Joe Biden has made a lot of foreign policy mistakes over his political career when dealing with foreign powers, undermining American interests on the global level and helping to strengthen its adversaries. After taking office, he will inevitably reverse many of Trump’s policies against U.S. opponents and attempt to wipe out several of Trump’s achievements. He will likely stop the trade war with China, re-engage with Russia, reactivate the nuclear deal with Iran, and overturn Trump’s pressurized policy against Iran.
One can understand Biden foreign policy record with a statement of an intelligence analyst and former Obama-Biden secretary of defense Robert Gates. In his 2014 memoir, Gates wrote that Biden “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
China
It is a fact that the U.S. and China’s economic interests conflict, however; Obama and Biden have tremendously developed China’s economy with their unreasonable policies. Biden’s irrational stance has hugely integrated China into the world economy, and still says they want China to grow. He endorsed China’s entry into the World Trade Organization and supported China for Most Favored Nation status, killing 3.7 million American jobs and thousands of factories.
During the Obama-Biden era, China surpassed the U.S. in 2013 to become the world’s largest trading nation and became the globe’s leading manufacturing country, seizing the title from the US, which held it for nearly a century. China is the currently the world’s second-largest investor; its reserves are several times larger than America’s.
Many countries in the Middle East, Central Asia, Europe, Africa, Oceania, and Latin America see China for their economic development. China has been advancing ties with American allies in the world. Currently, China is in the position to utilize its rising economic strength to undermine U.S. interests and relations with allies and use investments, protectionism sanctions, boycotts, and its vast market as the power to form a substantial block against the U.S. and end its supremacy.
Economically, the gap between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in 1950 and during the entire Cold War was larger than it is between China and the U.S. at present. The USSR accounted for about 13 percent of global GDP in MER in 1950, whereas China today accounts for 17 percent.
Trump succeeded in holding China accountable, starting a trade war by putting Twenty-five percent tariffs to address China’s unfair trade practices and theft of intellectual property to save the US economy from decline. Trump’s move brought back a lot of businesses and his policies have also halted China from becoming an emerging economic Superpower.
The reinstallation of Biden policies will vastly wane the US economy and provide a tremendous vacuum for China to capture the place of the U.S. in the world, politically and economically. The Biden policies will facilitate China to advance its interests around the globe, which will obviously change the current unipolar world into bipolar, end the position of the sole superpower of the world and China will become the second superpower. Similarly, there is an immense possibility of the cold war between the U.S. and China, which will divide the world into two blocs and end the U.S. primacy.
Russia
Similarly, Biden assisted Russia’s attempts to join the World Trade Organization in 2012 with whom the US fought a cold war for more than four decades, spent trillions of dollars during the Cold War and tens of thousands of Americans lost their lives.
However, Obama and Biden failed to halt the Russians’ expansionism, and their unsuccessful policies on Ukraine gave a triumph to Putin. They did not provide aid to Ukraine as Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea in 2014. During the same period, Bashar Assad burnt Syria with the support of Putin and Russia has consolidated its irregular mercenary groups in Libya. Russia got an opportunity once again to increase its influence in international politics.
The Russian expansionism and its thriving rule in the Middle East have vastly diminished during the Trump era, but Biden policies will hugely mount the Russians influence in global affairs, creating big issues for the US in the future as Russia is the most pressing threat to US in the Europe, middle East and Central Asia. Normalizing policies and giving space will provide a golden opportunity to Rusia to remake relations with its old allies, which will again emerge a geopolitical tension between US and Russia because both countries interest are fully in contradiction.
Iran
During the Obama-Biden years, Iran has achieved a chance to fill the vacuum of US opposition across the Middle East, and America’s adversaries were bolstered. Iranian-backed paramilitaries controlled large swaths of Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon and the regime has enormously backed the proxies against the US to plot attacks on American troops in the Middle East.
Biden also endorsed the nuclear deal with Iran; Obama and Biden provided the $400 million cash payment to Iran, which prompted Iranian aggression further in the region.
President Trump took hard action to protect the US interests in the region, brought Soleimani to justice, and greatly decreased perils for US soldiers, but Biden opposed the killing of Soleimani and Trump’s effective policy.
Biden will reactivate the Iran nuclear deal and saying “Tehran must return to strict compliance with the deal. If it does so, I will rejoin the agreement.” Biden’s policy will stabilize the cruel regime again, its weak economy and will trigger soaring conflict in the region. The stabilization of the Iranian regime will create a great threat to US interests in the middle east and central Asia. Iran may form new proxy groups in the region for the Confrontation of the US and will reverse the US gains.
Hizbullah Khan is a political analyst focusing on U.S. foreign policy.
