Muddle in the middle.
A snapshot from the day’s news – MSNBC is obsessing over Secretary of Defense Mark Esper’s announcement that we’re withdrawing 12,000 troops from Germany. The various former Republicans that populate its talk show panels are lamenting Trump’s undermining of the NATO alliance. In real time, we are seeing the Biden foreign policy take shape. I won’t say it’s a more aggressive posture, as Trump is aggressively pursuing conflict with Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, China, and others. There is, however, a somewhat nostalgic turn to the emerging centrist doctrine Biden will no doubt pursue. It appears we may be in for a slight return of the cold war model, the east-west divide, the Russian menace. If that’s the case, it would be a bitter trade in exchange for the crap show we’re living through now.
I am tentative about this observation because it’s hard to be certain what a Biden foreign policy will be when the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has consistently avoided posting any details about it on his campaign site. Since it’s likely to be formulated by committee, I’m guessing it will be bellicose, but measured; assertive, but mindful of precedent; proactive, but not necessarily the first to any party. Where will we bomb, drone, invade next under a President Biden? One can only guess. Likely he will re-deploy those 12,000 troops to Germany, whether or not they pony up the Euros for costs associated with the posting. Indeed, the only net positives might be a return to some type of arms control regime with Russia, Iran, and others, and perhaps a re-commitment to the tepid, voluntary goals of the Paris Accord on Climate. Not nearly enough for my taste, but there you have it.
I think the most compelling case for this muddle in the middle, from a foreign policy standpoint, derives from the very nature of the presidency and who holds that office. The U.S. president is too powerful. It is an office that wields force, both military and economic, in unlimited magnitude. No one should be THAT powerful, particularly not someone who is accountable to an electorate that makes up less than five percent of the world’s population. Placing Donald Trump in the cockpit of that titanic killing machine is not only irresponsible, it’s sheer madness. Regardless of any minor departures from the hard-line Republican orthodoxy on foreign relations and national security, Trump has proven his propensity to flub his way through any situation, with disastrous consequences. We’ve seen this in his response to the Coronavirus. Even as he seems inclined to curry favor with Putin, we’ve seen him tear up crucial arms agreements with the Russians, hurtling us back into a deadly arms race.
Plainly, Biden’s foreign policy will likely be as imperial and neoliberal as he can get away with. But every moment Trump sits behind that so-called Resolute Desk, we are in mortal danger. He simply has to go.
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