Welcome, Mr. Biden, such a relief!
The Biden-Trump hot contest reminded me of an epic saga in the history of cricket. It was in Sharjah, April 1986, Pakistan required four runs from the last bowl of the match. Chetan Sharma delivered the last bowl among millions of silent audiences. Javed Miandad hit the bowl straight to six. That’s known as ‘Sixer’ in our part of cricket chronicle. It was a nerve-wracking moment for more than a billion people in Pakistan and India. Both the teams played phenomenally, but the victory went to the one who aced a six in this equally challenging teams.
Fast forward to 2020. The metaphor of cricket has become a political metaphor for us. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden played exigently tough, apart from characteristically discourteous affidavits and allegations from the Trump part of the fulcrum, Mr. Biden remained calm, polished, and of course genuinely respectful to the voters. That’s what makes the Democrats more appealing, at least to the world beyond Mr. Trump.
Mr. Biden urged patience during the counting of votes – “I know watching these vote tallies can be very slow,” he said. “It can be numbing” to watch. Meanwhile, Mr. Trump falsely said in a speech early Wednesday that he won the 2020 general election. No winner had been declared, and votes were still being counted in several key states. A cuspated contrast in their views on politics, democracy, and of course the electorate. What is reassuring is the confirmation from Mr. Biden’s transition team’s focus on better management of the pandemic and other issues – “We can’t save any of the lives that have been lost but we can save a lot of lives in the months ahead,” Mr. Biden emphatically said.
The Republican cheerleaders rightly argued for economic growth, better livelihoods, and Making America Great Again, the Democrats befittingly argued for better governance, rightful institutions, and making the America great across the world. Once again, the Americans voted for civil rights, democratic institutions, and the states’ constitutional obligations to humane aspects of political economy. The Supreme Court holds the scale of justice enshrined irrespective of polemic appointments as reported by the American media. That’s what American democracy is all about.
Although I don’t intend to criticize the Trumpian effort to secure the White House, but certainly his second term could have furthered the self-inflicted wounds of the US democracy for a generation or more. Many parts of the world is plagued with rightist or quasi-autocracy governments, led by conscious or subconscious Machiavellians, Mr. Trump swum along with them quite well. But, the challenge for Mr. Biden is then to balancing his liberal policies with these populist rightist-nationalist leaders!
Nonetheless, the defeat of Mr. Trump won’t mean his legacy will be gone with the wind, Trumpism will continue to live on. That’s what precisely will remain as the key challenge for Mr. Biden along with the declining democratic values, and of course for the Republicans themselves. A new socio-political trilogy in the making.
Mr. Biden will have to deal with a massively divided society, the language of racial supremacy or racial hierarchy is increasing, and the gaps between liberal values and the structural parochialisms are widening. The role of the immigrants still remains the key to the US economy and political development. I am hopeful that the Biden administration will remain committed to the groups of ‘aliens’ that has positively contributed to the making of the US as a power hub.
Of course, being mindful of the colossal task of reforming or restructuring the executive branches, the appointments of the key secretaries will be the core and indispensable factor to determine the success of the Biden administration in and beyond Washington.
Logically, Mr. Biden will be hustling with the Covid failures for a foreseeable time. He will have to spend considerable time in mending the woes of the executive branch, and deliver to the populace aspiring to recapitulate racial and civic rights. Arguably Mr. Biden will have to spend time in reforming the law enforcement agencies along with the draconian changes to the immigration prescripts.
Too many issues for the first year for the White House.
The global expectations from Mr. Biden will be astronomical, soothingly Mr. Biden is much more au fait with the global system.
What one should expect to see is a relatively slower response to the global issues, restrained policies toward China, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific, gradual inclination toward multilateral institutionalism, and constitutional obligations to assert human rights and democratic values across the regions.Mr. Biden has already laid a pathway for his foreign policy that includes: addressing the common challenges that no one nation can face on its own such as climate change, nuclear proliferation, great power game tilting toward multipolar tensions, cyber warfare, and the mass migration.
Correspondingly, the US will have to engage in positive competition with the Mandarins that has already become the de facto global power – thanks to Mr. Trump. I assume Beijing will try to be congenially warmer with Mr. Biden if the White House embarks on cleaning the foreign policy rusts. I am aware of the colloquia that the US foreign policy remains comparably ditto regardless of the changes in POTUS in the White House, but the scopes for ‘business as usual’ is now old gone!
Moscow, Ankara, Tehran, Doha, Tokyo, or at the ideological level Islamophobia; transnational crime and extremism (be it white or non-white); and populist nationalism, have emerged as the iron hands that can rock cradles any time, not rhetoric any longer. That comes at a time when the global demography is in transition. AI; social media; and encrypted communication technologies; mobility, and cheaper communication has broken the barriers to knowledge, the hard choice between information and misinformation dictates the day to day life, nationalist populism in the absence of meaningful governance continues to tickle social pluralism, and the ever evolving social changes have altered the social capitals – whether it’s the West or the East- beyond the understanding of the primaeval political structures in the key low-income countries. That’s another level of challenge to deal with.
At least, the COVID has exposed an unprecendent level of inequalities; hence it has become the most significant political equalizer – at least the death tolls attest the reality. The need for common agenda and respect for multilateralism have never been felt this strong in our living memory. The challenge, therefore, lies in swaying from the Trumpian transactional foreign policy to a new Bideian intelligible foreign policy.
Professor Shahab Enam Khan teaches at the Department of International Relations, Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh and closely works with the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute as its Research Director.
Views in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect CGS policy.
