Biden Doctrine

Biden’s diplomatic credentials, burnished during his time as Vice President and long tenure in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, mean he actually knows how government works. America is going back to the good old mundane intergovernmental relations, which may be slightly boring, but nonetheless far more predictable and sustainable.

As many world leaders rushed to send President-elect Joe Biden congratulations on his projected US election victory over Donald Trump, others were notable in their silence on 08 November 2020. While outspoken disappointment was scarce, several prominent leaders who have maintained warm relations with Trump’s administration also kept silent on Biden’s win. That included President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. Also noticeably absent from well-wishing were Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China Xi Jinping.

Biden had at times gone even further than the outgoing president in attacking China. He has referred to Chinese President Xi Jinping as a “thug” and sworn to lead an international campaign to “pressure, isolate and punish China.” His campaign has also labelled China’s actions against Muslims in Xinjiang “genocide” – a step further than current policy, with significant implications if that designation is formalised.

The world of the year 2020 was rooted in, and being shaped by, changes to the nature and structure of the international system: namely, the decline of U.S. influence and its gradual withdrawal from the international order that it helped create and lead for more than 70 years, and the concurrent rise of a more competitive security environment, particularly among great powers. The 2020 Democratic Party Platform stated:

Democrats know it’s time to bring nearly two decades of unceasing conflict to an end. Our military engagements, which have spanned from West Africa to Southeast Asia, have cost more than $5 trillion and claimed more than half a million lives. Our war in Afghanistan is the longest war in American history, with the youngest U.S. troops now fighting a war that was launched before they were even born. President Trump said he would get the United States out of these wars, but instead he deployed more combat forces, expanded their missions, and stoked regional tensions that unnecessarily endangered American lives and interests.

Democrats will deliver on this overdue commitment to end the forever wars, and we will do it responsibly—setting priorities, leading with diplomacy, protecting ourselves from terrorist threats, enabling local partners, and bringing our troops home.

Democrats are committed to a durable and inclusive political settlement in Afghanistan that ensures that al-Qaeda isn’t allowed to reconstitute, the Islamic State (ISIS) isn’t allowed to grow, and the international community can help Afghans safeguard hard-fought gains, especially for women and girls.

Democrats will end support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen and help bring the war to an end. This war is responsible for the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, and it amplifies threats to the region and to our interests. Democrats believe that the United States should support diplomatic efforts—not block them.

Democrats will not only end the wars that have cost so much American blood and treasure—we will apply their lessons. We will only use force when necessary to protect national security and when the objective is clear and achievable—with the informed consent of the American people, and where warranted, the approval of Congress. That is why we will work with Congress to repeal decades-old authorizations for the use of military force and replace them with a narrow and specific framework that will ensure we can protect Americans from terrorist threats while ending the forever wars.

Rather than occupy countries and overthrow regimes to prevent terrorist attacks, Democrats will prioritize more effective and less costly diplomatic, intelligence, and law enforcement tools. We will right-size our counterterrorism footprint, put it in service of broader regional and overarching foreign policy objectives, and ensure it never undermines the values we seek to uphold. And we will mobilize our partners to make sustained investments that can prevent conflict and help extinguish the flames on which extremists feed.

Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden said he would take a strong stand against China’s human rights abuses in Tibet, and take measures to support Tibetans’ cultural and religious rights, including meeting exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. "As President, I’ll put values back at the center of American foreign policy,” Biden said in a Sept. 3 statement. “I’ll meet with [exiled Tibetan spiritual leader] His Holiness the Dalai Lama, appoint a new Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, and insist that the Chinese government restore access to Tibet for U.S. citizens, including our diplomats and journalists,” Biden said. “My administration will [also] sanction Chinese officials responsible for human rights abuses in Tibet, and step up support for the Tibetan people, including by expanding Tibetan language services at Radio Free Asia and Voice of America to get information from the outside world into Tibet,” Biden said. Biden also pledged to work with U.S. allies to press Beijing to return to talks with “representatives of the Tibetan people” to achieve greater freedoms and autonomy in the formerly independent Himalayan country, which China took over by force nearly 70 years ago.

The Dalai Lama has met with the last four U.S. presidents, sometimes in unofficial drop-by encounters during scheduled meetings with other senior U.S. government figures, but had not met with Donald Trump, who had not invited him to the White House, media sources said.

Hamid Dabashi, the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, wrote in Spetember 2020 that "Biden is even worse than Obama in his die-hard Zionism - in his support for the apartheid state of Israel, in his categorical disregard for Palestinians. Voting for Biden means excusing all the times in the past he helped arm Israel to murder Palestinians. Voting for him means, should he become the next president, siding with him every time he signs - and he will undoubtedly sign many - a new arms deal to support Israel and its murderous tyranny.... More than 300 million human beings trapped to choose between a Coke and a Pepsi deserve and must strive for a healthier choice. An entire planet at the mercy of US militarism and warmongering most certainly has everything to lose from either of these two American calamities."

President-elect Joe Biden on 24 November 2020 introduced a slate of veteran diplomats and policy-makers who will make up his national security and foreign policy team, saying: "America is back, ready to lead the world." Biden presented his picks for secretary of state, national security advisor, homeland security secretary, intelligence chief, UN ambassador and climate change envoy. "These public servants will restore America's global leadership and moral leadership," Biden said as the six men and women stood behind him wearing face-masks on the stage of the Queen theater. Biden said that after he is inaugurated on January 20, 2021 and Donald Trump leaves the White House, the United States will "once again sit at the head of the table, ready to confront our adversaries and not reject our allies." Biden said, in a jab at President Trump's go-it-alone "America First" policies, that "It is a team that reflects the fact that America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it".

The slate unveiled by Biden includes veterans of the Barack Obama administration and signals a return to traditional US diplomacy and multilateralism. Antony Blinken, Biden's choice for secretary of state, said the United States cannot solve global problems on its own. "We need to be working with other countries," the former State Department official said. "We need their cooperation. We need their partnership." Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Biden's choice to be the US ambassador to the United Nations, echoed those sentiments. "America is back. Multilateralism is back. Diplomacy is back," said Thomas-Greenfield, a seasoned career diplomat. "The challenges we face -- a global pandemic, a global economy, the global climate change crisis, mass migration and extreme poverty, social justice -- are unrelenting and interconnected, but they're not unresolvable if America is leading the way."

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) published a detained analysis under the headline “Should Michèle Flournoy Be Secretary of Defense?” POGO wrote that “Flournoy was widely considered to have been one of Obama’s more hawkish advisers and helped mastermind the escalation of the disastrous war in Afghanistan,” Arwa Mahdawi pointed out in a Nov. 21 Guardian piece. “She has called for increased defense spending, arguing in a 2017 Washington Post op-ed that Trump was ‘right to raise the need for more defense dollars.’ She has complained that Obama didn’t use military force enough, particularly in Syria. She supported the wars in Iraq and Libya …”

US President Joe Biden's speech 22 September 2021 from the UN rostrum once again reminded the world that the American leader is pursuing a policy of "endless surrender," said Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham. The journalist called the address of the head of the White House "tasteless" and "globalist". She said “He put the interests of the world community ahead of the interests of the United States”. In her criticism, the presenter noted that Biden's words about the joint successes of people around the world contrast with the financial and social situation of the Americans themselves. High mortality from COVID-19, migration crisis at the US-Mexican border, rising inflation and unemployment. According to Ingraham, the leader of the United States is guilty of all these problems.

Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton has joined her program. The politician was also dissatisfied with Biden's speech at the UN. In his opinion, the words of the head of state about the Cold War humiliate America in the eyes of the world community. "This speech was a shame at the United Nations. Joe Biden walked into the UN and put a giant kick me sign on Uncle Sam's back," Cotton concluded.