Imagining a Biden Foreign Policy

On June 5, U.S. Senator Joseph Biden acquired the 1,991 delegates needed to formally secure the Democratic nomination for President. Though months remain before the forthcoming American elections in November, the Biden campaign has already given an indication of the contours of a potential Biden foreign policy. Foremost among them, a tougher line on Beijing and rapprochement with Tehran.

BIDEN’S TRADITIONAL PROFILE

Biden’s reputation in Democratic policy circles has traditionally been dominated by his views on foreign policy. They defy easy categorization into his party’s hawkish or dovish wings. For example, the Senator voted against the Gulf War in 1990, but for the Iraq War in 2002. As the America’ fortunes in Iraq waned, he argued that the solution lay in partitioning Iraq into three ethno-sectarian statelets — even as Iraqis themselves voted for cross-sectarian political lists. And while ostensibly a proponent of drone strikes and raids by special forces — which he has touted as the ‘Counterterrorism Plus’ strategy -- he opposed the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Indeed, in recent years, Biden’s political stances have often been somewhat mercurial. As recently as February 2019, a prominent survey identified him as one of the Democratic presidential candidates who wanted to “boost the defense budget.” In November, by contrast, Biden told defense journalists in an interview, “We can maintain a strong defense and protect our safety and security for less.” This March, Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution, whose personnel are often tapped for senior positions in incoming administrations, tentatively suggested that while “defense-budget cuts are possible” in a Biden administration, the “top priorities are reforming and modernizing the military to reflect new technologies and repairing civil-military relations.”

Recent reporting has suggested that, as coronavirus has unsettled the political landscape, Biden is “seeking big Democratic ideas” in order to reorient his campaign. In coordination with allies in Congress, the former vice president is “racing to assemble a new governing agenda” that is “far bolder than anything the party establishment has embraced before.” In response, in early May, the Biden and Sanders campaigns unveiled six “unity task forces” designed to foster reconciliation between the party’s progressive and moderate wings under the rubric of crafting a governing agenda that fuses Biden’s incrementalist tendencies with Senator Sanders’s more transformative ones. Tellingly, foreign policy was not among them.

CONFRONTATION WITH CHINA, DÉTENTE WITH IRAN

One area where glimpses of a Biden foreign policy can already be discerned is China policy, where most political incentives are pushing Biden to adopt a more confrontational stance. Polling indicates that levels of distrust of China have risen sharply among all segments of the American electorate in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. In a similar vein, an adversarial posture toward Beijing will deflect accusations of cronyism leveled by President Trump. And indeed, the Biden campaign has begun running campaign ads accusing Trump of having “rolled over for the Chinese” while a pro-Biden super PAC accused the president of “outright acquiescence to China.” From a more protectionist stance on trade to aggressively condemning Chinese behavior towards the Muslim Uighur minority in Xinjiang, Biden’s administration is likely to witness a notable escalation of tensions with Beijing.

Another area where the dynamics of the 2020 campaign give strong indication of future governance is Iran. A pillar of Biden’s messaging strategy has been to “return to normalcy” of the pre-Trump era. This would entail, inter alia, de-escalating tensions with Tehran and bringing the U.S. back into the JCPOA, which was his Democratic predecessor’s signal foreign policy milestone. Biden has labelled the ‘Maximum Pressure’ campaign a “self-inflicted disaster,” arguing that instead Washington should demonstrate “renewed commitment to diplomacy to work with our allies to strengthen and extend the Iran deal” while also “push[ing] back against Iran’s other destabilizing actions.”