By Shogo Kawakita,
The administration of President-elect Joe Biden will face challenges in restoring the United States to its position of global leadership, even though the incoming leader has already pledged to rejoin the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization, a foreign policy and political risk expert believes.
"Biden is going to rejoin some of these organizations, and the U.S. will have a seat at the table, which is important. But that is not going to drive a new global order," Ian Bremmer, political scientist and president of the political risk research firm Eurasia Group, told Kyodo News last week in an interview via Zoom.
U.S. President Donald Trump, in pursuit of his "America First" policy, withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement early in his tenure and formally exited on Nov. 4 this year.
His administration also notified the United Nations of its withdrawal from the WHO, harshly criticizing it for its response to the coronavirus pandemic and accusing it of bowing to Chinese pressure on the way out.
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Biden, a 77-year-old Democrat and a former vice president under President Barack Obama, rejected Trump's go-it-alone style and has already assured world leaders in a flurry of post-election phone calls that "America is back" and "it's not America alone" anymore.
There is indeed likely to be "a honeymoon" period for Biden after he takes office on Jan. 20, 2021, Bremmer believes. "I think for the first six months of Biden, people are going to feel a lot better, internationally," he said.
However, he hinted that Biden would face "the 'G-Zero' reality of our world today" after the grace period is over, as the decline in American leadership dates back to the pre-Trump era.
G-Zero is a term coined by Bremmer to explain a world where no single country or group of countries has the political and economic leverage to drive the international agenda, leaving superpowers and constructs like the G-7 and G-20 with fading influence.
"I wrote about the G-Zero before Trump. It was (some) ten years ago. You have to remember when Biden was vice president, that was when everyone said the U.S. was leading from behind," Bremmer said.
Since then, Washington has not been "prepared to play the global leadership role" anymore, he said.
The United States' involvement in endless wars is one of the reasons that turned Americans' gaze inward, and the coronavirus pandemic has only intensified such public sentiment as the death toll in the United States continues to rise.
As of the middle of November, the number of U.S. deaths surpassed 240,000, a situation far worse than any other nation.
The political confusion after the Nov. 3 presidential election has also undermined confidence in U.S. institutions and further driven Americans to look inward.
Trump has still refused to concede, even after the vast majority of media outlets have called the race for Biden, with them awarding him a total of 306 electoral college votes when he needed just 270 to take the White House.
Far from congratulating his rival and starting the transition, Trump has doubled-down on pre-election claims that the poll was "rigged" against him, exacerbating the sense of chaos.
The Bremmer-led Eurasia Group published its "Top Risks 2020" in January, which listed the presidential election as the biggest concern with a title of "Rigged!: Who governs the US?"
The risk analysis report predicted the election "would create months of lawsuits and a political vacuum" regardless of the poll results.
"The U.S. is right now more divided politically than any point in my lifetime," Bremmer, 51, said. "It is also more divided politically than any other major industrial economy in the world, obviously very damaging to the country."
Bremmer said the erosion of the domestic institutions in the United States will contribute to the G-Zero phenomenon to some extent, adding that weakness and division in Europe, the decline of Russia, and the growth of China are also the reasons for a dearth of global leadership.
It is hard to see "the willingness of the U.S. to be the global policeman, to be the architect for global institutions and trade, and to promote global values" in recent years, even though Biden will attempt to restore the country to its former role as a global leader and to reassure allies and friends.
China got its coronavirus outbreak under control relatively quickly by deploying authoritarian methods of containment, and some experts believe Beijing would be willing to compete with Western nations by demonstrating the viability of a system with different political and economic values.
Bremmer forecast that the economic decoupling of China and the United States will continue in the technology sector, as demonstrated by the rollout of next-generation 5G broadband cellular networks, even under a Biden administration.
The nations are diametrically opposed on issues like Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the treatment of the Uyghur people, Bremmer said. The United States and European countries argue China engages in authoritarian overreach in these areas, while Beijing claims they are its domestic matters.
Bremmer said the U.S.-China relationship is not headed in a positive direction, even though it may become less volatile after the demise of the Trump presidency. He noted that Biden called Chinese President Xi Jinping "a thug" on the campaign trail. "Trump never did that. I think these things matter."
Japan is caught in the middle of the U.S.-China rivalry. The United States is its closest ally, while China is its biggest trading partner.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, a former chief Cabinet secretary under former leader Shinzo Abe, has to chart a difficult course between Washington and Beijing.
"Prime Minister Suga is going to work very hard to help ensure that the U.S.-China relationship does not create an uncontained conflict. He is very interested in working closely with President Biden," Bremmer, who recently spoke with Suga, said.
