Intro: Prior to the US elections, the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy held an instalment of their Asia Thinker Series titled "Asia's Takeaways from the US Elections" featuring Visiting Senior Research Fellow Drew Thompson. Now the elections have come and gone and Joe Biden is set to become the 46th President. So we asked Drew to give us a more detailed look at what's in store for a Biden administration.
David Austin: What do you think a Biden administration means for the regional dynamics, and how would you break that down?
Drew Thompson:The Biden administration is going to bring in a very different dynamic, certainly a different atmosphere. And it's being received here and perceived here in the region, I think with a mixture of both relief and concern. There's relief that the Biden administration will hopefully be more predictable, a little more dignified, and reassert American leadership.
But there's also concern about America's credibility, whether or not the US still has the ability to push back and stand up when China is overreaching. And to really also take into consideration the interests of other countries in the region, so that the [Biden] administration doesn't just see Asia as an afterthought revolving around China, but sees China as part of the region.
But I think what's most, maybe most relevant with the new administration is that the Biden team has already made clear that their initial focus will be on domestic issues. The transition team is very clear that the priorities will be dealing with COVID-19, dealing with economic recovery, racial inequity, which obviously has rocked major American cities for the last six months, and also climate change is one of their top priorities. So I mean, foreign policy doesn't make the list of their priorities. So I don't think it's an area where the Biden administration is going to start out focusing.
There's going to be something of a grace period. And the exception to that of course is, if there's a crisis, a foreign policy crisis that forces the issue onto his agenda, but it's not something they're going to lean into.
David Austin:It's not one of the priorities that they'll hit the ground running addressing, but what about re-establishing ties with allies? You want to talk about a United States relationship with Europe and NATO, do you see any changes on that front?
Drew Thompson: US foreign policy, isn't going to be a priority, so it's not going to change quickly. But I think the process of making foreign policy will change immediately after inauguration. So I expect that the Biden administration will reinstate an inter-agency led decision making process.
So that'll place the White House National Security Council at the centre of coordination and decision-making much as it was during the Obama administration. The Trump administration by comparison was much less process-driven. It was much more tailored for decentralised decision-making by the agencies, which gave Trump all the latitude he wanted to make decisions where he wanted to weigh in without constraint from bureaucracy.
So, I mean, Trump made no secret that he really trusted his own counsel. And that he was distrustful of his own bureaucracy right up until the end, as we've seen with the firings of his cabinet members, all the way after the election.
So I think foreign policy in the Biden administration will be both process-driven, but it'll also have a very different mindset. So, I mean, Biden is a liberal internationalist who will instinctively put his faith in the international system and the rules-based order that China has really effectively challenged while Trump has been in office. And Trump of course, was very dismissive of those international organisations. So I think Biden and his team will instinctively seek to re-engage with those multilateral institutions, whether that's the United Nations, the World Health Organisation, the World Trade Organisation, or strengthening individual alliances.
We can certainly expect Biden and the administration to show up at regional multilateral dialogues, whether that's, you know, the ASEAN Regional Forum here, or other economic groupings, like the G7 or the G20. When it comes to alliances, though, it gets interesting because I mean, again, Biden's instinct is to use alliances, but when it comes to issues here in the region, it's going to be a very much a mixed bag.
There's a lot of focus on China, of course, but I think it's also clear that US allies don't want to be dragged into the middle of a US-China contest or a competition. And at the same time, US allies don't necessarily want to be put front and centre or even part of a collective security arrangement that challenges China in areas where China is maybe challenging international norms and rules.
They don't want to be on the receiving end of China's ire. So as a result, I think it's going to create a bit of a dilemma for Biden. And it'll be difficult to actually use those alliances effectively, to do things like dealing with China or dealing with Russia, where we've seen countries are not terribly keen to step up for anything other than themselves.
It's a bit of a brutal international world at the moment, but alliances are not really geared up in, especially in Asia, as a network, it's more of a hub and spoke system. So whereas Japan might be much more willing to push back on China, especially regarding, you know, territorial disputes and it also sees very much, aligned interests with the US and things like the South China sea.
If you look at South Korea, it has a very different perspective on what the US ROK alliance is and what it is not. And it's certainly not designed to counter China, nor is South Korea looking to challenge China outside of the peninsula, where its own core interests are being are being, maybe challenged.
So for example, I mean, South Korea is not likely to deepen engagement with other US allies in the region, whether that's Japan, Thailand or Australia, because it really doesn't see its security interest as being threatened outside of the peninsula. So for instance, South China Sea is an area where I think South Korea is simply going to ignore it and focus on their immediate threat to the North.
So I think the alliance concept is a good one, but the application of it is going to be fraught with difficulty in the region here. NATO, again, it's a strong alliance, but when you break apart the NATO partners and the rest of the EU, they're having trouble coalescing against China without the United States.
And I don't think the US is going to somehow bring them greater cohesiveness when China has proven so adept at dividing and conquering. So the European effort to confront China on, for instance, economic issues and the effort to reach a trade agreement and investment and trade treaty with China has really stalled.
And that's not just because China has reached some stronger overarching bilateral relationships with some of the poorer parts of Europe, whether that's Greece, whether that's Italy, whether that's Hungary. There are enough countries that are indebted enough to China, that the European unity is being challenged.
And of course they have very little interest within the EU itself for getting caught up in issues in Asia as well, beyond the trade relationship with China. So it's a somewhat unwieldy solution to a very difficult problem, and Biden's going to have to grapple with that.
And I think it's also a good question about whether or not the Biden administration will be able to jump into some of the structures that President Trump eschewed, such as the CPTPP. Whereas the Obama administration pushed hard for it, and developed it and negotiated to it, then as now the Democratic Party really doesn't support those sorts of multilateral trade agreements.
And it's unclear if Biden has the political capital with his own party to gain their support to join CPTPP. It's worth noting during the TPP period that you know, the Democrats wouldn't give President Obama fast-track authority to do the negotiating. So you're going to have real problems getting quick wins, other than say, re-joining the WHO, or maybe correcting some wrongs at the WTO.
He's going to have to grapple with a very different environment than when he was the Vice-President. And Trump changed the making of foreign policy by making it much more partisan rather than directly driven by the national interest. And that political polarisation in DC is also going to exacerbate President Biden's challenges.
David Austin: Let me follow up on a few things you said. At the beginning, you were mentioning how, whatever the Biden administration does regarding foreign policy, they won't be doing it quickly. So is that part of the concern that you were talking about and do you see any near term risks that they might, you know, not have their eye on the ball, early on with where they should?
Drew Thompson: If we're speaking specifically about Southeast Asia and the region here, I mean, I think the Southeast Asian interests in the region, and how they want the US to pursue its foreign policies is fairly static. I mean, they want a reliable, predictable United States that sees value in its relationships. Both with ASEAN as a structure and with the individual states as distinct entities, not as a derivative of a China policy. So I think what they want is they want to make sure that the US is present and that the US is not causing friction between those countries and China. And they want the United States to not treat Southeast Asia as a theatre for US-China competition, much as it was during the Cold War.
And I think that's what they're hoping for from Biden, but of course it's very difficult for the region to have trust in the United States at the moment. I mean, there's been a lot of damage done to America's reputation. Partly because of the dramatic transition between Obama and Trump's approaches to foreign policy. As I mentioned, the political polarisation in Washington, the politicisation of foreign policy and that includes things like pulling out of TPP, pulling out of the Paris Climate Change Agreements, pulling out of the Iran agreement. All of those actions had strong support in Washington, but it did damage to the US reputation.
It's also important to remember that, you know, Trump was not the cause of populism, nor is it the fundamental cause of the structural problems within the US society and economy that are causing these dynamics in foreign policy. The problem really is that globalisation has failed a large portion of US society. The US middle-class is not better off today than it was 10, 20 or 30 years ago.
Free trade is not strongly supported by either party at the moment. And I think the average American worker feels that free trade - they should probably also blame productivity gains as well - but free trade and productivity gains have really not improved the lives of workers in the United States who really lost stability and security from the steady well-paying manufacturing jobs that they had before a NAFTA.
And I think even as companies themselves and investors have made tremendous fortunes from globalisation, it's the American workers who have not. And I think this deep discontent is informing foreign policy in the way that it hasn't in previous decades. So, I mean, this is really the classic tension between labour and capital that caused, you know, the incredible global insecurities at the turn of the century.
This is the rise of Marxism and socialism and the communist revolution in Russia. And labour movements and industrialised Europe and in the US, it's happening again. But it's taking a very different form. So from that perspective, you've got large portions of American society who feel really less secure about themselves and their future.
And in that environment, you know, you're going to have populism and populist leaders will find very popular and fertile political ground. Biden definitely brings back civility and he brings back predictability. And he'll bring American government back around to supporting, you know, those international organisations and those institutions.
But the harsh reality is that those institutions also have failed. They failed the American workers and they failed to deliver on a lot of their promises and goals, which is really what empowered Trump to walk away from them. I mean, the WTO, the WHO, and the UN are increasingly ineffective at curtailing the excesses of China and the overreach of China, and Russia and the United States too.
So their value is questionable in the minds of millions of Americans who'd rather see their tax dollars spent on more productively elsewhere. So I think Biden needs to take all of that into account. He's going to be under tremendous pressure from both his own party and from lawmakers in particular.
And he's going to have to take a very careful approach to re-engaging not just those organisations but how he supports international rule of law and international systems. And then how does he actually hold them accountable for performance so that the American public actually benefits, and isn't just working towards a very generic or esoteric objective of, you know, supporting world stability or globalisation, because I think globalisation has become a bad word in the US.
David Austin: I would love to ask you how the US got to this point, but I think that would probably be another hour or two-hour conversation. But what would be good for the US worker? What policies would help, from your point of view, if Biden or some other leader had the chance to make them?
Drew Thompson: I think it's really up to Biden to determine - and he's got teams of people working on this - and unfortunately, I think the challenge that we're going to see coming from many of President-Elect Biden's Democratic colleagues, is that they're going to push for an agenda that is part of the cause for concern, for many political conservatives in the United States, and that's going to include higher taxation. That's going to include more government services perhaps, and it's essentially the antithesis of the classic Republican approach to less government, lower taxes.
So I'm not sure at this point, how the administration, the future administration is going to make the connection between economic recovery and trade policy because they're integral. But as I mentioned, the Biden administration has made clear that economic recovery is the priority, not trade policy. So I think what the administration will need to look hard at is, is how do they help the American worker, how do they figure out ways to get wages to rise, because wages have declined steadily for decades, again, partly driving this American angst.
So how does President Biden increase employment and increase wages? And unfortunately, I think the instinct is going to be particularly, on the part of the political left, will be to raise the minimum wage, which then alienates business, as opposed to looking at the labour market, similar to how they do here in Singapore, as a product of supply and demand.
So I think President Biden is going to have to look at immigration policy, not as an ideological issue centred around American identity as a nation full of immigrants. I think he's going to have to look at it as a labour and productivity issue. How does immigration support US wage rates and how does it affect productivity and how does it affect GDP growth? And I think that's how they're going to have to look at these policies very pragmatically, but I think they're going to have to really focus more, not on the ideology, but on lifting that bottom 50% of income earners and figure out how to lift them up without simply taxing the highest earners as the means to, to narrow that gap.
David Austin: I want to turn back to the international scene. At the Asia Thinker Series that you were part of, there were a lot of unanswered questions and I think a lot of them kind of touch on, on things that you said. People were asking, just a simple question: with a Biden administration, how will that affect countries' decisions to whether they want to align themselves more with China or with the US?
Drew Thompson: Well, I think if you ask officials in this current administration, and I think the answer will be the same for the next administration - they're not seeking for countries to align with the United States or with China. They're not forcing countries to make a choice. The US doesn't see itself as doing that.
The US's primary interest is ensuring that countries on China's periphery, not just in Southeast Asia, but on its periphery are able to maintain their sovereignty and their independence, and not become dependent on [others], and that's the real goal, is that US acts as an influence in those countries by their independence, not through their binding to the US. So from that perspective, I don't think there's going to be a change between the last two administrations. There is definitely a recurring concern that countries have to choose sides. But again, I think that's a really a false choice. I think that's a false, it's a false assumption.
It's not a binary choice, countries have to make choices, but it's not about whether they become aligned with one or the other. The challenge is really going to be, you know, how the US can deal with China, avoid making Southeast Asia, as I said, a theatre for competition and the elephant in the room here, is US-China relations.
And again, US-China relations is not one of Biden's top priorities. And as he said during the campaign period when asked what the biggest threat to the US was, he said Russia, which I think surprised a lot of people. But that said, the issue with US-China relations is probably more critical because that's going to determine how much space individual countries in the region have to manoeuvre.
So there's certainly hope that US-China relations will be calmer under Biden. I mean, after, after his eight years as Vice President, Biden is a known entity to Beijing and President-Elect Biden has pointed out several times during the campaign that he's built a relationship with Xi Jinping. They met, I don't know how many times, they spent hours and hours, 25 hours together having meals and traveling and talking together. And that was part of the Obama administration strategy to cultivate then Vice President Xi Jinping. But again, that was years ago, and the Trump administration has definitely moved the goalposts when it comes to the US-China relationship.
There is a bipartisan consensus that China represents a threat to the US. Not necessarily an existential security threat, but that's potentially a security threat for sure.
China presents a lot of challenges, whether it's economic, whether it's security, whether it's identity, and I think Biden is probably going to enter office with a certain degree of, of optimism which may not be well-placed. I think any hope that Xi Jinping is the reformer is long since gone, though that was definitely part of what Vice President Biden's job was, was to try to figure out Xi Jinping's sentiments when he was still Vice President. And I think Americans have always been hopeful that future Chinese leaders, it will be reformers or at least more liberal or more open than their predecessors.
But I think any hope that existed in that 2012, 2013 timeframe has long since been dashed. So with Trump challenging all of these sorts of long-held assumptions about China, you know, I didn't think there'd be any question about returning to the Obama era of sort of Chinese policy of balancing cooperation and competition, but what Biden's proxies have been speaking broadly about using those terms.
I mean, they've been arguing for the necessity of engagement with China to tackle global challenges. And I'm not sure I agree with that approach. I think that there's a purpose for engagement, but I don't think that we need China to help on things like climate change, which is therefore the reason why we need to engage them.
David Austin: Looking at the transcript from the forum of the Asian Thinker Series, you talked about how the narrative of the US being in decline and China on the rise is kind of a Chinese narrative that's been propagated and picked up by some, but you don't agree with, is that correct?
Drew Thompson: The US is what it's always been. It's always been a little chaotic. It's always gone through cycles of chaos and rejuvenation. It's always been a place that values freedom of the individual over the interests of society. I mean, that's baked into the US constitution and that's a bit jarring for folks here in Singapore, where it's almost the opposite, where the obligations to society outweigh the interests of the individual.
And that's true in much of Northeast Asia as well. So when one is looking at the United States from here in Asia, you can sometimes see this sort of chaotic self-centred, sometimes violent society, that doesn't really comport with what you're seeing here. Now, China takes it to a whole other level with this very robust propaganda machine that serves the interests of the party and glorifies the party and the correctness of its policies and rules.
So it tends to exaggerate US shortcomings. But I think if you look at the US culture, the resilience of its people, the resilience of its systems, its attractiveness as a destination for foreign direct investment, for tourism, for education, you know, United States is not a nation in decline.
The United States has tremendous natural resources. This year obviously really defies economic forecasting, but I mean the US is on track or was on track for energy independence because of the natural gas revolution. The US is a leader in innovation and technology. And China aspires to have all of those things, but it's constantly playing catch up to the US, so again, I don't feel that just because people are marching in the streets, exercising their rights to demonstrate, to gather, it's their freedoms and they're exercising. And that's a strength. The debate, even when the debate is rancorous, the American public sees that type of debate as a strength, not a weakness.
But in China, it's the exact opposite where criticism is viewed as being unpatriotic, as being counter-revolutionary, being against the party. So you're going to have these perception gaps. And likewise in the US when they look at China's totalitarian society, where Xi Jinping has made the Communist Party everything. It's the elimination of civil society, the subjugation of the private sector to state owned enterprises and to the party, the elimination of any forms of dissent. North, South, East, and West, the party leads on all things. And of course from the United States perspective, that's equally problematic.
These are two very, very different political cultures. And one can just as easily look at the fragility of a Chinese political system that can't tolerate dissent and that locks up millions of people without cause, that arrests dissidents or letter writers, or lawyers who are seeking to protect rights that are granted to them in their own constitution.
So, these are two systems that both perceive each other as inherently fragile. But really, it's China's narrative of great rejuvenation, of changes unseen for a century. All of their political dogma is designed to present the inevitability of China's rise and its strength, and underplay and downplay those internal weaknesses.
And part of that narrative of playing up the strength of China's policymaking, its system, its structure, ultimately the Communist Party itself, part of that narrative necessitates the decline of other forces, whether that's the United States or Europe. So, I don't buy this notion that the US is somehow absent from the region.
I mean, if the President doesn't go to an Asian regional forum, that doesn't mean they've neglected the region. That means the President didn't want to take the plane to go to the other side of the planet for a meeting that had no outcomes, no objectives.
And particularly for President Trump, where he was so uncomfortable in those multilateral settings, he decided to delegate, but that doesn't mean the United States is simply not coming to the region, or not interested in the region. I think the US has heavily invested in the region. And Chinese claims to the contrary are just, I think are just false.
David Austin: Okay. Well, thank you. I have a million more questions, but I think that's a good place to end it.
Photo: Adam Schultz / Biden for President