden can go on the legislative front.