Biden's February 4 foreign policy speech

President Joe Biden gave his first speech devoted to foreign policy since becoming President at the State Department on February 4: White House transcript, Remarks by President Biden on America’s Place in the World 02/04/2021

Here is the ABC News video of the speech, President Biden delivers foreign policy remarks 02/04/2021:

Heather Cox Richardson on Facebook (02/05/2021) summarizes Biden's framing in the speech this way:

Not surprisingly, Biden announced a return to a more traditional foreign policy than his predecessor’s. But he did more than that: he tied foreign policy to domestic interests in a way that echoed Republican president Theodore Roosevelt when he helped to launch the Progressive Era of the early twentieth century.

She distinguishes this from Trump's framing in which he "wrenched U.S. foreign policy from the channel in which it had operated since WWII, replacing it with a new focus on the economic interests of business leaders."

I assume she's not trying to imply that economic and business considerations didn't previously play a huge role in foreign policy. She's rather addressing the thematic positioning of the national foreign policy narrative and the difference between Trump's and Biden's:

Trump chose as Secretary of State the former chief executive officer of ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson, who oversaw the gutting of career officers in the State Department. When the department lost 12% of its foreign-affairs specialists in the first eight months of 2017, it was clear that the Trump administration was abandoning a foreign policy in which the United States tried to defend the idea of democracy and to advance its interests through diplomacy.

But she uses Trump's Saudi policy that included backing it in its war in Yemen with its horrendous humanitarian consequences as nn example of the change. Biden's comment on Yemen during his speech drew a lot of attention:

We’re also stepping up our diplomacy to end the war in Yemen — a war which has created a humanitarian and strategic catastrophe. I’ve asked my Middle East team to ensure our support for the United Nations-led initiative to impose a ceasefire, open humanitarian channels, and restore long-dormant peace talks.

She rightly calls attention to the important symbolism in Biden giving his first Presidential speech on foreign policy at the State Department, the first agency that Biden visited as President:

The next thing Biden said was to assure the world that diplomats around the world spoke for the country again: “when you speak, you speak for me.” Later on, he reiterated that idea: “I value your expertise and I respect you, and I will have your back. This administration is going to empower you to do your jobs, not target or politicize you.”

Biden didn't signal that he was giving up Realpolitik for promoting democratization above all. The most urgent foreign policy problems for the human race are nuclear proliferation and climate change. Finding cooperative international solutions cannot wait until the US decides all other countries meet American standards of democratic governance. Cox takes note of the power-political role of NATO, which she calls "a military alliance among 30 nations of Europe, the U.S., and Canada, formed in 1949 to stop the spread of Soviet, and now Russian, aggression in Europe." (One of the tragedies of post-Cold War US foreign policy is that there was never a serious effort to redefine NATO's basic purpose and expanding NATO eastward with less careful consideration than was called for.)

Cox calls special attention to how Biden talks about the success of the economy and democratic governance as a key to the international strength of the US. It's certainly more appealing that Trump's chaotic combination of plutocracy, militarism and adoration of foreign strongman rulers. But Biden isn't pledging to annual the influence of the military-industrial complex on US foreign policy. And, so far, he's not signaling a fundamental shift in the policies the US pursued under the Bush-Cheney, Obama-Biden, and Trump-Pence Administration of leaning heavily against left-leaning democratic governments in Latin America.

Foreign Policy provides commentary on the speech in a (somewhat annoying) pop-up form from Amy Mackinnon, Robbie Gramer and Jack Detsche, Understanding Biden’s First Foreign-Policy Speech 02/05/2021. Mackinnon observes:

It's hard to cover the entire world in one speech, but even with that said, what's not in the speech is as interesting as what's in it. Note that there was no mention of terrorism, North Korean, Venezuela, Cuba, or the United States' closest ally in the Middle East, Israel. And, for that matter, there was not even a passing mention of the entire continent of Africa."

So there is still a lot for us to learn about Biden's foreign policy.

Mackinnon also calls attention to the fact that despite a more publicly critical stance toward Russia, Biden is not continuing with Trump's completely irresponsible stance toward nuclear proliferation. "The New START treaty is the last remaining nuclear arms control agreement between Russia and the United States and has been renewed for five years. It was set to expire on Friday [February 5]."

Not surprisingly, Biden described china as "our most serious competitor." Biden will be under serious pressure from many in the foreign policy etablishment to pursue a "new cold war" approach to relations with China. That's an outcome that US policy should seriously try to avoid.

Part of what we're seeing with Biden is not just a set of policies, but also a big step back to basic diplomatic competence. Competence, of course, isn't a purely neutral state of affairs. Competence applied to bad goals is likely to do more harm than good. But to achieve major international priorities like nuclear disarmament and successfully dealing with the climate crisis, requires very serious competence in diplomacy and national security affairs.

There have, of course, been a number of reports taking early stock of the meanings of Biden's foreign policy speech.

Andrew Rettman (Biden tells Western allies: 'America's back' EU Observer 02/05/2021) refers to some of the major issues between the US and the EU:

Meanwhile, Biden's speech comes at a time when France and Germany, among others, are calling for EU "strategic autonomy" after Trump showed the risk of Europe's dependence on US power.

The EU recently irked the US by signing an investment treaty with China without waiting for the Biden administration to take office.

The EU's top diplomat also went to meet Russia's foreign minister in Moscow before he had first met Biden's secretary of state.

And Biden did not mention two potentially divisive issues among Western allies: Nord Stream 2 and Iran.

Trump imposed sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 Russian gas pipeline to Germany in a move which Berlin has lobbied Washington to also overturn.

The Nord Stream 2 project is a particularly interesting example of an issue that is part of a complicated balancing act among conflicting interests. In particular, it's a major piece in the power balancing among China, Russia, the EU, and the US.

Julian Borger and Patrick Wintour (Biden announces end to US support for Saudi-led offensive in Yemen Guardian 02/04/2021) highlight the significance of the switch in Yemen policy. But they also stress the diplomatic signal he gave for a more decent and practical refugee policy:

In order to rebuild American “moral leadership” Biden said he would also restore the US refugee programme, and announced an executive order that would raise the number of refugees accepted into the US in the first fiscal year of the Biden-Harris administration to 125,000. That is higher than the 110,000 accepted in the last year of the Obama administration, which had dwindled to less than 15,000 in the Trump administration.

As Biden was speaking, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) announced it had canceled a deportation flight to Cameroonian and Democratic Republic of Congo, while it conducted an investigation into allegations of abuse by Ice agents against the deportees. The announcement marked a significant change of approach since the Senate confirmation of a new homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas.

“The United States’ moral leadership on refugee issues was a point of bipartisan consensus for so many decades when I first got here,” Biden said. “We shine the light, the lamp, of liberty on oppressed people. We’re offering safe havens for those fleeing violence or persecution, and our example pushed other nations to open wide their doors as well.”

Aljazeera takes note of this aspect of Biden's foreign policy signaling that was not specifically addressed the State Department speech (Biden lays out foreign policy plan to reverse Trump agenda 02/04/2021). Not a good signal, so far as I can see:

The Biden administration is also set to continue with aspects of the Trump’s policy towards Venezuela, the South American nation that has been at odds with Washington for more than a decade.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Wednesday the administration would continue recognising interim President Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s leader.

Price called Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro a “dictator”, but did not call for his removal.

Barbara Plett Usher highlights the Russia, Iran, and refugee policy aspects of the speech, What Biden's foreign policy 'reset' really means BBC News 02/05/2021.

And Elise Labott (Biden Puts a Kinder, Gentler Spin on ‘America First’ Foreign Policy 02/05/2021) sees Biden's speech as having "signaled a clear departure from Trump — and a return to U.S. orthodoxy."

Bidenism, if it can be called that, doesn’t entirely abandon Trump’s nationalist vision. Quite the contrary: Biden’s goal of making the welfare of the middle class the central tenet of U.S. foreign policy bears the imprint of the populist message that propelled Trump to power. Once a champion of a globalized economic system that included free trade, Biden now pledges that every foreign-policy decision must be taken “with American working families in mind.”

Michael Hirsh (‘America Is Back,’ Biden Says Foreign Policy 02/04/2021) applies some imagination to find a "populist" message in the speech, which I would say requires a fairly broad concept of what populism is:

Overall the speech was presented as a mixture of populist, anti-Wall Street ideas stemming from the Democrats’ powerful progressive wing and Biden’s declared intent to make the rest of the world forget the turbulent four years of Trump’s presidency and, instead, to see the United States again as a global leader and force for democracy and human rights. [my emphasis]

There has been a large amount of academic and journalistic work on populism in recent years. Almost none of it would conclude that "populism" is saying something that someone who is not an investment banker might agree with.

Just Security surveys a variety of views of Biden's speech, Diplomats, Top Experts’ Reactions to Biden Foreign Policy Speech 01/04/2021. Keith Harper, for instance, notes the return-to-normalcy tone of the speech: "What is striking about this speech, its extraordinary quality is how ordinary it would be for an American President prior to these last four years."

Stephen Holmes observes, "The world before Trump is gone forever." He expresses optimism that this may result in a more realistic and less arrogant foreign policy:

That means that American diplomacy is going to be compelled to take an imaginative, out-of-the-box approach to defining America’s new role and place in the world. Our own struggles with authoritarian nativism and xenophobia should also steer our diplomats away from lecturing other countries in counterproductive ways. Simply reverting to familiar patterns, however appealing that might initially appear to the highly skilled professionals now celebrating the return of “normality,” is not really an option. That is all to the good. A time for some serious rethinking has arrived.

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos takes a more critical view, i.e., a noninterventionist-oriented one, in In major address Biden says ‘America is back.’ But what does that mean? Responsible Statecraft 02/04/2021:

What was not clear from his somewhat brief remarks today is exactly what that will look like in practice, as the 16 years prior to Trump were marked by U.S. wars and counterterrorism operations in several countries, with an accompanying refugee crisis, and plummeting regard for American influence across the board.

But in Biden’s telling, it was Trump’s destruction of democracy at home, and his eschewing of traditional allies which tarnished our reputation as a model for democracy abroad. Diplomacy is the only way to get it back, he said. “We need to be re-forming the habit of cooperation and rebuilding the muscle of democratic alliances that have atrophied over the last few years of neglect and I would argue, abuse.”

“We have to earn back our leadership position.” But don’t worry, he stressed, “America is back.”

Going "back" to invading Iraq, or "back" to supporting coups in Venezuela or Honduras or Paraguay, or militarily intervening in Syria and Libya, would not the best policy.

Vlahos, who served for three years as executive editor of The American Conservative, also finds some of the omissions particularly notable:

Strikingly the president skipped over some of the greatest foriegn [sic] policy challenges of his early term. The words “Kim Jong Un” or “North Korea” never left his lips. There was no mention of the 20-year war in Afghanistan or the pending May 1 deadline to withdraw the remaining 2,500 American troops there. He said he has directed Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to review the entire U.S. force structure worldwide, but aside from announcing that he is stopping a Trump plan to withdraw some 12,000 forces from Germany (only half were actually supposed to come home, the rest were headed to other NATO outposts), he said nothing about our country’s longest war in history.

As for the Iran nuclear deal and Washington’s return to it, he was silent, even though the JCPOA is probably the best example of multinational cooperation of the last decade, and Trump leaving it in 2018 the starkest exemplification of the former president’s disregard for diplomacy in his tenure.

But aside from Yemen, this was not a newsmaking speech. It was more of a pep talk, aimed in part at State Department employees hoping for a morale boost and their own reset after the lean and anxious years under Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a political striver with his own agenda.