American hegemony is crumbling – Biden’s disastrous foreign policy decisions and fragile alliances prove

But, even if Biden were in a stronger position in relation to his reelection possibilities, his so-called “Foreign Policy for the Middle Class” and his “Build Back Better” program, contain streaks of nativism and protectionism that worry many abroad. Managing international affairs as an extension to domestic politics and domestic economic policy, as these policies propose, echoes some of Trump’s misunderstandings on how modern economy works. Biden’s administration, as a result, has retained many of his predecessor trade initiatives, including the aluminium and steel tariffs on American allies. Meanwhile, the current White House has shown little interest in strengthening the World Trade Organization or in joining the TPP successor, the CPTPP. To win Rust Belt voters for his party, Biden seems unwilling to depart from Trump’s legacy in this area. On top of that, Biden’s decisions to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan without consulting its allies, or of imposing against their wishes a tight deadline for leaving Kabul, was seen as reminiscent of the unilateralism of Bush and Trump. Not surprisingly, this brought fresh doubts in relation to the trustworthiness of the United States and renewed calls for a European strategic autonomy. The European Union foreign policy chief, Josep Borell, talked about a wake-up call for Europe, and about their need to think and act in their own strategic terms. On a similar note, the Biden administration’s nuclear submarine deal with Australia, secretly bypassing a diesel submarine deal between France and Australia, was resented by the former and by other of its European partners as a new manifestation of America’s unilateralism. It would seem that although Biden has formally called for a liberal internationalist crusade against authoritarianism, and asserted his commitment to a “rules based international order”, many of his actions have created doubts about his true convictions in this matter. This has led Richard Hass to assert that the United States wants the benefit of international order without the hard work needed for building and maintaining it. In sum, the possibility of the United States getting a “third chance” looks, indeed, ever more distant and uphill (Dorsey, 2021; Hass, 2021; Karni, 2021; McGee, 2021; Menon, 2021; Schake, 2021). The United States faces now an extremely difficult assignment in gathering an alliance base, even more difficult when directed against the golden goose that China represents. In 2020 the European Union’s trade with China reached US$709 billion versus US$671 with the United States, a gap in China’s favor that will increase with every passing year. Not surprisingly, the European Union members, with Germany at their head, have been reluctant to confront the Asian country, claiming a strategic autonomy in its relationship with it. Although timidly supporting Biden’s proposition in the June 2021 G7 Summit—to keep a firmer stand in relation to China- European countries were squeamish about getting dragged by the United States in this contest. Germany, Italy, and France made it clear that the G7 should not be hostile to China (Brands, 2021; Collison, 2021; Deutsche Welle, 2021; Mahbubani, 2020a). Even in Obama’s time, it was difficult enough to gather the support of allies against the economic opportunities that China embodied, as evinced for instance in the foundation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, AIIB. Proposed by China in 2013, Washington opposed the initiative and tried to boycott the participation of its main European and Asian allies. The fact that China could attain financial might in the world’s fastest growing region was considered a threat to the United States. However, the boycott’s fortune fell when one of America’s closest allies did not buckle under its pressure: The United Kingdom. As soon as London decided to participate as a founding member of AIIB, the rest followed suit before its initial subscription period was foreclosed. Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea, among others, were all in. The United States’ opposition to this initiative proved insufficient against the opportunities that it represented. In this context, China has moved in the opposite direction to the United States. Not only has it forged a strong strategic partnership with Russia, Iran, and Pakistan, but it has engaged in a multilateral institutional building process reminiscent of that undertaken by the United States between 1944 and the beginning of the 1960s, with the intention of creating a favorable international architecture. From the trio, Russia, Iran, and Pakistan, the first of them plays a fundamental role.