Today, President Joe Biden released the United States’ Pacific partnership strategy. Although it bears some resemblance to the Pacific engagement strategy that was drafted by the Asia–Pacific Security Affairs Subcommittee of the Biden Defense Working Group, this strategy is a separate document that arose through a completely independent drafting process. Nevertheless, it fulfills part of the vision of those who worked on the original policy paper during the 2020 US presidential campaign. It provides a roadmap on the direction for engagement by the US government in the Pacific islands region.

When I reviewed this strategy a few days ago, the first thing that struck me was the considerable emphasis that has been placed on regionalism by the Biden administration. The strategy makes an explicit commitment to bolstering regional institutions such as the Pacific Islands Forum, the Pacific Community and the secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Program. No similar mention is made of a commitment to bolstering subregional institutions such as the Melanesian Spearhead Group, Polynesian Leaders Group and Micronesian Presidents’ Summit.

This is significant given the tremendous tension that has existed between regionalism and subregionalism among Pacific island countries over the past few years. Recall what happened last year. The member states of the Micronesian Presidents’ Summit announced their decision to withdraw from the Pacific Islands Forum. Over the summer, Kiribati appeared to follow through on that threat. Those wounds have yet to heal. So, it is quite remarkable that the Biden administration has made the decision to take sides and declare a preference for regionalism in the ordering of the international relations of Pacific island countries.

Yet, this move carries monumental risks. In the short run, it could amplify the regional dynamics involved in the compact negotiations with the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands and Republic of Palau. And that could frustrate the successful completion of the renewal negotiations with FSM and the Marshall Islands by the end of the year. In the long run, it could result in the weakening of relations among the Micronesian states and between the Micronesian states and the United States.

It’s therefore important to be clear about one thing: Biden and his administration are taking a gamble here. They are betting that the upside potential is worth more than the downside risks. Let’s hope they’re right. No one wants them to roll craps. That could imperil the preservation of American hegemony in the North Pacific.

After pondering this pivot towards regionalism, I was struck by the realisation that this strategy provides a roadmap on the overall direction for only one kind of engagement with the Pacific islands. By definition, it doesn’t provide a roadmap on the overall direction for relationships that result from formal agreements between two or more nations for broad, long-term objectives that further the common interests of the respective parties. It therefore can’t provide a roadmap on the overall direction for free-association relationships and homeland relationships. Here, the scope is more limited. It is targeted at relationships that result from less formal agreements between two or more nations for narrower, shorter term objectives that further the overlapping interests of the respective parties.

As a consequence, the Biden administration has left the US government wanting for a comprehensive roadmap on the overall direction for engagement in the Pacific islands region. Someday, the US Congress may remedy that situation by demanding one. If that happens, the administration could easily fulfill the request by creating two additional national strategies. Like the Pacific partnership strategy, they could be nested side by side under the Indo-Pacific strategy. For argument’s sake, we could call them the Pacific free-association strategy and the Pacific homeland strategy.

Ideally, all of these strategies should have been developed by one team in a collaborative process involving three simultaneous work streams. That would have made the most sense, since the government needs to think systematically about developing, implementing and sustaining relationships in the Pacific islands region. Unfortunately, the National Security Council appears to have taken a different approach with the development of this strategy. That could make it a lot more difficult for the US government to integrate and harmonise its different kinds of engagements across the Pacific islands region.

This month’s US–ASEAN Special Summit hosted by President Joe Biden in Washington was a symbolically significant and necessary step towards giving Southeast Asian states what they want: respect on their own terms and backing for their economic development and security interests. This was done with a nod to their cherished principle of ‘ASEAN centrality’ in regional affairs and determination not expressly to side with the US over China. But the Biden administration will need to deliver on the commitments outlined in the event’s joint statement if all parties are to secure what they really desire: a demonstrable recommitment to a constructive US counterbalance to China in the region.

Just holding the US–ASEAN event, which every ASEAN leader attended bar Myanmar’s junta boss Min Aung Hlaing and The Philippines’ outgoing president, Rodrigo Duterte, was vital for the Biden administration. It came on the heels of the ASEAN–China Special Summit ‘to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the ASEAN–China Dialogue’ in Brunei in November. The symbolism of that event was laid on thick, especially the announcement that the parties had agreed to elevate their relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership ‘that is meaningful, substantive and mutually beneficial’.

Superficially, therefore, the Washington summit played catch-up, not least because Biden’s predecessor had shown little regard for the region and its principal institution. Donald Trump conspicuously failed to attend the East Asia Summit (EAS) in 2018 and 2019 (after leaving the 2017 meeting early). And while he ostensibly sought to make up for this by inviting ASEAN leaders to a special summit in early 2020, his choice of venue—Las Vegas—was at best impolitic given that three of the ASEAN states have mainly Muslim populations for whom gambling is forbidden. The pandemic put paid to that event and to any prospect of Trump attending another EAS in person. This contrasted with Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama, who attended every EAS during his presidency after the US joined, bar one.

After a sluggish start due in part to other priorities such as the Afghanistan imbroglio, the Biden administration has increasingly focused attention on East Asia in general and Southeast Asia specifically. The summit came on the back of a welter of trips by senior US officials to the region in 2021, among them Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin, Vice President Kamala Harris and, most recently, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who collectively visited the six principal ASEAN states of Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Biden was evidently intent on using the summit to reinforce the message that his administration understood ASEAN’s complaints of neglect, and that it was determined to rectify this. He underscored this by nominating a close aide, National Security Council chief of staff Yohannes Abraham, as US ambassador to ASEAN. If Abraham’s appointment is confirmed, it will grant ASEAN a more direct conduit to the US president than China’s ASEAN ambassador, a relatively low-level career diplomat, likely offers to Xi Jinping.

The summit’s duration and range of issues and meetings afforded opportunities to accentuate the extent of US involvement in the region and explore future paths. These included a working lunch with Harris covering maritime cooperation and pandemic issues, and a subsequent session on climate action and infrastructure; another working lunch with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders; and a meeting involving Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, Trade representative Katherine Tai and leading business figures.

That Biden only attended two of the summit’s six events (including a state dinner) generated some grumbles and sparked unflattering comparisons with Obama’s more attentive actions at the last US–ASEAN Special Summit in 2016. But with war raging in Europe and economies around the world (including his own) hit with multiple pandemic- and Ukraine-related challenges, the US president might be excused for attending to a few other issues too.

This focus on practical engagement was also evident in the summit’s ‘Joint Vision Statement’ (JVS), especially when contrasted with the joint statement released after the ASEAN–China Special Summit, a largely platitudinous screed containing some commitments that the ASEAN states would have known Beijing was unlikely ever to honour, particularly on the South China Sea and nuclear disarmament. Although replete with its own necessary bromides, the JVS is noteworthy for its lengthy detailing of initiatives, programs and work plans spanning a myriad of fields.

Especially noteworthy are the prominence of current and future US–ASEAN cooperation on pandemic recovery and resilience detailed in the statement’s first clause; two lengthy clauses detailing Mekong-related cooperation—a subject barely touched on with China, whose use of the river system has been detrimental to downstream states—and the heavy emphasis on maritime cooperation covering everything from improved maritime domain awareness to efforts to curb illegal fishing (contentious between China and some ASEAN states, and between different member states).

Other notable points of difference highlight how the divergent interests of the US and China in the region shaped their summit security agendas. Both Myanmar and North Korea are covered at some length in the JVS. Both are absent from the China document.

Other aspects reflect the administration’s Democrat priorities. Besides a whole section on climate change and ‘energy transition and resilience’, the issues of gender equity and equality and the ‘rights of persons with disabilities’ are addressed in terms of US support for ‘ASEAN-Led mechanisms’. Unsurprisingly, neither issue was evidently part of the ASEAN–China talks.

A more unfortunate Democrat trait Biden displayed was poor public messaging, specifically on his announcement of new funding totalling a mere US$150 million to ‘mobilize billions more in private financing’. Irrespective of whether such funding could achieve this, the announcement unsurprisingly sparked derision and criticism for its apparent parsimony. As the White House and others have explained, however, the new funding represents only a fraction of many billions of US investment and development assistance that have poured into the region, and which has dwarfed China’s investment and aid commitments.

The other area arousing more legitimate doubt and disappointment among ASEAN observers is the section on ‘Strengthening Economic Ties and Connectivity’. Much of it is banal, offering vague commitments to ‘prosperity and development in the United States’ and to cooperating ‘to promote trade and investment and facilitating resilient global supply chains and seamless regional connectivity’, all of which beg more questions than they hint at answering. In this respect, the contrast between the JVS and the ASEAN–China statement, with its many iterations of various trade agreements and economic master plans, highlights the US failure since Trump to entertain the idea of free-trade agreements with regional economies that would boost US market access and investment, and redounds strikingly to its disadvantage.

For this reason, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) initiative Biden launched on the sidelines of his visit to Tokyo for the Quad leaders’ meeting last week represented the main missing piece in the US–ASEAN puzzle. What sort of picture that piece helps complete remains unclear, however, above all on the trade front. The IPEF’s quest to ‘build high-standard, inclusive, free, and fair trade commitments and develop new and creative approaches in trade and technology policy’ sounds laudable. But even those that have quickly signed up to launching ‘collective consultations toward future negotiations’ on the IPEF, including the seven leading ASEAN economies, must be wondering how and if any of it will boost their access to US consumers or direct more US development finance to them. The ASEANs will expect the benefits of membership to equate with those that existing agreements such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and the Belt and Road Initiative promise to deliver.

Notwithstanding this qualification, the Washington summit will largely have met the principal objective of both parties, as its central announcement indicates most figuratively. They committed to elevating the relationship to a ‘Comprehensive Strategic Partnership that is meaningful, substantive and mutually beneficial’. Biden could at least wave his counterparts goodbye in the knowledge that his gestures were respectful of ASEAN’s interests and, in some areas, indicative of Washington’s tangible commitments to the region’s security and prosperity. And nothing better signals that ASEAN’s leaders could return home still comfortably positioned between Washington and Beijing than a partnership announced with the same adjectives used in announcing ASEAN’s comprehensive strategic partnership with China.

Within days of Russian forces entering Ukraine on 24 February, pollsters were taking the pulse of US public opinion on the Biden administration’s response. The initial results revealed a high degree of caution about sending direct military support—no boots on the ground or jets in the air—while declaring high levels of moral support for the Ukrainian people and equally high levels of outrage over Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion.

That public opinion was broadly reflected in the Biden administration’s measured (some would say tardy) response to Russia’s military advances—sending financial and select military hardware to Ukraine, while ruling out any measures that could provoke direct combat between US and Russian forces.

Yet, despite what seems like a close alignment between the American public and the US administration on how to respond to Russia’s invasion, public opinion generally marked President Joe Biden down sharply on his handling of the crisis. That likely reflected a degree of latency in US opinion in assessing the administration’s failure to deter the invasion, and a combination of misstatements (a ‘minor incursion’ anyone?) and prematurely ruling out direct military support.

On a purely political level, while the polls showed that Americans had been following events in Ukraine closely, their top concern remained runaway inflation, with 40% of respondents rating ‘inflation or increasing costs’ as their main worry.

By the end of March, however, significant changes were emerging in US popular attitudes towards the scale and scope of America’s response. According to a poll conducted by Reuters, 74% of Americans—including solid majorities of both Republicans and Democrats—said the United States and its NATO allies should impose a no-fly zone in Ukraine, even though such a move would likely pit the US military against Russian forces in Ukraine and adjacent areas. An equally bipartisan 80% of Americans said the United States should stop buying Russian oil, despite the likely inflationary impact on petrol prices.

That conundrum—support for Ukraine, but worries about inflation—was reflected in polling which showed a majority of both Republicans and Democrats would choose candidates in the mid-term elections who are in favour of providing military aid to Ukraine and who also indicate they support sanctioning Russia. At the same time, the polls reveal very high levels of concern about the impact of sanctions on prices, particularly among more economically vulnerable Americans and among women voters—both groups that tend to lean towards the Democrats.

So, support for Ukraine presents a wicked problem for the Democrats as they head to mid-term elections later this year: supporting Ukraine (very popular) means imposing an oil embargo on Russia, which will trigger rising fuel prices and increase costs across the whole economy (very unpopular).

By this month, another trend was emerging: an increase in Americans concerned that the US is doing too much to support Ukraine. A Pew Research poll found that 12% of Americans felt the US was providing too much support, up from 7% in March, even as majority support for increased military aid remained consistent at around 55%. This seeming contradiction could be explained, at least in part, by ‘sticker shock’ over the growing cost of US aid—the poll came hard on the heels of Congress approving a US$13.6 billion aid package. But that trend could be expected to continue as Congress pushes through even more aid for Ukraine, signing off on another US$40 billion just last week.

At the same time, Americans are becoming less inclined to feel the US has an obligation to defend Ukraine. According to polling firm Morning Consult, for the second week in a row in May the share of voters who believe the US has such an obligation is down, falling to 44% from a high of 50%. Republicans (32%) are the least likely to believe the US has an obligation to defend Ukraine, compared with 57% of Democrats and 40% of independents.

Only one in four Americans now say the US is doing too little to support Ukraine, a record low since Morning Consult began tracking the numbers, and down from a high of 37% in mid-March.

Whatever the reason, the trend is concerning. While solidarity with Ukraine remains strong within Congress and the Biden administration, it clearly has limits with the American electorate.

It didn’t have to be this way. Since Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 and the bloody proxy war waged since then in the Donbas region, there has been no doubt that Vladimir Putin has aggressive intent towards Ukraine.

Across those seven years, the US and its European allies could have made Ukraine a much pricklier and more indigestible target. That would not have required forward-deploying large numbers of troops, just a tougher-minded plan to arm and train Ukrainian forces.

There are, for example, a limited number of routes for ground forces to advance on Kyiv. Why haven’t they been made impassable? Why is it only now that significant shipments of lethal equipment are taking place? Will there be time to get these weapons into the right hands?

Whatever NATO does now looks flustered and gives Putin an opportunity to claim that Russia is being provoked. Moreover, the steps underway are pathetically inadequate. France has offered to send troops to Romania under NATO command; Denmark is deploying F-16 aircraft to Lithuania; the Netherlands is sending two joint strike fighters to Bulgaria; and Spain is sailing a frigate to the Black Sea.

The Biden administration’s revised plans to put 8,500 US troops under ‘heightened preparedness’ to be sent to some NATO countries but not Ukraine may help to reassure Poland, Romania and the Baltic states, but they impose no added cost or risk on Putin and confirm Joe Biden’s long-stated position that the US and NATO will not directly defend Ukraine.

One can only despair at Biden’s handling of the situation. When the president should be signalling caution to Russia and pushing NATO to a more concerted position, Biden persists in telegraphing US weakness, ruling out military action, offering negotiating concessions, accepting that a Russian attack is inevitable and showing that there’s no allied unity on possible sanctions.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin seems to be absent from the field. The US Defence Department’s website records that he spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart on 13 January and ‘discussed risk reduction near Ukraine’s borders’ with the Russian defence minister on 6 January. Explaining the administra­tion’s evolving policy position on Ukraine seems largely to be left to White House press secretary Jen Psaki, forever being forced to correct the president’s remarks, and the Pentagon’s John Kirby.

Leaving the public face of crisis management to media minders doesn’t build confidence. Matters of war and peace can be led only at cabinet level. Biden doesn’t look as though he is giving the issue the time it deserves. His wider national security team looks as if it is playing a solo hand rather than shaping a coordinated effort.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is emerging as being more on top of his brief, but here, too, the State Department is tripping over its own processes. Of course, at this time the embassy in Kyiv should be sending dependants and non-essential staff out of the country, but why on earth announce it? As in Kabul, nothing could more visibly look like the US was packing its bags.

The European response has been just as flaky. This was a moment for the new German administration to stand up. Instead, Germany has baulked at providing Ukraine lethal aid, saying ‘weapons deliveries would not be helpful at the moment’. Berlin’s public offer to send a field hospital is the worst possible signal.

The French focus seems to be to pitch for a European-led response, but the European countries most able to shift the strategic balance in Ukraine have absolutely no intention to do so.

Mired in his own political Chernobyl, Boris Johnson at least was able to strike the right declaratory note in saying a Russian invasion would be a ‘painful, violent and bloody business … I think it’s very important that people in Russia understand that this could be a new Chechnya’.

The British prime minister is implying that an invasion could lock Russia into a long-term occupation, fighting against a determined insurgency backed with Western support, in the context of a significantly strengthened NATO eastern front.

For all that the US and NATO have fluffed their lines, Putin’s strategic position is more difficult. He has forces at a level of readiness that can’t be sustained indefinitely. A warmer than usual winter means that moving heavy armoured vehicles towards Kyiv on slushy ground will be difficult. Crossing the Dnieper River will be no easier today than during the terrible battles in Ukraine in 1943.

If Putin’s aim is to stage a manufactured coup in Kyiv to install a puppet leader without a ground invasion, there has been sufficient intelligence warning of that risk and therefore an opportunity to harden key buildings and deploy special forces to make that a difficult task.

Beijing has denied as a ‘hoax and provocation’ reports that Xi Jinping has asked Putin to delay an attack on Ukraine until after the Winter Olympics conclude on 20 February, but Putin would feel some pressure not to annoy his authoritarian partner.

Russia’s options are all unpalatable. Push on with an attack and face the risk of a costly long-term occupation; risk a bloody nose with a coup that could be thwarted; annoy a strategic partner in Beijing that could help shield Russia from sanctions; or back down with a risk of embarrassment at home and a stronger NATO abroad.

Biden has perhaps the narrowest window of opportunity to exploit Putin’s dilemma. The chal­lenge is to find a way for Russia to back down from conflict without looking defeated. Is there any scope to explore a pathway to demilitarise the Donbas or a wider area of eastern Ukraine? Could the possibility of Ukraine’s membership of NATO (now extremely unlikely to be agreed) be formally frozen for a decade or more?

What all parties to the dispute need now is time, before the ice hardens and the tanks roll.

The prospects of pushing the dispute into formalised talks may be slim, but it is surely worth Biden calling Putin to explore possibilities. In that call, Biden also could give Putin some understanding of what tougher sanctions might mean for his personal wealth, as well as the holdings of the oligarchs who prop up his regime.

September marked a new year in the Jewish calendar, for schools in the northern hemisphere, and in the realm of diplomacy, with the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York. New years are duly met with new resolutions, which tend to involve renewing one’s commitment to specific goals. But while it’s usually individuals who engage in this practice, organisations or even nation-states can do the same.

In fact, the idea of a New Year’s resolution is one way to understand US President Joe Biden’s UNGA speech on 21 September. The United States, he said, is ‘opening a new era of relentless diplomacy; of using the power of our development aid to invest in new ways of lifting people up around the world; of renewing and defending democracy’. He anchored these goals in values that were ‘stamped into the DNA’ of the US and the UN: ‘freedom, equality, opportunity and a belief in the universal rights of all people’. And he invoked respect for human dignity, individual potential and ‘the inherent humanity that unites us’.

Biden’s speech offered a broad set of resolutions to renew American leadership in the world on issues including health, climate change, nuclear non-proliferation, counterterrorism, conflict prevention, developing-country infrastructure, food security, equality and anti-corruption. He made clear that these goals will be pursued within a framework of both universalism and multilateralism.

But there was something missing from the speech. For resolutions to stick, they must be grounded not only in visions of the future but also in honesty about the past. Biden has been clear about many of the biggest problems facing the world, and he has resolved that the US, along with its allies, will play a leading role in addressing them. But he should have signalled a genuine departure from past practice by expressing a greater willingness to learn from America’s own recent failures.

For example, when touting the US contribution of US$15 billion to the global pandemic response and 160 million vaccine ‘doses of hope’ for others around the world, Biden could have acknowledged that over one-seventh of the 4.7 million reported Covid-19 deaths globally were in the US. America’s disproportionately large share reflects its own inability to fight the coronavirus for most of 2020. To this day, stark political divisions continue to ensure that pockets of the country remain breeding grounds for new variants to emerge.

When Biden spoke about his administration’s admirable and genuine commitment to dealing with climate change, he could have acknowledged that the US bears a disproportionately large share of responsibility for the problem. It has been a leading source of greenhouse-gas emissions for more than a century and its flawed political system has prevented it from committing to international agreements for longer than four years at a time.

When Biden raised the issue of America’s ‘forever wars’, he could have acknowledged that those wars killed far more civilians than soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even as the US was leaving Afghanistan, American drone operators mistakenly killed an aid worker and seven children.

When Biden described corruption as a ‘national security threat’ that ‘fuels inequality, siphons off a nation’s resources, spreads across borders, and generates human suffering’, he might have added that the billions of dollars the US poured into Afghanistan and Iraq provided fuel for the very corruption he condemns. And he could have acknowledged that the US government knew as early as 2011 how corrupt the Afghan government had become, but decided not to expose or prosecute bad actors.

The reason to be more honest about these issues is not to wallow in America’s flaws and failings. Rather, it is to recognise the complexity of the problems America confronts and its own complicity in them. By making clear that the US understands just how hard it will be to make progress, and that much will depend on it changing its own behaviour, Biden can signal an intention to move beyond rhetoric.

After George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police in May 2020, many US companies and institutions issued statements condemning systemic racism, as if the problem was simply ‘out there’, floating in society. But as many people of colour were quick to point out, addressing the problem requires that leaders acknowledge and confront the racism within their own organisations. The same logic applies to nation-states that have set their sights on global problems.

Another reason for being more honest is to lead by ‘the power of our example’, as Biden put it in his inaugural address. Although his UNGA speech never mentioned China and explicitly disavowed any intention of seeking a new cold war, it drew a clear line between the (admittedly imperfect) democracies that seek to uphold the UN’s values and the authoritarian states that violate them at will.

That line does not divide countries full of good people from countries full of bad people, or good governments from bad. Instead, the distinction is between countries that are dedicated to individual rights and those that are not.

China, as its constitution makes clear, is explicitly committed to a socialist system, placing power and ownership in a collective of the people. Yet, in practice, the key difference between free countries and unfree countries lies in the people’s ability to hold their government to account, and thereby narrow the gap between what governments say and what they do.

A new year, whenever and however we mark it, should be an occasion for assessing that gap with radical honesty, and for using that assessment to guide a renewed commitment to professed ideals. If our leaders did that, the annual UNGA would look very different.