US foreign policy needs a script rewrite under Antony Blinken and Joe Biden
- The problem with US foreign policy right now is not its secretary of state but its continuing ways of thinking about the rest of the world
- A happy ending without seemingly inevitable US-China conflict is out there, but the US should start by rewriting its own playbook
Standing against this tattered tapestry is Antony Blinken, Biden’s impressive secretary of state. Blinken has brought to his prestigious position a high level of intellect, an affable but determined bearing and an understated projection of the sense of dancing in the middle of a period of history that is trickier to navigate than usual.
Nevertheless, one competent secretary of state, however talented and focused, does not a new foreign policy make as that person is not the president. Constitutionally speaking, the executive branch is the big decider.
All major foreign policy decisions are presidential decisions, a point Ted Sorensen – the great aide to John F. Kennedy – rightly used to hammer home to his students.
Even a president needs to work some constituencies hard. To switch gears or even slightly alter the nation’s direction, buy-in by the powerful US military-industrial-media complex looms as a major question.
The best a new US administration can do is inspire talented citizens to accept tougher foreign policy jobs and try for better outcomes, drawing on policy rationality, close teamwork and happy splashes of luck.
America’s sulking allies in France might require more than that to ease their hurt, though.
Blinken comes to the top of the foreign policy establishment heap at a time of bitter American polarisation domestically. Whether this means it is the best or worst of times to be an American secretary of state, this is Blinken’s moment.
As Nye wrote with characteristic clarity and patience in his 2015 book Is the American Century Over?: “It goes against common sense and history to believe that the United States will have a dominant share of world power forever.” But common sense is not in abundant supply these days.
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Blinken has not been able to skirt the pitfalls of America’s excruciating bad judgment, so he has made or gone along with titanic mistakes. As Nye put it: “Historians can make a credible case that periods of maximalist overcommitment have done more damage to America’s power conversion capability than periods of retrenchment.”
The problem with American foreign policy right now is not with its secretary of state but with its continuing ways of thinking about the rest of the world. Like a halfway decent old movie, it is replayed so often on television it seems like it will never go away. To quote Nye once again: “Belief in the inevitability of conflict can become one of its main causes.”
All the unnerving noise about the inescapability of military conflict – which is coming to some extent from both sides of the Pacific – only weighs down America’s freedom of action to get out from under that old movie. A happy Hollywood ending is there for the having, but for starters the US should begin rewriting its own playbook.
Avoid the usual clichés and aim for some happy ending – or at least not a major tragedy. China would also benefit from some new screenwriting and better plotting. Both sides need to provide the world with a much nicer picture. Blinken might not be James Bond, but neither is he Darth Vader.
Clinical Professor Tom Plate, author of the ‘Giants of Asia’ book quartet, including the bestseller ‘Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew’, is Loyola Marymount University’s Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Affairs and the Pacific Century Institute’s vice-president.