Looking back at Joe Biden's policy statement in Foreign Affairs

Joe Biden's version of the traditional Presidential candidate's Foreign Affairs article on his foreign policy views was published in their March/April 2020 issue, Why America Must Lead Again: Rescuing U.S. Foreign Policy After Trump.

It's a mostly safe statement that's pretty much standard Democratic foreign policy rhetoric of the last 30 years. Which of course is Better Than Trump.

But this is one thing that stands out, not strictly a foreign policy issue, which I take as a commitment on his part that I expect him to follow through on as President:

I will also take steps to tackle the self-dealing, conflicts of interest, dark money, and rank corruption that are serving narrow, private, or foreign agendas and undermining our democracy. That starts by fighting for a constitutional amendment to completely eliminate private dollars from federal elections. In addition, I will propose a law to strengthen prohibitions on foreign nationals or governments trying to influence U.S. federal, state, or local elections and direct a new independent agency - the Commission on Federal Ethics - to ensure vigorous and unified enforcement of this and other anticorruption laws. The lack of transparency in our campaign finance system, combined with extensive foreign money laundering, creates a significant vulnerability. We need to close the loopholes that corrupt our democracy. [my emphasis]

By "starts," I assume he means it's something he'll start pushing in a serious way at the first of his Administration. I look forward to hearing that in his Inaugural Address.

I'm being a bit sarcastic, of course, because this was not something he stressed during his campaign. It was almost certainly a line tossed in to respond to criticism that Sanders and many others - not strictly on the left - make of the current campaign finance system.

It's always important to pay attention to what Presidential candidates of the major parties say about their foreign policy. At the same time, there is a well-developed foreign policy jargon that requires some effort to interpret. So we have to look at pieces like this one as a general indication of policy preferences. And, despite our national narcissism and our country's actual enormous power, US foreign policy doesn't control the world. So to a significant extent, US foreign policy is aspirational, depending very much on the responses of other international actors. The Vietnam War and the Iraq War provide a couple of dramatic examples of those limitations.

It's hard not to notice that the two issues that are literally existential threats to the survival of humanity are only discussed in passing until near the end:

The United States must lead the world to take on the existential threat we face - climate change. If we don’t get this right, nothing else will matter. I will make massive, urgent investments at home that put the United States on track to have a clean energy economy with net-zero emissions by 2050. Equally important, because the United States creates only 15 percent of global emissions, I will leverage our economic and moral authority to push the world to determined action. I will rejoin the Paris climate agreement on day one of a Biden administration and then convene a summit of the world’s major carbon emitters, rallying nations to raise their ambitions and push progress further and faster. We will lock in enforceable commitments that will reduce emissions in global shipping and aviation, and we will pursue strong measures to make sure other nations can’t undercut the United States economically as we meet our own commitments. That includes insisting that China - the world’s largest emitter of carbon - stop subsidizing coal exports and outsourcing pollution to other countries by financing billions of dollars’ worth of dirty fossil fuel energy projects through its Belt and Road Initiative.

On nonproliferation and nuclear security, the United States cannot be a credible voice while it is abandoning the deals it negotiated. From Iran to North Korea, Russia to Saudi Arabia, Trump has made the prospect of nuclear proliferation, a new nuclear arms race, and even the use of nuclear weapons more likely. As president, I will renew our commitment to arms control for a new era. The historic Iran nuclear deal that the Obama-Biden administration negotiated blocked Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Yet Trump rashly cast the deal aside, prompting Iran to restart its nuclear program and become more provocative, raising the risk of another disastrous war in the region. I’m under no illusions about the Iranian regime, which has engaged in destabilizing behavior across the Middle East, brutally cracked down on protesters at home, and unjustly detained Americans. But there is a smart way to counter the threat that Iran poses to our interests and a self-defeating way - and Trump has chosen the latter. The recent killing of Qasem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, removed a dangerous actor but also raised the prospect of an ever-escalating cycle of violence in the region, and it has prompted Tehran to jettison the nuclear limits established under the nuclear deal. Tehran must return to strict compliance with the deal. If it does so, I would rejoin the agreement and use our renewed commitment to diplomacy to work with our allies to strengthen and extend it, while more effectively pushing back against Iran’s other destabilizing activities. [my emphasis]

Nuclear arms reduction and nonproliferation are actually a more urgent threat than climate change. Because a nuclear war would inflict catastrophic destruction immediately. And it would induce massive and very rapid climate changes that would kill more people than the initial nuclear blasts. It could literally make the Earth uninhabitable for homo sapiens in a very short time frame. Nuclear proliferation is distinct from the longer-term global climate change. But the danger of nuclear war is also the single most serious aspect of the climate crisis. Eliminating fossil fuels entirely won't save humanity if there is an all-out nuclear war involving the US, Russia, and/or China. Even a "small" nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan would have catastrophic and rapid global effects because of the huge clouds of particulates it would spew into the atmosphere.

I hope it doesn't take a new edition of the Cuban Missile Crisis for nuclear arms reduction and nonproliferation to g et the urgent priority they should be getting right now.