Tag Archive for: Joe Biden

Was the Afghanistan withdrawal reckless or ruthless?

The collapse of the Afghan government and Afghan National Security Forces once US and NATO military support ended has been graphic and rapid.

There are many analyses about the folly of US President Joe Biden’s administration and the blindness of intelligence agencies that seem not have to predicted this outcome. But it’s much more likely that it was foreseen and understood; just not that it would happen so fast.

The ANSF were built to operate within the framework of coalition support that was available for most of the past decade—high levels of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance information coupled with rapid close air support and contractor support for logistics and maintenance.

Once that framework was removed, the ANSF no longer had a method of fighting the Taliban that worked, and were without the assured backing of US and NATO power. It’s not surprising their will to fight evaporated quickly. That, in parallel with the Taliban’s opportunistically rapid advances, led us to where we are: with a Taliban regime in Kabul.

The speed of events has been a shock, but their direction was entirely foreseen—and most likely understood by not just the Biden administration and NATO members but by other coalition members too, including the Australian government. Even if there was a hope that this wouldn’t happen and that somehow the Afghan authorities would hold on and retain control of the capital and other centres, hope is not a method.

What does all this tell us? Biden meant what he said when he announced both the Afghanistan and Iraq withdrawals, so we should expect that he also meant what he said when he committed America to facing the systemic challenge from China, focused on the Indo-Pacific.

Biden was not for turning on Afghanistan, even as events accelerated to the rapid collapse.

If the Taliban advance on the capital had shocked him, he had the option of reversing Taliban momentum by backing the Afghan government and its forces. That could have been done by returning US air, logistics and intelligence support to the abandoned Bagram base near Kabul and so stiffening ANSF capability and resolve to retain control of Kabul—with some 4.6 million of Afghanistan’s 37 million people. But he didn’t, and other US partners, NATO members and Australia seem not to have united around such an urgent response to events on the ground.

American public reaction overall has been muted and hasn’t followed the line of reports in major media criticising Biden’s decision. The general sentiment has been to support Biden’s decision despite events in Kabul. Republicans have in the main simply said they would have managed the withdrawal better.

There will be predictable and ugly follow-on consequences, for the Afghan people, for Afghanistan’s neighbours and, quite likely, for the wider world. Taliban human rights abuses are not new, but the scope for these, including against members of the Afghan government and its agencies, is large. Their scale is likely to be too.

No one should expect restraint from a triumphant Taliban. Early assistance and positive engagement with the new rulers of Afghanistan, despite their record of atrocities and in the midst of their acts against opponents, will be easier for governments whose own conduct shows this matters less to them.

What happens from here should to an extent be laid at the door of the US, NATO partners and Australia for how we ended our military presence, and be shared by enablers and supporters of the Taliban over the last 20 years.

Engagement with the Taliban will be on their terms, with core behaviour not moderated by external exhortations or resolutions. The US and NATO withdrawal leaves no vacuum in Afghanistan for others to fill—Afghanistan is a dense patchwork of domestic power and interests that any external forces will find as confronting now as through its history.

Any partners of Afghanistan’s new rulers will engage with eyes wide open about the complicity this brings them in how the Taliban rule the people of Afghanistan. There are likely to be few ‘win–win’ outcomes for the Afghan people.

Outflows of refugees are expected, but they will face a more difficult environment than ever, with countries’ border controls considerably tighter than in pre-Covid times and local populations more willing to see these controls enforced.

Australia and other coalition partners must meet our obligations to Afghans and their families who worked closely with us over two decades, with much faster processing. The pace of this work needs to at least match the pace of its environment—a systemic issue for our government and agencies that extends well beyond Afghanistan.

The export of global terror may be the one thing the Taliban understand would cross a threshold for response even now. They’re unlikely to want to repeat the lessons of 9/11 and decades of war. We shouldn’t leave this to chance, though, so resources must still be focused on assessment and warning of attack planning from within Afghanistan.

Beyond Afghanistan, the US and NATO withdrawal only makes sense if it’s the first shoe to drop in a two-step move.

We now need to see not only that Biden had the resolve to keep to the Afghanistan withdrawal as the nasty human consequences it involved became palpable, but that he and his administration now apply that same resolve to the systemic challenge Xi Jinping’s China provides to the US and open societies globally, with a focus on the Indo-Pacific.

And here, the US has to be joined by partners demonstrating equal resolve.

The stakes for Australia as a key US ally in the Indo-Pacific are high, and forthcoming major events in the US–Australia alliance will test our joint resolve—a meeting of Australian and US defence and foreign ministers in the annual AUSMIN talks, and a possible meeting between Biden and Prime Minister Scott Morrison, maybe timed to coincide with the next Quad leaders’ meeting.

These meetings take on particular importance now, and they must do much more than turn the handle on routine alliance management.

It’s in the US’s interests to re-establish momentum in Biden’s foreign and defence policy and to follow through on words about reasserting American economic, strategic and technological power through and with its allies and partners in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

Commitments to a greater US military presence in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, enabled by new Australian investments in naval and other facilities supporting our own and US forces in Australia’s north and west, are achievable, tangible demonstrations of resolve and power. As will be acceleration of technological and military–industrial cooperation that adds to US and Australian deterrent power, like coproduction of advanced missiles in Australia.

Resolve to take large strategic decisions and to live with their consequences is a rare commodity.

We’re experiencing a reckoning with Afghanistan and two decades of decision-making now. What we do on the abiding strategic challenge of China under Xi can either store up future reckonings or set a path to face the challenges with resolve and partnership.

Afghanistan is a reminder that the US is a ruthless power and ally with a stark calculation of its interests. This is a lesson for allies and adversaries equally.

For Australia, our alliance has long been what we tell ourselves routinely—a deep one based on shared interests and values. Those interests are deepening in the world we see emerging.

A key message from the US is that it is much more likely to support allies who are capable. It will help those who help themselves—and who can make useful contributions to US interests.

A demanding and ruthless US is maybe not what America’s adversaries expected from a Biden administration. Whether America’s partners and allies can work with the implications of that we’ll begin to see at AUSMIN and in other leadership forums over the rest of 2021.

Biden’s Afghan blunder

Afghanistan is on the brink of catastrophe, and it is US President Joe Biden’s fault. By overruling America’s top generals and ordering the hasty withdrawal of US troops, Biden opened the way for Taliban terrorists to capture more than a quarter of Afghanistan’s districts. Now, the Taliban are pushing towards Kabul, and the United States is looking weaker than ever.

The US effectively ended its military operations in Afghanistan on 1 July when it handed over to the Afghan government the sprawling Bagram airbase, which long served as the staging ground for US operations in the country. In fact, ‘handover’ is too generous a description. In a sign of what’s to come, US forces quietly slipped out of the base overnight after shutting off the electricity. The resulting security lapse allowed looters to scavenge the facilities before Afghan troops arrived and gained control.

Biden has vehemently defended his decision to withdraw, arguing that the US ‘did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build’ and that ‘staying would have meant US troops taking casualties’. He has also stood by his rushed approach, insisting that ‘speed is safety’ in this context. ‘How many thousands more of America’s daughters and sons are you willing to risk?’

The implication was clear: questioning the wisdom of the US withdrawal is tantamount to supporting the endangerment of Americans. But it is Afghans who are really in jeopardy.

Recall the last time the US left a war unfinished: in 1973, it hastily abandoned its allies in South Vietnam. The next year, 80,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians were reportedly killed as a result of the conflict, making it the deadliest year of the entire Vietnam War. It’s also worth noting that in 1975, the US effectively handed Cambodia to the China-backed ultra-communist Khmer Rouge, who went on to carry out unimaginable horrors.

Now, the US is leaving Afghans at the mercy of a marauding Islamist force—one with a long history of savage behaviour. Already, the Taliban offensive has displaced tens of thousands of civilians. And while the Afghan government in Kabul teeters, the Taliban are seizing American weapons from the Afghan military and showing them off as they march across the country.

America’s justification for rushing out of Afghanistan is much weaker than its reasoning for leaving Vietnam. Whereas 58,220 Americans (largely draftees) died in Vietnam, only 2,448 US soldiers (all volunteers) died over the course of 20 years in Afghanistan. Moreover, since it formally ended its combat mission on 1 January 2015, the US have suffered just 99 fatalities, including in non-hostile incidents. During the same period, more than 28,000 Afghan police officers and soldiers have been killed.

None of this is to minimise the blood and treasure the US has sacrificed in Afghanistan, let alone suggest that American troops should stay indefinitely. On the contrary, ending America’s longest war is a worthy goal. But Biden’s approach entails effectively admitting that a terrorist militia has defeated the world’s most powerful military, and then handing Afghanistan back to that militia. This undercuts global trust in the US, jeopardises Afghan and regional security, and threatens to trigger a resurgence of terror worldwide.

The Taliban’s impending return to power will surely energise and embolden other terrorist groups in the larger global jihadist movement. Furthermore, the Taliban, a creature of Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, still receive significant aid from Pakistan’s military. So, while Biden says that Afghanistan’s future is now in its own hands, it is actually mostly in Pakistani hands, as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani recently noted.

Among those facing the most acute risks is India. When the Taliban were last in power, from 1996 to 2001, they allowed Pakistan to use Afghan territory to train terrorists for missions in India. The group’s return to power could thus open a new front for terrorism against India, which would then have to shift its focus from the intensifying military standoffs with China in the Himalayas.

The Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan helps China in other ways, too. Given that Pakistan is a Chinese client, the US withdrawal paves the way for China to make strategic inroads into Afghanistan, with its substantial mineral wealth and strategic location between Pakistan and Iran.

China would achieve this by offering the Taliban the two things they desperately need: international recognition and economic aid. With Russia also likely to recognise the Taliban’s leadership in Afghanistan, the group will have little incentive to moderate its violence, despite its current attempts to polish its image.

Biden had a better option: the US could have maintained a small residual force in Afghanistan, in order to provide critical air support and reassurance to Afghan forces. Yes, that would have violated the deal Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, struck with the Taliban in February 2020. But the Taliban have already violated that Faustian bargain. Biden was happy to overturn many of Trump’s other actions, making his insistence on upholding this deal difficult to understand.

Biden says the US is ‘developing a counterterrorism over-the-horizon capability’ that doesn’t require a physical presence in Afghanistan. But if Afghan security continues to unravel, over-the-horizon operations will make little difference. The more likely scenario will be an emergency evacuation of US embassy personnel and other American citizens from Kabul, much like the evacuation from Saigon in 1975. India, for one, has already begun such an exodus, evacuating its consulate staff from Kandahar.

Robert Gates, who served as secretary of defence under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, wrote in 2014 that Biden ‘has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades’. The hurried US withdrawal from Afghanistan is set to extend that pattern.

Biden’s back but the US still needs to rebuild its international standing

America is back. That was the key message US President Joe Biden sought to convey during his first trip abroad since taking office in January. But while Biden himself has rejoined the mix of global leaders—having served as vice president in Barack Obama’s two administrations—past US policies might not get the same opportunity for a comeback.

We live in a different world today than we did just a few years ago. Geopolitical tensions are on the rise, and cooperation on shared challenges is more urgent than ever. China’s emergence as a global power, in particular, has sparked deep, almost existential, fears in the United States, driving a reassessment of policies across the board.

A comparison between the Biden administration’s Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, released in March, and the 2015 National Security Strategy, issued when Biden was vice president, provides a glimpse into the logic of that reassessment. The 2015 strategy paid considerable attention to China, noting, for example, that the US would ‘closely monitor’ the country’s ‘military modernization and expanding presence in Asia’.

But the latest guidance puts America’s ‘growing rivalry’ with an ‘increasingly assertive’ China front and centre—and proposes a strategy to pursue it. ‘Taken together’, the document reads, ‘this agenda will strengthen our enduring advantages, and allow us to prevail in strategic competition with China or any other nation’.

The Biden administration is right to work to bolster America’s economic competitiveness and strengthen its physical infrastructure and human capital. This is in the entire world’s interests. But, if the US wants to compete effectively with China, it will need to look well beyond its borders—and far into the future.

As it stands, the US–China competition is playing out primarily in the economic domain, as China’s GDP continues to grow and its leaders move decisively to forge ever-deeper trade and investment ties with countries and regions worldwide. Already, China is a trading superpower, with more than 100 countries trading at least twice as much with it as they do with the US.

The extent to which China expands and entrenches its trade dominance will go a long way towards determining the scale of the country’s political influence. And if the Biden administration’s recent guidance is any indication, China will face relatively few barriers to achieving its goals.

In 2015, the US had a forward-looking trade policy, which sought to shape the global trading system of the future. The National Security Strategy recognised, for example, that initiatives like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership would enable the US to set ‘the world’s highest standards for labor rights and environmental protection’, remove barriers to US exports, and put the US ‘at the center of a free-trade zone covering two-thirds of the global economy’.

Today, neither the TPP nor the TTIP is in place—at least not with the US as a member. The Obama administration’s vision for the global trading system was shot to pieces by Donald Trump’s administration, with its mercantilist trade philosophy. But the real disappointment is that Biden does not seem eager to revive the Obama-era vision. Instead, his administration seems to be taking a defensive and backward-looking approach to trade—one that looks a lot more like Trump’s than Obama’s.

Yes, on his trip to Europe, Biden and European Union leaders agreed to a five-year truce in their 17-year-old trade dispute over subsidies for aircraft manufacturers. But he did not remove Trump’s tariffs on European steel and aluminium. He and his European counterparts say they are ‘working toward’ a deal, but even if they reach one, it will reflect nothing like the vision and ambition that animated the two sides during TTIP negotiations in 2015.

So, when it comes to trade, the US isn’t ‘back’ at all. And China is wasting no time in taking advantage of this situation to raise its trading profile even further. Already, it has been instrumental in forging the world’s largest free-trade agreement, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which includes 15 Asia–Pacific countries.

China has also declared its intention to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was forged by 11 countries after the US walked away from the TPP. Earlier this month, CPTPP members agreed to start accession negotiations with the United Kingdom. The EU—which has been pursuing trade deals with these countries—should consider joining the pact as well.

What will come of China’s ongoing trade efforts remains to be seen. But it’s clear that Chinese leaders understand the critical importance of their country’s trade linkages to its global clout. America’s leaders need to relearn that lesson—for the benefit of Americans and Europeans alike.

Making America global again

The liberal international order remains trapped in the 20th century. As autocracies like China and Russia increasingly develop spheres of cooperation, the United States is responding by building or strengthening regional groupings of its own, from NATO to the Indo-Pacific Quad (the US, Japan, Australia and India). But America should instead take a global approach that focuses on values and visions rather than on countries.

Emerging strains of authoritarianism pose new challenges to democratic aspirations from Crimea to Taiwan. In both Eastern Europe and East Asia, proliferating ‘grey-zone’ warfare tactics are jeopardising countries’ territorial integrity, open trading systems, democratic elections, technology supply chains and the rule of law. These illiberal threats are no longer just European, American or Asian issues. They target all open societies, international human rights and democracy itself.

Unfortunately, America’s post-1945 international frameworks are ill-suited to fostering a common conversation among liberal societies. The G7, NATO, the European Union and the Quad are too regionally disparate to forge a strong global response.

Consider the issue of semiconductors. The most advanced of these play a foundational role in emerging technologies such as biotech, quantum computing and artificial intelligence, and are produced almost exclusively by the US, the EU and their Asian allies. But semiconductor manufacturers depend on a global system of talent and trade in which China is deeply embedded. No democratic forum currently exists to generate consensus on international standards, export controls or industrial cooperation.

The US, the EU and their democratic Asian allies, which have technologically sophisticated economies and high standards of living, together account for roughly half of global GDP. But if the US is to protect and rejuvenate its economic foundations and approach autocracies from a position of strength, its strategy cannot be merely trans-Pacific or transatlantic; it must be openly sourced from across the democratic world.

US President Joe Biden’s administration has, or at least had, a vision of global democratic cooperation, but one focused on countries more than issues. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and author and pundit Robert Kagan called in 2019 for the establishment of a ‘league of democracies’. During the presidential transition, Biden announced his intention to convene a ‘summit of democracies’ during his first year in office. But the administration stumbled on the rock that trips up all such efforts: the difficulty of defining who belongs to the liberal democratic club. It has renamed the gathering the ‘summit for democracy’ and apparently postponed it until next year.

Rather than focusing on democracy itself, the summit should emphasise the underlying values that liberal democracies cherish: an open society, the rule of law, representative government, economic opportunity, privacy, security, freedom of expression, justice and equality.

To that end, the US should consider how to work with smaller states to convene countries in support of specific democratic norms and standards on important issues. Jared Cohen of the Council on Foreign Relations and Richard Fontaine, the CEO of the Center for a New American Security, argue that such ‘microlateralism’, a combination of ‘small-country leadership and large-state participation’, can be a ‘key instrument in the United States’ collective-action toolkit’.

Developing a code of best practice for open societies’ pandemic responses might be an easy starting point. Taiwan, for example, has been among the most successful in countering Covid-19, despite its proximity to the Chinese mainland and lack of vaccines. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, recently praised Taiwan’s handling of the pandemic, noting that the US has ‘a lot to learn’ from the country’s ability to combat disinformation and tackle the challenges of an interconnected democratic society. The US could turn to New Zealand, for example, to lead or co-lead a gathering of states committed to developing a set of principles or code of conduct for tackling pandemics. This could be named after the host city, like the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

Such a forum should not be restricted to governments. Civil society, academia, industry, philanthropy and religious organisations are all force multipliers for democratic dynamism. During the Covid-19 pandemic, institutions such as Johns Hopkins University and vaccine developers like Pfizer–BioNTech have been invaluable in immunising society from disinformation and the virus, respectively. The vibrancy of these non-governmental actors is one of liberal democracies’ unique strengths compared to authoritarian systems.

These gatherings could also disseminate democratic best practices on combating disinformation. Estonia, which developed a multi-faceted digital approach to reinforcing its democratic institutions after a series of crippling cyberattacks in 2007, offers an excellent example of how civic tech can foster resilience to autocratic hostility. Its ‘digital nomad’ visa has allowed citizens of countries from Canada to South Africa to work virtually in Estonia, thereby integrating further private-sector expertise and strengthening cultural ties with other open societies. Such innovative pockets of ingenuity shine a positive light on the value of human freedom and show how developing and diffusing democratic norms can offer a multi-centred model of 21st-century governance.

The Biden administration is currently preparing for the G7 and NATO summits, but prominent democracies such as Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, Taiwan and South Korea will not be at the table (although the UK has invited some, including Australia, as guests to the G7 meeting). An effective mechanism for strategising among liberal–democratic states could help America get its own house in order and provide values-based leadership on human rights, security, tech governance, supply chains and even global corporate taxation. Emerging or at-risk democracies, seeing opportunity rather than only forced choice, will certainly take note.

US strategy for addressing authoritarian challenges should be global, not regional, plural rather than unitary and issue-based rather than country-based. Over a century ago, following the last pandemic, America was the engine driving the creation of a new international order. Today, it must lead from the centre rather than the front, side by side with many other countries, to seize a unique opportunity to update the model of a more interconnected, inclusive and democratic global society.

Policy, Guns and Money: Biden’s first 100 days, Taiwan and biosecurity in northern Australia

Thursday 29 April marked US President Joe Biden’s hundredth day in office, a symbolic milestone used to measure the impact of a new administration. ASPI’s executive director, Peter Jennings, is joined by Bruce Wolpe, senior fellow with the United States Studies Centre, to discuss Biden’s achievements so far, in areas such as the response to the pandemic, climate policy, and the domestic and foreign policy challenges facing the administration.

Taiwan has been receiving increased international attention recently, partly because of its successful pandemic response but also due to cross-strait tensions. ASPI research intern Elena Yi-Ching Ho speaks to Wen-Ti Sung, lecturer in the Taiwan Studies Program at the Australian National University, about cross-strait relations, the potential for military conflict and whether the status quo is still sustainable.

ASPI analyst Teagan Westendorf speaks to Ruth Wallace, dean of the College of Indigenous Futures, Arts and Society and director of the Northern Institute at Charles Darwin University. They discuss Australia’s evolving biosecurity challenges and the opportunities for Indigenous communities in northern Australia to play a significant role in understanding and responding to biosecurity threats.

Building bridges, burning bridges: Biden’s climate change summit

President Joe Biden’s two-day climate change summit, which was timed to coincide with Earth Day in the US and continues tomorrow, is intended to rebuild bridges with most of world that were damaged by four years of Donald Trump’s climate-denial policies. However, it also looks likely to burn a few bridges as well.

Biden took executive action on his first day in office to reverse the Trump withdrawal from the Paris climate accord and announced a virtual ‘Leaders Summit on Climate’ to galvanise a global effort to tackle the climate crisis.

Along with domestic policy reversals, Biden is looking to use the meeting to burnish American claims to leadership again on this critical international issue. In support of this aim, critics as well as proponents of international action have been included.

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro were among the 40 key leaders invited to participate. Significantly, China’s President Xi Jinping confirmed his attendance, which is expected to reinforce the agreement announced last week between China and the US  to cooperate to take specific actions to reduce emissions.

The virtual format of the summit limits the corridor diplomacy that is a traditional benefit of international summits. These were restricted to the pre-summit negotiations to secure acceptance on items for the agenda.

There’s cautious optimism that the summit will have positive repercussions globally for action on climate change as well more effective collective leadership in meeting emissions targets, sharing technology and supporting developing states that may lose economically.

Whatever the global benefits for building bridges between the US and the rest of the world, the summit has already raised some diplomatic tensions regionally.

Fiji’s Prime Minister Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama, expected to be included on the elite list having been the president of the 2017 United Nations climate conference (COP23) and the most prominent regional leader internationally on climate change impact on small island states, was not invited.

He associated himself with the Biden agenda from day one when he congratulated the new president on his win, tweeting, ‘Together, we have a planet to save from a climate emergency.’ He also invited the incoming president to attend the August 2021 Pacific Islands Forum meeting which Bainimarama will chair.

Bainimarama has been personally hurt by his exclusion from the Biden summit. Tony Greubel, the acting head of the American embassy in Suva, was called to meet with Fiji’s former foreign minister Ratu Inoke Kubuabola for a ‘please explain’.

Pointedly, Ratu Inoke queried why David Kabua, president of the Marshall Islands, had been invited as the small islands’ voice at the summit at the expense of Bainimarama.

Ratu Inoke is now Fiji’s special envoy to the Pacific Islands Forum but, in January, he was a candidate for the position of secretary-general of Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat. Although his candidature was withdrawn before voting started, Fiji was widely believed to have helped deliver the job to Cook Islands’ candidate Henry Puna against Marshall Islands’ candidate Gerald Zackios.

Bainimarama may well have grounds for believing that extending the small island invitation to Kabua was a deliberate reprisal for Fiji’s role in the contretemps. There has been serious disappointment among some influential American analysts over the treatment of the Marshalls.

According to an alternative explanation for the summit snub, Xi’s acceptance will rub some salt into the wound that Bainimarama feels.

Graham Davis reports that Bainimarama once told the US’s ambassador to Fiji at a public function in Suva that China was a much better friend to Fiji than America was. This event occurred before Biden was elected, but the barb struck home with the US diplomatic establishment for being as gratuitous as it was undiplomatic.

A third possible explanation has less to do with Bainimarama’s absence than the Marshalls’ success in advocacy on the existential threat climate change poses for the Pacific’s low-lying islands.

From former foreign minister Tony de Brum’s ‘1.5 to stay alive’ slogan to promote awareness of the danger of exceeding 1.5°C in global warming to former president Hilda Heine’s and current president Kabua’s leadership, the Marshalls have offered very steady and visible island advocacy.

But whatever the reason, Fiji’s exclusion from Biden’s climate summit will complicate the bridge-building on climate change that the American policy changes are intended to achieve.

The US does want Fiji’s support broadly on a variety of regional issues including selling its new climate change message. Yet, the Biden administration seems unwilling to respond to attempts at manipulation by countries playing the ‘China card’.

Moreover, the administration is particularly responsive at the moment to Micronesian priorities since it is renegotiating compacts of free association with all three states.

The Biden embrace of significantly reduced carbon emissions and support for the Paris accord will repair American bridges with the Pacific island region with regard to climate change. However, the overall effect on regional relations may be mitigated by two factors.

The August Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ meeting will be fractured along a north–south cleavage as things stand now. The Biden summit could serve to deepen the rupture if Fiji takes umbrage over the politics rather the policies announced at the summit.

Second, Australia’s stance at the summit clearly lacked sympatico with the Biden message and, without any post-summit bridge-building of its own, Australia will go to the leaders’ meeting even more isolated and out of step with the region.

Australia needs to bring some ideas to Biden’s climate summit. Here are a few

Up to 40 world leaders, including Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, will participate in a two-day virtual leaders’ summit convened by US President Joe Biden and timed to coincide with Earth Day. The summit is part of Biden’s major diplomatic offensive to galvanise nations to tackle climate change.

Biden has appointed former secretary of state John Kerry as his special climate envoy and one of his first acts as president was an executive order directing all US national security agencies to quickly get on board the climate agenda. For those agencies, it’s about making climate change part and parcel of their regular planning cycles, ranging from assessing climate impacts on military installations, war-gaming climate impacts and developing climate risk assessments.

Prominent in Biden’s executive order is the desire to partner with allies on climate diplomacy. This year is the 70th anniversary of the ANZUS alliance, formed on 1 September 1951. Biden’s Earth Day summit is a significant opportunity for Australia to align itself with the president’s reinvigorated US commitment on climate action.

There are several bold steps we might set out at the summit. Australia should adopt a leadership role on climate security in the Pacific islands region. Climate change is viewed there as the primary threat to security as recognised in the 2018 Boe Declaration.

Reducing global emissions means greater climate security for our island neighbourhood and supports the Morrison government’s commitment to its Pacific Step-up. Regional leadership on climate security would provide a soft-power counterpunch to China’s regional ambitions. China is the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, responsible for nearly 30% of global carbon emissions.

Talking about climate security could send a signal to our own defence organisation to get more serious about climate planning, commensurate with our Five Eyes partners who have well-developed policies on the strategic implications of climate change.

Regional leadership on climate security should include establishing climate change as a standing agenda item at key Pacific island security, diplomatic and aid dialogues. We should commit to convening a Pacific climate security summit with island leaders to define keys risks and develop a priority action plan.

Appointing a climate security envoy to work with regional governments on climate risks would be useful. We should reboot Indo-Pacific Endeavour, the annual Australian military activity to deepen partnerships and interoperability in the region, by strengthening the climate security context in its disaster response exercises. Commissioning a regional climate security threat assessment from a respected national agency or think tank and providing regular updates would be welcomed by regional leaders.

Pacific nations fear their islands could be swamped by sea-level rise, shrinking their offshore estates and rights to fishing and mining within their boundaries. They’re trying to lock in existing maritime zones now. Australia has been supportive of defining and declaring island baselines, limits and boundaries consistent with the law of the sea. But we should be more explicit that these limits should stay in place regardless of sea-level rise.

The last thing we want to see in our neighbourhood is China offering the massive dredgers it used to build its fortified islands in the South China Sea to Pacific countries so that they can build up their land to protect against sea-level rise.

Morrison’s department is stepping up its efforts to deal with climate change by creating a senior position to coordinate Australia’s strategy. The Department of Defence should be included in this strategy. The Morrison government could announce a commitment to reducing defence emissions, without compromising our military’s fighting capability. Defence emits around 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year, more than half of all federal government emissions. Of this, roughly half comes from the defence estate (such as offices); the rest is from its fighting forces (ships, aircraft, tanks and other capabilities).

As a first step, Defence could provide incentives for net-zero bases, mandate electric vehicles across its civilian fleet and undertake an audit of its estate for carbon offsetting and sequestration opportunities. It should actively support local defence industry, research, and development to deliver alternative non-hydrocarbon fuels. Initiatives such as the defence force’s new all electric off-road buggy, designed and built in Melbourne, are a great starting point.

Coupled with a stronger national emissions-reduction target, Morrison might present these ideas at Biden’s summit as a pathway to engagement with the US on climate change, demonstrating regional leadership and giving us added momentum heading towards the G20 summit in October and the 26th annual climate conference (COP26) in Glasgow in November.

Biden’s plan: out of Afghanistan, into the Indo-Pacific

US President Joe Biden has done what Barack Obama and Donald Trump wanted to do when they were in office but couldn’t—get a plan in place for a total US and partner military withdrawal from Afghanistan that ends a war that’s run since 2001.

It’s not a tidy end to a long, bloody war. But it is a strong statement that reorders US priorities now and for the next decade.

Biden’s America is engaged in rebuilding its economic strength and national cohesion and in re-energising its high-technology leadership for civil and national security purposes. This involves strengthening American alliances and partnerships internationally across a combination of economic, technological and security elements.

Counterterrorism remains on the agenda, but as a lesser priority than in the now-closed 9/11 era, and it’s a dispersed and distributed threat, not one that’s centred in Afghanistan.

The fact that his domestic and foreign policy agendas have so much alignment means fears in various foreign capitals that Biden would lead an introspective America are misplaced.

As a White House spokesperson put it:

[Biden] deeply believes that in contending with the threats and challenges of 2021, as opposed to those of 2001, we need to be focusing our energy, our resources, our personnel, … our foreign policy and national security leadership on those threats and challenges that are most acute for the United States: on the challenge of competition with China, on the challenge presented by the current pandemic and future pandemics, on the challenge posed by this much more distributed terrorist threat across multiple countries.

Closing the 9/11 era might well be the best way for Biden to do something else that eluded Obama and Trump—getting real government and corporate heft behind facing the challenge Xi Jinping’s state-corporate China poses to America.

In Obama’s case, the ‘pivot’ to the Pacific never happened because he wouldn’t extract the US from other commitments, notably its embroilment in the Afghan conflict. In Trump’s case, coherent policy eluded him, and his China policy successes were achieved by isolated folk within his dysfunctional administration.

Reinvestment in America’s technological strengths and re-engagement with allies and partners are already founding principles for Biden’s America.

Beyond these, the way for Biden to start with the China challenge is to deter Xi from military adventurism on Taiwan. Sending an ‘informal delegation’ to Taiwan in the week he announces an end to the US military presence in Afghanistan while pushing the Strategic Competition Act through Congress shows Biden gets this.

Right now, Xi is telling the world that China’s rise is inevitable, as is the decline of the US and ‘the West’. Because of this assessment, he’s been taking risks that have been paying off—in the South China Sea, in Xinjiang, in Hong Kong. And the consequences of such Chinese government risk-taking have been minimal.

Sanctions on lower level Chinese officials involved in the mass abuses in Xinjiang, and on Hong Kong officials engaged in implementing Beijing’s harsh repression of political freedoms there, don’t hurt the Chinese economy or anyone on the communist party’s politburo or touch the wealth of these aristocratic families, so why should Xi consider stopping? And why shouldn’t he keep moving fast on an even bigger domestic and political priority—unification of Taiwan with the mainland, if not through intimidation, then through military force?

Biden’s Afghanistan decision clears the air for the US to answer those questions because it makes an emphatic statement that US attention has shifted to the urgent competition with China. That’s good news everywhere but in Beijing.

Now is the time to dismantle Beijing’s narrative on Taiwan simply and clearly, because this is the path to changing Xi’s risk calculations about using force against that island.

The line we hear from Xi’s government is that Taiwan matters more to the people of China than to anyone else, so no one will sacrifice anything to oppose Beijing’s takeover of what is already psychologically theirs. This, as usual, is a story that Beijing is writing in the hope that others will believe it—with some success.

Biden can create that wonderful post-modern item, the counter-narrative; one that’s likely to be more powerful than Beijing’s Taiwan line because it has the virtue of being real. This starts with clarity of US and international interests in Taiwan.

Taiwan matters to the US, and to Australia, in ways that go well beyond written statements of commitment like the US’s Taiwan Relations Act. Hearing why from both Washington and Canberra will be a key plank in resetting Xi’s risk calculations.

Taiwan matters for at least four compelling reasons that, taken together, have to absorb the time and attention of national leaders and governments across the Indo-Pacific and in NATO.

And the reasons are a combination of strategic, economic and technological themes that echo the priorities Biden articulated during his election campaign and has been acting on since becoming US president in January.

The first reason is geographic. Taiwan’s location gives whoever owns it and is able to operate forces from it the ability to project military power into mainland China and to complicate Chinese military plans and its own power projection. China possessing Taiwan removes this constraint and enables it to project force more easily against Japan and South Korea and beyond its ‘first island chain’.

Taiwan is a 23-million-person island democracy in the Indo-Pacific. Whether or not it is conquered by an authoritarian Chinese government should matter to any other democracy on the planet, but it sure as eggs matters—to Australia, an island democracy of 26 million people in the Indo-Pacific, and to Biden’s US that has put values and human rights back at the centre of its foreign policy.

Then there’s the sheer economic and technological importance of Taiwan, home of much of the world’s semiconductor industrial capacity. This area of high technology is in the middle of US–China competition for future economic and strategic power. China lags the US and Taiwan in this area despite spending billions of yuan and decades of effort to catch up. Taking over Taiwan would close a glaring technological gap in Chinese civil and military technology while handing Beijing a powerful additional tool for economically coercing the rest of us (remember Beijing’s attempt to do this to Japan over rare earths).

And the last reason Taiwan has to be at the heart of US and allied priorities now and over the rest of the 2020s is that in strategic competition momentum matters. Analysts and pundits in the US and in allied and partner capitals told themselves, their governments and anyone else who would listen that China’s island building in the South China Sea and creation of military bases there only gave it control of ‘a pile of rocks’.

Instead, Beijing’s militarisation of the South China Sea changed the strategic position there to the great disadvantage of Southeast Asian states and in ways that undercut American and allied power. What more profound effect would Beijing gaining control of Taiwan have?

So, while Afghanistan decisions may seem a long way from Taiwan, Biden’s uncomfortable but necessary reordering of American power and interests away from the 9/11 era to the real competition of this decade comes at the right time.

Washington’s fresh approach to settling the Afghan conflict

The protracted Afghanistan conflict and lack of progress in the intra-Afghan peace talks in Doha have prompted President Joe Biden’s administration to get tough with the Afghan government and pressure the Taliban to reach a political settlement urgently. It has proposed a United Nations–led international conference to boost the chances of such a settlement. Will this new initiative work?

In heavy-handed style, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently sent a letter to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani stating bluntly that his government should either get its act together and reach an accommodation with the Taliban or face the wrath of the militia who stand to gain more territory at the cost of the government. He proposed that a peace conference be held under UN auspices in Turkey, bringing together the warring Afghan parties and Afghanistan’s neighbours to hammer out an agreement for a transitional government, a ceasefire and a political roadmap involving constitutional changes and establishing an Islamic Council, with the full participation of the Taliban, leading to a general election that allows the Afghan people to elect their government. Turkey has since announced that it plans to host such a meeting next month.

Blinken’s proposal is very much along the lines of the US-driven and UN-led Afghan Bonn peace conference of December 2001. That event, which took place following America’s toppling of Taliban rule, mapped out a political transition for Afghanistan, without the participation of the Taliban since it was designated as a terrorist group.

The unusually sharp tone of Blinken’s letter to Ghani is understandable. The US and its allies have been fighting in Afghanistan for nearly two decades without a very effective partner on the ground to stymie the growing Taliban-led insurgency. Afghan governmental and non-governmental leaders have proved to be divided, quarrelling among themselves for self-centred and self-serving objectives rather than institutionalising a governing system and pursuing strategies that could generate national unity and benefit a majority of the Afghan people. This dysfunction has fed into what have also largely evolved as inappropriate US Afghanistan policies, which have failed to halt Pakistan’s support for the Taliban and failed to neutralise the insurgency of the group and its affiliates.

Biden’s predecessor, the impulsive neonationalist and longstanding critic of the Afghan war Donald Trump, found the situation untenable and opted for a total military withdrawal from Afghanistan no matter what. His envoy for Afghanistan, the Afghan American Zalmay Khalilzad, negotiated and signed a peace agreement with the Taliban in February 2020, which provided for a US and allied troop pull-out by 1 May 2021. This was in return for a Taliban pledge to prevent hostile actions against the US and its allies from Afghanistan. The deal, in which the Afghan government had no part, also provisioned for the release of 5,000 Taliban from Afghan jails and the liberation of 1,000 government soldiers from Taliban captivity.

That agreement was the worst of its kind. It made the Taliban America’s partner in peace, without obliging them to agree to a universal ceasefire or to genuinely enter negotiations with the other Afghan parties, including the government, for a viable settlement. In effect, it furnished the Taliban with carte blanche to dramatically increase their operations across the country, involving targeted assassinations of civil activists, journalists, enlightened religious figures, judges and officials, at the cost of mounting military and civilian losses, while maintaining the facade of peace talks in Doha.

The problem with Blinken’s forceful initiative is that it has identified the Taliban as the salient force, while striking a raw nerve in the Ghani government. Ghani has worked hard to rebut the Taliban’s continuous labelling of his government as an American ‘puppet’. He, along with some of his ranking supporters in the government, cannot but view Blinken’s message in the form of a patron imposing its preferences on a client for its own benefit.

Speaking on behalf of the government, the first vice-president and former head of the Afghan National Directorate of Security, Amrullah Saleh, criticised Blinken’s initiative as unacceptable. He essentially reiterated Ghani’s past emphasis that there would be no compromise on the 2002 Afghan constitution and the legitimacy of his government and transfer of power by election. Saleh stressed that the government and the people want peace, but not simply on any terms imposed upon them.

While Saleh’s stance is supported by Ismail Khan, a former heavyweight minister from western Afghanistan, it is not shared by several other leaders outside the government. For example, former President Hamid Karzai (2001–2014) has backed Blinken’s proposal as the ‘best chance to accelerate stalled peace talks’ between the warring Afghan parties. So has the ex-vice-president of the Karzai era, Yunus Qanuni. Nonetheless, Ghani and most of the other leaders have agreed to attend the Turkey conference.

Blinken’s move is forceful enough to cut both ways. On the one hand, it has cajoled the government and the Taliban to strike a deal at the Turkey conference, despite the risk of any deal being unravelled in its implementation, as happened to the outcome of the Bonn conference. On the other hand, it can further polarise both sides, causing them to harden their positions and thus undermining the chances of a viable political settlement for an early US and allied military exit with some face-saving measures.

Meanwhile, Ghani and several other leaders have also agreed to attend an Afghanistan peace conference in Moscow this week, perhaps as a balancing act to keep Russia on side. Whatever the case, in the event of Turkey’s conference resulting in the formation of a transitional government, it seems certain at this stage that it will be portioned among Ghani and other leaders, who have most unfortunately failed the Afghan people thus far. This may help the US and its allies to complete their military withdrawal, but pity the suffering Afghan people who are set to endure violence, insecurity and uncertainty for quite a while longer.

Biden’s first 30 days were easy. Now comes the hard part

US President Joe Biden has hit the ground running. In his first two days in office, he signed 17 executive orders—more than any previous US president over the same period. He rejoined the World Health Organization and the Paris climate agreement and showed resolve in using US military power to support security in the South China Sea, in the Middle East and around Taiwan.

Biden also used his early calls to other world leaders and the virtual G7 summit to demonstrate the return of the US as an engaged, constructive ally and partner.

But, as always with any plan, others get a say in what happens and, as former UK prime minister Harold MacMillan observed, plans change because of something simple and inevitable: ‘Events, dear boy, events.’

Biden’s early actions haven’t all been about security and leadership engagement, though. He has also moved rapidly on pressing issues like the pandemic, speeding up the US Covid-19 vaccination program and committing US$4 billion to the international effort through the COVAX Facility. To get Americans back to work as vaccinations roll out, he’s pushing a well-targeted US$1.9 trillion stimulus package and reinvesting in modern, sustainable infrastructure.

As active as he’s been, Biden has had it easy so far. He and his close team of experienced policymakers and advisers prepared well for office and have drawn on that preparation to roll out decisions and initiatives.

There will be more pre-planned moves in the remaining two-thirds of the first 100 days, but, like a chess game, it gets harder from here as he and his administration go from the set-piece moves to the broken play of actually governing the US and navigating the global environment.

That’s no doubt well understood by folks like Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell and others in the foreign policy and national security team.

Already, the coup in Myanmar and Iran’s nuclear program have crowded their way onto Biden’s desk. Myanmar is providing an early test of how the new administration’s rhetoric about the centrality of human rights and freedoms at home and abroad will feature in the use of US power and influence.

Iran and Myanmar are serious policy challenges; however, the core challenge for the Biden team is already very clear—Xi Jinping’s China. And if Biden pre-planned his opening moves, so did Xi.

Xi didn’t wait to let Biden settle into the Oval Office. As head of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Military Commission, he sent some dozen Chinese military aircraft to breach Taiwanese airspace four days before the 20 January inauguration. On the same day, the CCP passed an aggressive new law authorising China’s coastguard to use force, including lethal force, not just in areas owned by China, but in areas subject to disputed claims—like the South and East China Seas, and around Taiwan.

Xi also pushed the fast-forward button in Hong Kong, arresting 55 pro-democracy activists and subjecting pro-democracy voice Jimmy Lai to new charges under Beijing’s punitive and vindictive national security law, apparently including for speaking with foreign media organisations. Xi is likely to purge Hong Kong’s judiciary to end that unhelpful rule-of-law independence that might complicate Beijing’s use of power there.

But Xi’s most telling move was his first phone call with Biden. China’s state-run media organisation Xinhua’s readout tells us that he left it all to Biden to fix things after Donald Trump: Xi told Biden to resume dialogue and cooperation between the US and China, said the US had to get ‘the relationship’ on the right track by avoiding confrontation and, most important of all, stressed that the US president had to ‘respect China’s core interests and act prudently’. Xi gave up nothing as he urged Biden to follow a path of compromise and caution in order to avoid conflict and confrontation.

Unsurprisingly, Biden’s side of the call is better understood in the White House readout than in the Chinese state’s version. It shows more evidence of carefully prepared set-piece diplomacy.

Biden ‘underscored his fundamental concerns about Beijing’s coercive and unfair economic practices, crackdown in Hong Kong, human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and increasingly assertive actions in the region, including toward Taiwan’. He also talked up the potential for the US and China to cooperate on shared challenges, including global health, climate change and preventing weapons proliferation.

Responding to Xi’s soothing call for ‘win–win’ cooperation between the US and China, Biden ‘committed to pursuing practical, results-oriented engagements when it advances the interests of the American people and those of our allies’.

What’s going on here is interesting for what happens next. Throughout 2020 and in the first two months of 2021, Xi has shown that he’s the opposite of the kind of president he urged Biden to be. Xi is a high-stakes risk-taker and gambler who’s deeply opportunistic and in a hurry to cement his place in CCP history.

Biden doing Xi’s bidding and showing caution, prudence and cooperation while avoiding confrontation and friction would empower Xi to take more and bigger risks, not just in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, but on Taiwan—and with continuing economic aggression and more of the rolling disinformation we’ve seen from China around the pandemic and his government’s awful mismanagement right at the start.

Over the next two months, we’ll begin to see if team Biden is as good at broken play as it is at pre-planned steps. And we’ll see if Biden resists Xi’s siren calls to settle world affairs just between Beijing and Washington, and instead brings in the power and voices of America’s allies and partners, with a core of unity despite discordant notes.

Contrary to Xi’s urging, the Biden administration needs to show a capacity for positive risk-taking through big new moves with US partners like Australia. His term for US–China relations—‘extreme competition’—is a hopeful sign that Biden gets this.

From an Indo-Pacific perspective, Biden’s plans for reviewing the US’s global force posture and China strategy show promise. More US forces operating with Australia through and in expanded facilities in our north and west would be a positive development for Australian, US and regional security. The reviews are sensible, but they need to produce early initiatives and not be lengthy studies that are reasons to avoid action and so miss opportunities while others act.

And outside of these traditional areas, rapid cooperation and co-investment with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government on powerful technologies like quantum computing and unmanned undersea systems will show Xi that Biden’s America isn’t just back, but is able to work in new, unexpected ways with allies and partners.

Nothing is more likely to change Xi’s trajectory and risk calculus than this type of creativity and speed. As Morrison knows from his management of the pandemic, clear decision-making that engages with risk can be a powerful force for good. That’s the real lesson out of the early Biden days.