Presidents like to hang their foreign policies on one big concept, sometimes even one word.
And each president, at least since Woodrow Wilson, has tried to sell the country, and the world, on his big idea.
Jimmy Carter’s was human rights. Richard Nixon’s was detente — the historic “openings” to China and the then-USSR. Barack Obama’s was “leading from behind,” which, in retrospect, sounds even worse than it was.
President Joe Biden, who is on his first overseas trip, initially to meet with allies in Europe and then to sit down with Vladimir Putin in Switzerland, also has a big idea. And Biden clearly intends to build his foreign policy around it. The idea is that the world is now in a titanic, historic struggle between authoritarian regimes (like China, Russia, Turkey and others) and democracies (like the United States and the NATO nations, but particularly those we have a “special relationship” with, like Great Britain and Canada). Germany and France must be major players in the defense of democracies, too.
This is one grand theme of the Biden presidency and the major thread of his foreign policy: Open societies must prove they can govern and cohere at home and that they can stand up to bullies, stick together and compete in the world.
This is a solid big idea and maybe a sound organizing principle for action as well — one that addresses the world as it really is today and brings to bear some measure of idealism.
There are two subsidiary principles to the emerging Biden doctrine: One is that the United States, as the world’s greatest democracy, is “back” and willing to lead the democracies of the globe again, which is an implicit criticism not only of Donald Trump, but Obama as well. And the second is that strong alliances are the only way for democracies to prevail; we cannot go it alone. That is a direct refutation of the Trump foreign policy, which Biden regards as isolationist.
President Biden is two things: He is an internationalist and he is experienced in foreign policy, having been head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and having been vice president.
Internationalism is also a legitimate way to see the world.
But, it is also true that any president today needs more than one big idea to manage foreign policy. We need to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.
Most of the “experts” and sages say that what Biden faces on this trip is European doubt about how free America itself will be in the long term and, in Putin, a wily and ruthless opponent.
But the challenge to Biden is, in the first instance, more complicated than that, and in the second more simple.
The United States is still the freest nation in the world. What the president must actually convince the Europeans of is not that we are democratic and that voter suppression will not prevail, but that they should follow us as the leading democrats of the world.
What makes the president of the United States, any more than the prime minister of Great Britain or the president of France, the spokesman for the free world against the tyrants?
Moreover, our interests and those of the Europeans are not in perfect sync all of the time. Certainly they are not with regard to trade.
Which brings us back to Trump, who also had one big idea: “America First.” This, too, was too simplistic and too clumsily applied. But it is not inherently isolationist to ask Germans to play on a level playing field with us in trade.
Americans have been transferring wealth and jobs to Japan, China, Mexico and Europe for three generations now, and there was never a plebiscite on that. If there had been, we know how most Americans would have voted.
Trump saw that, and Biden would be wise to see it too.
So, yes, by all means, build and rebuild alliances, but with the stipulation that American jobs and industry certainly ought to come first. There is no reason why we cannot do both. To conduct a successful foreign policy we need dualistic and complex thought, not binary thought.
As for Putin, the issue is not his wiliness but whether Biden and allies are willing to stand up to him, together, and force him to pay a price for his tyranny and his brutality.
We are told our president seeks “stability” with Putin, so that U.S. policy makers can focus on China. That’s not standing up. And that’s not good enough.
(Trump’s Putin man-crush certainly was not good enough and further empowered the dictator.)
Putin has crushed every small germ of political freedom and democracy in Russia. He has jailed the leader of the opposition and seen to it that he is tortured in prison. Alexei Navalny is a brave man — freedom’s prophet. And he is dying in a gulag while the forces of democratic light that Biden celebrates and wishes to lead twiddle their thumbs in silence.
If the contest that Biden says is historic and upon us is real, and the U.S. wishes to lead the fight for democracy, he need not outsmart Putin, he must confront him.
Biden must speak Navalny’s name — when in Putin’s company.
Ronald Reagan said: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
President Biden must say: “Mr. Putin, set Alexei Navalny free.”
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