Biden Foreign Policy Has the Words Right But the Economics Wrong
Allies won’t rush to help a superpower that decries free markets, demonizes Big Tech and quashes pipelines.
Virtual diplomacy.
Photographer: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Listening to Secretary of State Antony Blinken describe the Joe Biden administration’s approach to American foreign policy on March 3 was incredibly comforting. Gone was the bluster about “swagger” and the America First xenophobia of President Donald Trump. It was replaced by a humility that is appealing for the hegemon of the international order, and by a commitment that the values animating America’s domestic compact will return to its international conduct.
The speech was timed to the release of the administration’s Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, a 24-page outline for congressionally mandated policy that typically takes the better part of a year to fully develop. The document, too, is comforting, written with the calming professionalism of establishment judgment.