Not all news is good – to put it mildly – for the Biden administration. Difficult interim elections are looming in November 2022, a front of authoritarian regimes seems to be confirmed, the allies doubt or do as they see fit. Pakistan shuns invitation to virtual summit of democracies held in December 2021; United Arab Emirates considering suspending order for fighter jets in Washington; Paris has made a crisis over the Australian submarine affair… Even the Mexican neighbor, under its difficult president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, adopts the Cuban vaccine Abdala against the Covid, after Vietnam and Venezuela. But above all, the state of democracy in America is worrying.
A year after coming to power, but also a year after the events of Capitol Hill, where is Joe Biden’s America? “America is back”, promised the winner of 2020. “America is back … home”, people joked after the Afghan withdrawal. The country is in turmoil. Its diplomacy, however, is making every effort to invent the alliances of tomorrow in the face of what it sees as the main challenge: China. And the announcement of the fall of House America, so far, has always been greatly exaggerated.
In the tournament
The disorder is initially internal. As if Joe Biden had failed to appease the country. The Republican Party remains loyal to Donald Trump and a large part of its voters remains convinced that the election was “stolen”: it is in itself a victory for opponents of democracy elsewhere in the world. Conspiracy gathers an irrational number of followers in the United States, and we discover its deep anchoring: after the turpitudes of the QAnon movement, it is the role of many podcasts in the chaotic treatment of the 2020 elections that has emerged. turned out to be devastating. Social divisions are growing, the country, still in the grip of the Covid epidemic and its political tensions, is experiencing increasingly exacerbated dividing lines. Between wokism and “MAGA” (“Make America Great Again”, the slogan of the Trumpists), dialogue has become impossible.
The dialogue between Washington and Moscow continues and by their own admission the two capitals are also consulting on the Iranian talks, which have just resumed in Vienna. Will we then see “Nixon upside down”? Where the former president (1968-74) had moved closer to Beijing to contain Moscow, America today could be tempted by the opposite maneuver
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It is this weakened society which faces a dangerous world, of which it had nevertheless proclaimed itself the strategic guarantor. Will the Biden administration be the fourth successive to seriously worry America’s allies? After a Manichean Bush administration which launched the country into the Afghan and Iraqi conflicts, after an Obama administration which seemed too hesitant by dint of over-intellectualizing its “strategic patience”, after the exhausting Trump years, here is the age of captain raises doubts, even before the vice-president (many of whom was expected) manages to convince.
Alliances for tomorrow
The departure from Kabul gave the wrong signal, and democracy seems to be receding around the world. In the State Department, Defense and other positions relating to foreign action, many appointments remain blocked, in part due to Republican obstruction in the Senate, including in key positions (public diplomacy, special correspondent for North Korea…). The president had appointed 80 ambassadors at the end of 2021, but others remain to be appointed, and not the least (Brazil, Italy, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Ukraine, etc.).
On the other hand, the Pacific could be treated in personalities, with Caroline Kennedy (daughter of JFK) in Australia, or Rahm Emanuel (former mayor of Chicago and chief of staff of the White House under Obama) in Tokyo. And the agenda of the Secretary of State impresses, who tries to draw the map of a new camp of democracies. The UKUS affair should not – seen from Paris – obscure the intensity of the phenomenon. Canberra has now chosen its side. Japan is strengthening its strategic ties with Washington and signs, a rare thing for the country, a second treaty of alliance in its history (after the one signed with the United States in 1960), with Australia precisely. On the European front, not as neglected as it is said, Blinken has just received Annalena Baerbock (German Minister for Foreign Affairs) in Washington, which consolidates the American line on China and Russia. He had just met with the B9 (or the “Bucharest Nine”, NATO’s Eastern European allies). In Finland, the President and Prime Minister of this neutral state did not rule out NATO membership in their end-of-year speeches. Further in Afghanistan, Blinken appointed two women special envoys (Rina Amiri and Stephenie Foster) who will follow the plight of young girls and women, as a challenge to the Taliban.
Let’s not bury America
The year 2022 will depend on the initiatives launched or not by several peer competitors: will Russia attack Ukraine? What will China do in Taiwan? In addition, will a new agreement with Iran see the light of day? Will the Taliban hold out in the face of the looming humanitarian catastrophe? Of course, in appearance, the rivals are gaining ground: Russia gains a foothold in Africa and sends its troops to Kazakhstan; Beijing is increasing the number of its nuclear warheads. But in the face of these challenges, the US economy remains strong while China, like everyone else, suffers the shock of covid. It is said to be omnipresent in Africa, but the eighth FOCAC (Forum on China-Africa Cooperation) which was held last November in Dakar, despite some signed documents (such as a “vision 2035” for Sino-African cooperation) was much smaller than the previous ones in projects launched (50 in 2018, 10 in 2021). It could also be that relations with Moscow heat up, if Ukraine does not ignite. The dialogue continues and by their own admission the two capitals are also consulting on the Iranian talks, which have just resumed in Vienna. Will we then see “Nixon upside down”? Where the former president (1968-74) had approached Beijing to contain Moscow, America today could be tempted by the opposite maneuver.
In the 1970s, America was said to have been demolished by its moral crisis (Watergate, the defeat in Vietnam…) and by the progression of communism in the world. It was predicted in the 1980s good to be bought by a Japan announced as the next first world power. Admittedly, the year 2022 will be difficult. But this is neither the first nor the last time.
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