The evolution of Biden’s foreign policy

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Welcome to Chatham House. I’m Leslie Vinjamuri. It’s wonderful to see that so many of you are on today’s roundtable call. I direct the US and Americas Programme here and I’m also Dean of our Academy. And we have a really extraordinarily talented and distinguished panel – so panellists today, to talk with us about the evolution of Biden and Biden’s foreign policy and Biden the man, and what a wonderful conversation to be able to have, in the context of what, I think, what’s been a series of discussions at Chatham House in London and the United Kingdom, across the world, frankly, about America and its changing role in the world. And especially, I think, since January 20th, a great curiosity about what this change of administration will mean.

Let me briefly introduce our panellists before I set the stage and begin our conversation. We have a wonderfully British, American, London, Washington set of guests, and we’ll begin with Lord Adonis, who will be very well known to those of you in the UK. He’s speaking to us from the House of Lords, which is remarkable, that somebody is in there, in their home office, which is their real office. Lord Adonis is currently Vice-Chair of the European Movement. He’s previously been a well-known Journalist. He’s recently been writing about Biden and Biden’s foreign policy. He was, as you will know, at the heart of the Blair-Brown government for 12 years. He served as Minister for Schools, as Transport Secretary, and I know you, Lord Adonis, from your robust tweets and Twitter exchange, not least about education.

We then have Ambassador Lewis Lukens, who is also very well-known to our audience, very well-known to London and the United Kingdom. You’ve had a long and distinguished career in the US Foreign Service, and your last post, Lew, was here in London, where I think you must have enjoyed it so much that you decided to stay, which is wonderful for us. You are currently Senior Partner at Signum Advisors, you spent 30 years in the US Foreign Service, you served in so many places. I think it was five continents, is that right? You were Ambassador to Senegal, to Guinea Bissau, Deputy Executive Secretary for Secretary Hilary Clinton, Senior Director on the National Security Council under Condoleezza Rice, who is also a frequent guest at Chatham House. And you’ve been writing quite a lot and speaking in the media, so we are all aware of your work and looking forward to your comments.

Heather Hurlburt is at New America in Washington DC where she currently is and has spent her career writing and thinking and shaping our thinking on America’s role in the world, on the link between America’s role at home, its domestic policy and its internationalist foreign policy. You were also Special Assistant and Speechwriter to President Bill Clinton, so that gives us a strong sense of how long you’ve been in this game of thinking deeply about US foreign policy, and we need that. We do need actually experts and expertise. Thank goodness that we finally recognise that. But you are currently Director of New Models of Policy Change, which is a really important initiative that you’ve been leading in Washington at New America.

So thank you all for joining us. I guess I would start out by saying before we turn to you, Lord Adonis, that is an interesting framing of the panel, The Evolution of Biden’s Foreign Policy thinking, because it co-exists along a number of questions that we’re asking about America and they don’t all suggest that the President himself is the most important thing. For many people, there’s a sense that America’s role in the world, its foreign policy, that there’s an inevitability that what America wants and how it behaves and how it engages is simply a reflection of its relative economic decline, of a more competitive world where China has risen, where emerging powers have more ability to influence economic change, and you know, does the President, whether it’s a Trump or a Biden or Obama or whoever might come next, is that the most consequential thing? And yet, inevitably, we all want to talk about the individual and perhaps, under Trump’s Presidency, our focus on the individual became that much more important.

But there’s also another line of thinking, that we know is very important, and I’ll remind our audience of a conversation that I think we had around a year ago, or maybe a year-and-a-half ago, about the President’s role in foreign policy, right? The unconstrained President, and the sense that the President himself or herself perhaps one day, and their personality and their changes – their changing views are especially important now in the US system, because that office and the executive authority and the role in foreign policy in particular is uniquely and newly powerful and consequential for the rest of the world.

So, with those sort of questions, you know, on the table, and not least the question that I guess so many people are asking, which is, is this just going to be a return to what we saw under President Obama, let me turn to you, Lord Adonis, to get your thoughts. And it’s wonderful to have somebody who’s been in the game for so long and has been looking at America from outside of America, and from inside the British Establishment to tell us your thinking on Joe Biden.

Lord Andrew Adonis

Well, thank you very much, Leslie, and thanks very much to Chatham House as well. You said, when we came together just before the start, that Chatham House itself is closed, and that no-one’s in there at the moment. I’d like to reassure you, ‘cause my office is round the corner from Chatham House, and I walk past it on my way to and from home every day. It’s still there, it hasn’t gone away, and so it’s going to be there when you come back. I’m not a foreign policy expert, let alone an American foreign policy expert, so this is going to be, I hope, a fruitful weaving together of many different strands, and I sit in awe of Lew, who’s got huge experience of US foreign policy, and indeed, of the conduct of diplomacy, and Heather, and really looking forward to what they’ve got to say.

The way I came at Biden was completely differently. I was asked by Prospect Magazine, and this is the latest issue, to do a – if you can see it, I can never be sure what you can see or not see on cameras – to do a profile of Joe Biden as a Politician, because I am a Biographer. My most recent biography is actually of Ernest Bevin, who’s the great post-war British Foreign Secretary, in many ways with George Marshall, the creator of NATO, the creator of the West as we know it today, in many ways. Which has got me into foreign policy to some extent, just as my work in resisting Brexit has got me into foreign policy. I never took much interest in foreign policy before, ‘cause we had one which I thought was quite stable in Britain, and then suddenly, it was all thrown up into the air five years ago. But I am a sort of a long-term student of people who exercise power.

I worked for Tony Blair for almost the entire time he was Labour Leader. I was a Minister under Gordon Brown, and I’ve been fascinated by this concept of power and how it’s exercised, and of course, the exercise of power in great leaders, who are in charge of great countries, is as much abroad as at home. And so that interested me greatly, and when I was asked to do this profile I therefore, of necessity, got to look at Joe Biden and his views on abroad, as well as at home.

For those who, like me, are coming at Biden very new and want to know what to read, well, there is my profile in the current issue of Prospect, which gives my view of him, but the two best biographies I read by far are Jules Witcover, his biography of Joe Biden, A Life of Trial and Redemption, which is quite brilliant in piecing together the whole of his public career, including, I don’t know if you can see it, this phenomenal photo, if you can see it there, of Joe Biden berating Slobodan Milošević. This is an incredible photo, where he, in one of his many trips to the Balkans, when he was Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, he berated, Biden pers – sorry, he berated Milošević personally over the various atrocities that Milošević was conducting. And apparently, in this exchange in 1993 over Kosovo, he said, when a rather implacable looking Milošević said to him, “Senator Biden, what do you think of me?” Apparently, Biden got up, pointed at him, jabbed his finger in Milošević’s chest and said, “I think you’re a war criminal and should be tried as such.”

Now, I have to say to you, that is remarkable courage, and it does tell you a lot about Joe Biden, somebody who behaves like that. I’m full of admiration for it. There aren’t many people who, when they meet Dictators, ‘cause by the way, my experience of most people who meet Dictators, including Churchill, unfortunately, meeting Mussolini, it is not a good idea to meet Dictators personally. You tend to form a better opinion of them and want to slightly aim off, as you do in all human relations. My best advice from all of my reading of history is never deal with Dictators directly, get intermediaries to deal with them, because you’re much less likely to come off the rails.

It’s one of the great pieces of good fortune, in my view, that Churchill never met Hitler. He very nearly met him, but he never met him. Everyone who met Hitler was worsted by him, including people like Lloyd George, who should have known better, but they were simply bowled over by the charm. That was not the case with Joe Biden. He met Milošević and he gave him a piece of his mind, and he then went back and urged President Clinton to get tough on Milošević and of course, in due course, Clinton did a lot with Tony Blair and sent troops into stabilise the situation in the Balkans and to get Milošević out.

So he’s got real courage, he clearly does believe in human rights as an international commodity, which isn’t always the case with great power leaders. I think, to my mind, one of the most significant things he’s done so far, though again, Lew and Heather will give a view on this, is the stand he’s taking in respect of Saudi Arabia, which does appear to be a significant departure, in terms of keeping his distance from dealing with the Crown Prince and making clear that at least some areas of arms sales and support are off limits to do with the Yemen. And that’s completely in line with the Joe Biden view of the world, as I can see it.

And the other thing I would recommend to read, which is shorter, is Evan Osnos, who’s written the most recent biography of Joe Biden, which is a kind of campaign biography. He’s s Columnist on The New Yorker, which is, I think, brilliant in bringing Joe Biden’s life, including one fact, that I must share with you, that tells you a huge amount about Joe Biden. When Evan was – who I did a podcast with for Prospect Magazine, and you can track it down if you want to see it, when Evan was shadowing Joe Biden as Vice President under Barack Obama, he sat in for several days on his meetings. And one of his meetings, which he records in detail, was on the Cyprus question, which I’m full of interest in, because I’m Cypriot myself, and there aren’t many senior Americans or indeed Brits, for that matter, to be frank, who take a deep interest in the Cyprus issue, of course, and I think it’s hugely important.

Biden has a very, very fine-grained knowledge of a lot of these situations, because he’s dealt with them over many years as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And what Evan records is that in this 65-minute meeting, which is a long meeting on an issue like Cyprus, Joe Biden spoke for 53 of the 65 minutes. Now, I’m told he’s come – he speaks a bit less than he used to now. It used to be almost impossible to get a word in edgeways. But what Evan said was that he – that was then typical. He is very, very forthright in meetings, but he’s also remarkably well-informed, because he does so many meetings and has got such long experience.

And this relates then, to the first of the three things I want to say, ‘cause I don’t want to cut across my colleagues and their time. The first thing to be said about Joe Biden, is he is one of the most professional Politicians in the history of politics. He became a Senator at the age of 29, which is below the legal limit for becoming a Senator, but his 30th birthday was just before the inauguration in January 1973. He was a Councillor before that. Heather tells us she comes from Delaware. He was a Councillor for one of the three County Councils in Delaware at the age of 27. But he wasn’t much interested in paving stones, streets, and utilities. He wanted to do what he saw as politics in the big time and particularly international affairs, right from the beginning, that was his great objective.

One of his big aims, once he became – and he was six times re-elected as a Senator, 36 years continuously in the Senate, then eight years as Vice President. So, one of the most experienced, arguably, in terms of years served, the most experienced person ever to become President of the United States. Two big Committee Chairs in that time, both of them over long periods of time. One at the Judiciary Committee so very much involved in domestic, legal and Supreme Court type issues over many years. But the other was the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which he chaired twice and forged with huge energy. For example, in the Iraq crisis, I read in the Osnos book, he went to Iraq personally ten times. Ten times. That’s, I presume, far more than any President did, than Bush or Obama did over that period. And he was constantly to and from Europe, to and from Asia, to and from the Balkans when the Balkans crisis was going on. So, he’s deeply personally experienced.

He’s a through professional, and the people he has around him, conducting foreign policy, are equally professional. I mean, Lew can tell us more about them, but Tony Blinken was a long-term Advisor of Joe Biden’s when he was Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. He was at school in Paris. He speaks French. He does interviews on [inaudible – 16:50]. I mean, you know, a level of experience, which is just extraordinary as a – for the post of Secretary of State. He was Deputy Secretary of State under Barack Obama. Hugely knowledgeable and experienced and a very long-term rapport going back over more than 20 years with Joe Biden, as indeed is true of most of the people who are working for Joe Biden. Most of them, there are a few new ones, like the Vice President and like Pete Buttigieg and so on, but most of his staff and, indeed, many of appointees are long-term people. And what – the big impression this leaves on me is of deep experience and the grownups being back in charge. And when you look outside the United States at the fear of Trump, there was a real fear over policy, but the biggest fear, in my experience, was over – about irrationality. Was that something might happen by accident because of some appalling misstep by an unbriefed and ignorant President.

I shall never forget meeting with the Foreign Minister of Estonia two years ago. I said – ‘cause of course, huge issues in the Balkans, British and American troops in – sorry, in the Baltic – British and American troops in the Baltic conducting exercises and even more American and British troops than there were five years ago, despite Brexit and despite Trump, because of the really serious situation vis-à-vis Russia. And I said, “What do you worry about?” And he said to me, “There are two things I worry about every morning.” He said, “The first, of course, if Russia and what Putin might do, as he becomes ever more dictatorial and expansive abroad. But the second thing,” he said, “I worry about is Trump, because I – every morning, the first thing I do is switch on Twitter, just in case he’s said something that provokes a crisis in NATO or with Russia. That he’s withdrawing troops or something, you know, or something of this kind,” and he said, “and even though I know we might be able to put it right again afterwards, you know, it might just create this real crisis and discontinuity that gives Putin his chance.” People don’t worry about that with Joe Biden, with Tony Blinken, with Kerry doing climate change and so on. That’s firstly, reflection on Biden.

Second big reflection on Biden, is that of course the realities haven’t changed internationally. Nothing suddenly changed on January the 20th when he became – internationally, when he became President. Xi Jinping didn’t suddenly become more accommodating. The problems of Russia didn’t change. The essential dynamics of European trade policy and the big issue of American jobs at home, in what was already an economic crisis, upon which has been layered COVID, that hasn’t changed either, and a lot of Trump’s change was rhetorical and a fear of irrationality.

In terms of actual changes about America’s strategic interests and what he did to affect them, changes weren’t nearly as great. He didn’t back away from NATO. He did withdraw some troops. He played a bit fast and loose with Germany. He was very rude about Chancellor Merkel, but he didn’t fundamentally rupture any of America’s international alliances. And though he had very ambiguous relationships with both Putin and with Xi, he didn’t fundamentally, again, change American policy or American interests. So, the underlying continuity was there with Trump, and it is not fundamentally, in my view, going to change with Biden.

And then, the third comment, just to wrap up, is of course, what’s very clear about Biden is that the domestic is going to – is for the immediate future, going to be most important. Joe Biden was essentially elected because he wasn’t Trump and because Trump had so badly mishandled COVID-19. His overwhelming priority is to fix things at home. And if you look at his Town Hall that he did two days ago, which was wonderfully reassuring, you’re seeing a really serious President, there was almost nothing on international policy at all. It was COVID, it was vaccines, it was growth, it was recovery, it was the $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus package. There was a bit of immigration on it, which does of course have foreign policy elements to it, and that might be the area where a change in foreign policy is greatest, actually, in the short-term, is his immigration policy, but fundamentally, he’s about domestic policy.

However, and this is the point I would end on, of course, a lot of the issue of whether United States Presidents get involved in foreign policy, isn’t to do with what they set out to do, it’s to do with circumstances and events. George W Bush set out to be a big education reformer, no child left behind and all of that. FDR, my great hero, who I liken Joe Biden’s potential to in the profile I do, was elected to get America out of The Great Depression. Both of them ended up being sucked into massive and overwhelmingly preoccupying foreign policy crises, Iraq, and of course the Second World War. Why? Because, as Macmillan said of politics, the main influence in what happens in politics is, “Events, dear boy, events.”

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Thank you. Lord Adonis, you put a lot on the table. I think one of the most interesting points that you made was the depiction of Joe Biden calling Milošević a war criminal. Very interesting, of course, because as we know, human rights is right up front and centre in this administration, and yet there will be some tough – some very tough trade-offs, and I think, you know, two years later, Milošević went to Dayton and the talks sort of continued, and Milošević stayed in place. So, I think that depiction of Biden as being somebody who really does care about the values, but now is going to have to face the trade-offs, is something that I think is also, in addition to your three points, worth really considering.

Lew, let me come to you next, Ambassador Lukens, you’ve had a lot of experience, I imagine, with Joe Biden and in foreign policy as well, so we’re looking forward to your comments.

Ambassador Lewis Lukens

Thank you, Leslie, and thank you, Chatham House. It’s a great pleasure to be on this distinguished panel with Heather and Lord Adonis. I just want to touch on three things. In coming back to your question, Leslie, at the beginning, of does the Presidency matter? Does who the President – is it important who the President is? And in this day and age, it is really important, and it’s important because of the personnel assignments, again, coming back to what Lord Adonis was saying. Personality is policy, and Joe Biden has assembled a national security team, not just Tony Blinken, but Jake Sullivan of the National Security Council who had many years’ experience working for the Vice President – and when he was the Vice President, and also, at the State Department as Deputy Chief of Staff for four years to Hillary Clinton. Wendy Sherman, coming back to the State Department as the Deputy Secretary of State. These are all people who know their briefs, as we say here, in the UK.

And process is back, and I wanted to quickly touch on process, and processes are considered kind of boring, but it’s so important. The notion that you decide issues through an inter-agency review process and you have meetings and you work it up in the system and come to a high level decision with all the relevant agencies having had their say and weighed in, is so, so important and a real break from the last four years, where that process was pretty much broken or non-existent. And Donald Trump would, you know, he would hear something on TV, or he would speak to somebody and then he would announce a policy change via Twitter, and you know, without all the relevant government agencies having been involved. And the good example of that was the Muslim ban, which came into effect a week after Donald Trump became President, which hadn’t gone through legal clearance, it caught the State Department completely by surprise, and you know, I was here in London when that happened, and you know, the British Government was on the phone saying, “What does this mean? We heard Brits aren’t going to be included?” And so, all those kinds of – you know, that kind of confusion, I think we will not see in this administration, because they will follow the process.

And I was on a Zoom call with Jake Sullivan, just two days before inauguration, so actually exactly a month ago on January 18th, and he said one of his goals as National Security Advisor is to break down the silos. And he said on issues like the pandemic, on China, on dealing with technology and emerging threats, you have to break down the silos and have proper cross-agency, cross-department reviews. So, we’re going to see processes back, and again, personnel and people who really know the President well, but who also are deeply steeped in the policy and have experience.

The second thing I want to quickly touch on is the integration of foreign and domestic policy, and this has been very clear, it was very clear through the campaign and has been very clear, in the last month, since President Biden took office. Having Susan Rice, whose entire background is in foreign policy, running the Domestic Policy Council out of the White House, is significant. It shows that they’re going to integrate domestic and international policy. Tony Blinken gave an interview on NPR two days ago, and he said, “The State Department’s mission is to advance the security, prosperity, and values of the American people.” And on that call with Jake Sullivan on the 18th, he said, “For Joe Biden, foreign policy equals domestic policy.” And he said, “We have to broaden the definition of national security and measure its success by its impact on the American people.” And he said, “What Joe Biden and his team want to do is create a human and humane vision of national security. And in recognition that the United States has to build back at home first, and this means coming back from the pandemic, rebuilding our economy, restoring trust in our democracy, rebuilding our infrastructure before we can really sort of carry our weight around the world.”

And then finally, I just want to take a quick look at what the administration has focused on in the last four weeks. And you know, Lord Adonis, you made the point that a lot of – sort of, the structures have remained, despite maybe Donald Trump’s best efforts to destroy them, but you know, the US is really back in the game, and we have re-joined the Paris Climate Agreement, re-joined the World Health Organization, and re-joined the UN Human Rights Council, ended the Muslim ban, we’re paying our UN dues, and we’re engaging with partners and allies. And Tony Blinken, I talked to him, he was in town for a Biden campaign event, you know, a year-and-a-half ago or so, and he said, you know, “Joe Biden recognises,” and Tony Blinken’s background attests to this, “that you can’t address the threats that we’re facing in the world right now, things like China, how to deal with China, climate change, Middle East and Iran, you can’t do it alone. America first basically meant the last four years America alone and this team understands that to be effective and to address these challenges, you have to work with your allies and your partners.” And that’s what they’re doing. Doesn’t mean that there are going to be easy solutions to any of these problems. The challenges of the world remain the same. But we’ll be working with our allies to try to come up with a co-ordinated approach.

I think that the biggest challenge for this administration is and will be China. They’ve addressed some issues in the Gulf and dealing with Saudi Arabia and Yemen very quickly, but China is sort of the looming over the next four years, biggest challenge, from the standpoint of technology, from the standpoint of trade, human rights. Lord Adonis, you mentioned human rights, this team will certainly be much more focused on human rights than the Trump administration was. China’s military expansion in the region, and how do you address all those things in a sort of holistic, not just all of US Government, but working with partners and allies around the world? And I think, you know, four years from now, we’ll look back at the first four years, Biden Presidency, I think and realise that the relationship with China was really the defining international relationship that the US had to deal with in these four years. And I’ll pause there, thanks.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Thank you. That’s really helpful and useful, and I’m going to come back to you, not until we’ve heard from Heather though, but my – you know, one of my reactions to this, what we’re continuing to hear, and I think you made the point really well by pointing to the appointment of Susan Rice, that link, you know, between domestic and foreign policy. But surely there are going to be times when pursuing a foreign policy for the middleclass is going to make it harder to achieve that other goal, which is doing things together, getting America’s friends, partners and allies onboard. And I think, you know, one of – one signal that we’ve seen already where this might run into tension is the Buy America policy that was announced. You know, even the Canadians sort of went ‘whoa’, you know. First keystone decision, and then Buy America, and this isn’t looking like a foreign policy that’s about, you know, America’s friends and partners. So, you know, the idea that all the things go together, I think, is still one that this administration, as happy as so many of us are to see it, you know, there will be trade-offs, presumably, and I think Heather must be the best-placed person in Washington to tell us about what those trade-offs are likely to be.

Heather Hurlburt

Indeed. Thank you so much, Leslie, and thank you, Chatham House, it’s a real pleasure to be here along with Lew and Lord Adonis. And if you look out my window you can see a bit of an ice storm behind me, so I am bringing you the full American experience. And I think we will get to – you have indeed left me with the nub of the problem, but we’ll go back and start – as you said, I went to high school in Delaware, early in Biden’s career as Senator. Actually, could point out to you landmarks, such as the corner where his first wife and child were killed in an auto accident. Delaware is a small state, so everyone has a Joe Biden story, which tells you a lot about the smallness of the area, but it also tells you something about who Biden is. And unlike Trump, obviously, but also unlike Obama, Biden is someone who, first of all, is very much and very proudly the product of the American lower middleclass. He’s our first President in quite a while who didn’t go to an Ivy League or other super-elite university, and he wears this with a certain amount of pride and very proudly represents and feels that he speaks for that group of Americans.

It’s also interesting, Leslie, I thought your comment about how the world views sort of the inevitability of American decline at this moment, and I think if that were put to Biden, he would remind you that, as Andrew says, he was a young man interested in government, but not particularly interested in the minutiae of local politics during the Vietnam War. And indeed, when he runs for Senate as a 29-year-old, he tells people that he wants to go to Washington to end the Vietnam War and get involved in foreign policy, and nobody in their right mind would have said, “Oh, this is moment in which I want to make my career in American foreign policy.” That was a moment, in its own way, at least as dark for American aspirations as this one. So, I think that’s just an important, sort of, internal piece of who Biden is.

I also can’t resist to share another Biden story, which is that he is supposed to have had a meeting with Putin in Moscow while he was Vice President, and Putin took him to show him around his very lavish personal office, to which Biden first said, “Yeah, capitalism’s great, isn’t it?” And then he is supposed to have leaned in close and said to Putin, “You know, George W Bush looked into your eyes and saw your soul. I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul.”

Now, one might wonder, after hearing multiple of these stories, whether perhaps there was some embellishing for effect going on, but I think that again, conveys something about who Biden is and how he works, to a larger point, which is that certainly, unlike Obama and unlike Trump to some degree, Biden is all about relationship. And so, we are perhaps unused to that, after the last four or even the last 12 years in American foreign policy, but for both allies and non-allies seeking to deal with Biden, we are back to a mode of foreign policy, which perhaps many of us studied more about it, find more understandable, where relationship and investment in relationship actually matters. So I think that is worth saying to contextualise Biden.

Something else about the moment and how it looks from Washington, which is indeed through the campaign, Biden and his team presented himself as an FDR, a Franklin Roosevelt-like figure, and that was mostly aimed at domestic issues and a domestic audience, but there were certainly echoes of it in how Biden likes to talk about the world, likes to talk about the allies. But in the wake of the January 6th attempted insurrection here at the Capitol, it’s very interesting to see that Biden’s inaugural address actually didn’t reference FDR at all, but instead, leaned heavily on Abraham Lincoln. So, I think it’s worth again, for a man who’s as conscious of history as Biden is, it’s worth thinking a bit of, if he sees himself as much as a Lincoln-like figure as an FDR-like figure. So I throw that out there as a metaphor as well.

Now, also during the campaign, Biden said two things on the campaign trail over and over and over to the point that those of us who were helping out made a bit of a joke out of it. One being, as has already been said, the primacy of domestic policy, the primacy of rebuilding the economy, certainly the need to put trade deals on hold until sufficient prog – until significant investments had been made in the Build Back Better agenda. At the same time, Biden never ceased to say that rebuilding relationships with allies, restoring America’s role and respect in the world, was of fundamental importance to him. And many people have raised, as you just did, Leslie, how do you do both?

And for Biden and the team around him, what I want to suggest is that there is – well, there’s more visible change on the domestic side, where you do have more new personnel and more explicitly saying, “We will take approaches that are different to the approaches taken in the Obama administration, whether that’s in the size of stimulus for a struggling economy, whether it’s in how we approach college, whether it’s in how we approach immigration.” And on the foreign policy side, there’s much more continuity, as has been noted, both in personnel and in policy. But in the end, the place where profound change is going to seep in on foreign affairs is the idea that it’s – the foreign affairs comes through the domestic policy, that as you said, there’s no distinction.

And I want to look at that on three points. And first is Biden’s democracy agenda, and as has been mentioned, Biden is very much sincere in his belief in human rights, but also more broadly in the idea that American power exists to do good in the world, which is perhaps an idea that might be rather tattered and discredited at this point, but it is core to who Biden is as a person. So Biden both sees the need for a US to champion democracy globally and obviously, the rather extreme challenge that exists to American democracy. So, there is an attempt, through a variety of ways, addressing a variety of issues from economic inequality, to racial justice, to structural reforms, to think about how what we do at home can parallel or change or take advantage of the ways that we’ve traditionally, for the last generation, done democracy promotion abroad. And this is where Susan Rice’s role is very, very interesting, because Susan brings both, you know, encyclopaedic knowledge of what has and hasn’t worked in America’s traditional democracy promotion agenda, but she also brings, from her own life experience and from her work throughout her career when she wasn’t in government, a real understanding of what it is to be on the wrong side or the disenfranchised side of democracy in America. And I think the early work that she’s doing on racial justice and the way that the democracy work will be run out of the White House, in a combined effort between Susan’s shop and Jake Sullivan’s shop is going to be very interesting and presage really significant change. And frankly, in my view, is the only way that the US – that we rebuild our credibility as a world leader in democracy, right? By being – there’s been a lot of tossing around of the word ‘humble’ in US circles recently, and if what we’ve been through, for the past four years, is to do any good to anyone, it’s via our being humble about it. So that’s my point one.

Point two, which is related, is, as I mentioned, we had this insurrection on January 6th, and so we have a very severe domestic extremism problem. And this is of course one of the reasons that, as was mentioned, the rest of the world looks at the US and says, “Well, Biden looks nice, but does this have any staying power?” But we are aware that although it took very particular characteristics in the US, we’re not the only democracy, we’re not the only industrialised society that’s facing these extremist pressures. And so there also, you’re going to see really interesting partnerships and looking to allies and looking to others to say, “How do we deal with dis and misinformation? How do we deal both with society seeking to use our polarisation against us, but also with knowledge that if we don’t struggle with the sources of the polarisation, it doesn’t really matter how much we sanction Moscow for its election interference, for example. So that’s going to be a second area where domestic and foreign policy are going to mix in confusing and interesting ways that force particularly those of us who’ve worked in the counterterrorism space, over the last couple of decades, to really define what that work is and what it looks like.

And third, of course, is the economic agenda. And here, this is the one, as you referenced, that’s going to be the most challenging for allies, but it’s actually the one where we have the best foundation to think about how to manage it, because for all of us who come out of the security space, we’re very used to one particular sort of relationship. But if you spend any time with trade negotiators, none of this is news to them, actually, and the idea that our – as allies, our most difficult relationships, in the economic sphere, is not new at all. So, in many ways, the challenge there is going to be whether we can build fast enough the kind of openness and trust to have really challenging conversations about topics like Buy American, about choices like the one the EU made to sign the investment deal with China versus the Trump administration’s deal with China, versus how do we go forward on that, versus how do we deal with labour law in both the US, the EU and the UK, how do we deal with expectations of different sectors?

And in some ways, the parallel that I like to draw for the challenge that the Biden administration is throwing down, frankly, to our allies, is the Biden administration is saying a little bit, much as European Union countries have got used to talking about some things that we used to think of as internal among themselves, if we want to build a strong marketplace of democracies, we are going to have to get used to having some of those conversations, whether it’s on terrorists, whether it’s on digital taxes, whether it’s on some of the internet privacy standards that have been so difficult for Americans. But of course, that’s a huge challenge, both because the substance of it is a huge challenge and because it’s far from clear that all of our allies are united in wanting to build something that looks like a marketplace of democracies.

But if you look at, and I’ll just conclude with this, and it’s been mentioned a couple times, but for the audience, Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, has written several pieces and a lengthy report out of the Carnegie Endowment, looking at how Americans understand the link between their economic situation and US foreign affairs. And there really lies the key to how the Biden administration sees this issue, which is that ultimately, there’s the foreign affairs of events, as Lord Adonis said, the things that happen while you’re making other plans, but also, the challenge that Americans have got to see, reverse the damage that Trump benefitted from and kind of surfed a wave that was already there, the perception that US foreign affairs had got totally unmoored from their wellbeing. And that’s really the core of the challenge before the Biden folks, and it’s an enormous challenge for the alliance as well. And perhaps I’ll just stop there.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Thank you. You’ve, all three, put quite a lot on the table, and it’s reflected in the number of questions that we have. We only have 15 minutes, so I will ask my question, but I’m not going to come back to you until I’ve taken another one that’s sort of related to it. And I guess in – you know, my first question is really for Lord Adonis, but we’re going to bring two to you and see if others on the panel have a reflection as well. And that is, you know, there was a funny window, you were sitting in London and having the kind of UK perspective on the US, there was a funny window when everybody was saying that in fact this government was worried that Biden would be elected. And you know, you’ve indicated a slightly different story about that, but I’m curious whether you think that moment has totally gone, right? That there was a feeling that the former – that the current UK Government might have been more comfortable with the Trump administration.

But let me, before you say anything about that, come to Douglas Andrews and Douglas, would you like to ask your question?

Douglas Andrews

Yes.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Great, we can hear you.

Douglas Andrews

That will be fine, thank you. I think the question you were referring to is the one that I sent into Lord Adonis?

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Yes.

Douglas Andrews

Yes, Robert [inaudible – 44:16] recently editorialised that Britain should play a significant role in facilitating Biden’s foreign policy. My question is, is this realistic, in the light of the UK’s current status both as an outlier from the EU and in light of what Leslie just mentioned about the previous alignment between Johnson and Trump?

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

And I think you might – I think all the panellists might have a view on this, and actually kind of a very different perspective about, you know, the UK’s ability to work with and to help and Biden’s agenda. But we’ll start with you, Lord Adonis.

Lord Andrew Adonis

I don’t – I, frankly, don’t know whether Boris Johnson would have preferred Trump to be re-elected. It’s certainly true that in terms of the narrative of Brexit and the outsider populist and all of that, which Boris Johnson has been doing for the last few years, that of course chimed more with Trump. On the other hand, all of the people around him, who’ve got their heads screwed on, knew that another four years of the deeply unstable and increasingly erratic and irrational Trump, would have put huge strains on the Western Alliance and NATO, so I suspect actually, he was conflicted.

In terms of the relationship, I think it’s very significant that the first call that President Biden made to a European leader was to Prime Minister Johnson, and when you read the readout, and on Lew and Heather’s point about there being an orderly conduct of affairs now, there are actually, amazingly, proper readouts with written accounts of what was said, which aren’t embarrassing and which you don’t read on Twitter and so on. And the readout, which was remarkably straightforward, was largely focused on international security, defence and the defence of values. And the only conflict between them was Boris Johnson announcing that President Biden had said that he wanted to progress a US-UK trade deal, and there being no mention whatever of this from the White House. And I think you can guess which of those narratives was authentic.

But the fact that Biden made the first call is very – is not difficult to fathom. NATO is still a key alliance; Britain is still an absolutely critical player in that. Indeed, actually Johnson’s made a bigger commitment to NATO. He’s switched spending from international development, a big switch, four billion, from international development to NATO hardware. And given that many of our European colleagues aren’t spending more or appreciably more on defence, this really matters. So the fundamental alliance between United States and the United Kingdom, I don’t think has changed. And though clearly Biden isn’t going to be supportive of a wild Brexit policy, particularly if it has any impact on Ireland, and of course he describes himself as Irish, then that would lead to tension. But equally, I don’t see Boris Johnson going down that road either. So, NATO looks to me to be fundamentally in good shape. The stresses on it, of course, are going to be great because of Russia, and I think Anglo-American partnership is going to be important.

But of course, the point that’s been raised was raised both by Lew and by Heather and in the questions, which is the increasing salience of China. Well, Britain is of limited use in helping the United States in China. It’s Asian, far-eastern allies are far more significant in that respect, Japan, Australia, and so on, and if it is the case that American foreign policy in the next four, eight years of the Biden administration is first, second and third about China, which is distinctly possible, then though Britain will be a valued partner in keeping things stable in Europe, it’s not going to be relevant in respect of China.

And I was very struck by the article, which I was told to read by a European Ambassador in London, in Politico, it’s called, which is a kind of equivalent of Kennan’s Long Telegram in the – to counter China’s rise, the US should focus on Xi, which I’m told was written by Matt Pottinger, the former Deputy National Security Advisor. The really interesting, I thought, bit about that, wasn’t so much what he said about China, which was fairly stock and straightforward, it was that he focused so personally on Xi as being the disruptive factor, which relates to Heather’s point about Biden being all about relationships and this being a very difficult relationship that’s going to develop. But also, there was a tantalising reference in that very long article to how the United States should downplay things with Russia, in order not to have both China and Russia on the other side. Because China, geopolitically, is going to be a far more serious threat over the period ahead, it should prioritise tackling and containing, essentially, containing China, rather than a very weak, if vocal Russia.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Before I come to Lew and Heather, let me also bring one more question in, and I wanted to come to Trisha’s question, because I think it’s so relevant to all the panellists. Trisha, are you…?

Trisha de Borchgrave

Yeah, can you hear me?

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Yes, we can hear you.

Trisha de Borchgrave

Hello, hello, thank you very much for this, really, really interesting, I love everybody’s comments. My worry is exactly what Lord Adonis just said, which is, in the next four to eight years, well, we’re already fretting and fearing that all the good stuff that’s happening to repair damage might go down the tubes in the next two years, maybe with the midterms, or four years, obviously with the next election. And so my question was really about this Buy America. Biden has a really, really good connection to the working class of America, we know that. He connects extremely successfully, but that was sort of swept aside, as we know, by Trump and also, arguably, from what, 30 years of shock jock radio. But my question really was how is Biden going to successfully be able to start to convince that large Trump following to switch sides? Because we do have this really rabid Republican contingency now, that is seeking to hold those 70 plus million, and they’re being quite clever about it. You have the ones that are a little bit more excessive, but you have the Nikki Haleys coming through, there’s a lot of posturing and manipulating, and it is a cohort of electorates that – of an electorate, that is willing to be manipulated, it’s ready for that. So what do you think are the most important issues that will be palpably there for people to start saying, “Okay, you know, life is not too bad and it’s really worth maybe sticking with the guy,” or maybe at that point with the Vice President, who knows? Thank you, I’d appreciate your comments. Thanks so much.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Lots and lots in that question. Let me come to you first, Lew, and you might also comment on this question about the role of the UK and working with the Biden administration on its agenda, especially since it’s out of the EU. You have your own particular perspective, as an American Diplomat of many years, now in a new role, but based here in London, and then I’ll come to you.

Ambassador Lewis Lukens

Yeah, so I think there’s actually this amazing sort of synchronicity right now with a new administration in the US and the UK trying to find its place as, you know, Global Britain, as it leaves – as it’s left the EU and is trying to sort of reposition itself. And I think there are a lot of ways that the UK can be helpful to the United States, and I think Lord Adonis downplays a little bit too much the UK’s possible role in helping on issues like China. I think actually, you know, being a member of the UN Security Council, hosting the G7 this year, there are a lot of opportunities for the UK to play a very robust role in being supportive of US foreign policy, in helping Joe Biden and his team address some of these challenges. And certainly, as the readout on both sides of the phone call made clear, both leaders are very focused on climate change and you know, after four years of a US President who denied that climate change was an issue, I think it would be very refreshing for the British Government to have a partner in Washington who is aligned on that issue and others. So I think there’s a real opportunity now for the UK to sort of seize the moment and position itself as a strategic partner of the United States, moving ahead as it creates its own role post-Brexit.

And then, just quickly on Trisha’s excellent question. I think Joe Biden’s strategy is he wants to pass this $1.9 trillion Stimulus Bill, get the money flowing, stimulate the economy. The US economy I think will rebound this year, as vaccines are more widespread, and people start to open up and shop again and travel. But his real priority is – I mean, he’s going to try to raise some taxes in the summer, corporate taxes and personal taxes for the highest earners, but his next legislative ambition is a huge infrastructure package, $2-3 trillion, which is aimed at creating millions and millions of well-paying middleclass jobs, union jobs. And I think Joe Biden’s, you know aspiration heading into the mid-terms next year and then certainly into the election in 2024, whether he runs again or not, or Kamala Harris is running for President, will be to be able to say, “We rebuilt the American economy. We got America back on its feet. We created this many jobs.” And these will be sort of middleclass jobs, working on infrastructure, that will appeal to many, not all, but many of the sort of blue-collar workers who used to be Democrats and then were, you know, appealed, you know, were attracted to Trump, and I think, you know, many of them came back to Biden, in the last election, and I think his hope is that more will, after he passes these legislative packages.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Heather, there’s a lot on the table for you to respond to, so I’ll let you pick and choose.

Heather Hurlburt

Wonderful, so to very much associate myself with what Lew said about climate change in particular as something where Washington is very much looking to London for partnership and support early on. To go back a bit to the Russia/China question, I think it’s worth underlining that Matt Pottinger, who is reputed to have written that long article, is someone who spent all four years in the Trump NSC, is associated with a particular sort of realist American school of foreign policy thought, which I do not believe Joe Biden shares, and there may be one or two officials in his cabinet who share it, but not very many, and so I would not expect to see, in the near-term, any of this kind of let’s ease up pressure on Russia to put more pressure on China, although it is going to be – that’s going to be a hot debate in American foreign policy for the decades to come.

I think – and to Trisha’s excellent point, I think it’s worth keeping in mind that the sort of the source – both the source of strength for Trumpism and the people that Biden most successfully got to defect, are themselves middleclass folks, but who identify both economically and culturally with the declining fortunes of the white working class, without actually themselves being white working class. So, one of the things that all the initiatives that Lew laid out seek to do is really change the US economy in some ways. And again, this is – it’s not unique to the US, this problem of jobs and opportunity and vibrancy migrating into a few big urban centres at the expense of other large portions of the country. So this idea of redistributing where the jobs are, where the opportunity is, sort of moving away from the vision of everybody mobile to the idea of, well, if you want to be able to live in West Virginia or Southern Delaware and have a fruitful life, we want to make it possible for you to do that.

So that is in Biden’s thinking the key, although I also think, just to add one other quick point, unfortunately, there is no longer an illusion that there’s kind of an easy way to make massive numbers of people leave what I’ll call the Trump movement. So, you’re going to unfortunately continue to see these very hard-fought inch-by-inch, just a couple of thousand voters here and there, scenarios for the foreseeable future, which is, I respect, going to be at least as nail-biting for our friends and allies as it is for us.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

That’s great, thank you. Let me just take a couple more questions. Unfortunately, we’re just about out of time, but let me come to you, Susan Schoenfeld Harrington, to ask your question.

Susan Shoenfeld Harrington

So, my question follows up on what we were talking about, or what you all were talking about, with respect to China and whether we want to look at foreign policy going forward, in terms of the agreements that have been made over the last four years between the EU and China, and whether Biden’s foreign policy, i.e., working together globally to try and contain the Chinese, is now somewhat hamstrung because of all these agreements and the increasingly close relationships that are being garnered because of the vacuum of foreign policy that the Chinese had stepped into. And that actually is particularly obvious with the WHO, for example, and supposedly their continuing closeness to China because Trump had walked away from that, with respect to the pandemic. So there are a lot of questions there, but I just wondered what you all think about that.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Kamil Sallé, because it’s a really – we don’t talk enough about Africa in US foreign policy and you’ve raised a really important question. Are you there, Sallé?

Kamil Sallé

Yes, thank you to the distinguished panel. My question is with regards to Africa. What will – how highly will it feature in Joe Biden’s foreign policy agenda in light of, you know, the Trump administration’s lack of soft power engagement, as well as the delegation of foreign policy issues to his allies? Thank you.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

So, let me go in reverse order, and this is your opportunity to choose the question that you’d like to answer and any final comment you’d like to make. Unfortunately, there are so many questions, there’s so much to say, this has been a tremendously rich discussion, but we only have an hour, so, Heather, let me start with you.

Heather Hurlburt

So, Sallé, there’s tremendous enthusiasm for the return of American soft power toward Africa. I think there’s also the challenge of how you balance thinking about Africa as a partner or African nations as partners, versus how you think about seeing them in the context of a competition with China. So I think that will be the challenge on that.

And to Susan’s very excellent question, because of the divergence of views among European partners on what the economic relationship with China should look like vis-à-vis what the relationship with the US should look like, that both means that there’s lots of space for opportunity and growth, you know, when you look out from Washington, you don’t see a unified position either on the economic side or on the political side. So that both presents opportunities, but also, of course, presents limitations because there’s less you can do, if you’re having to make coalitions of the willing all the time, as opposed to if you can work together as a bloc. But I think, from looking out from Washington, the view is there’s lots of opportunity to do things with allies toward China, and s real question as you – for all the reasons you’ve mentioned about how much allies are willing to do.

So maybe that would be my final point, which is that though Washington faces the world with all the weaknesses and doubts and questions about our abilities that questioners have so rightly identified, there is also in Washington this real question of the Biden administration is enormously committed to working with allies, but what is that actually going to mean from the allies’ side?

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Thank you, Heather. Lew?

Ambassador Lewis Lukens

So, on Africa, I mean, I say this having served as an Ambassador in our largest Embassy in francophone Africa, I don’t think it’s going to be terribly important to the Biden administration. Certainly, they will pay more attention to it than the Trump administration did, but you know, since – my father started his career in 1960 in central Africa, in the intervening years, it has never been particularly important. It is – it will be important, as Heather said, in the context of sort of global power with China and, you know, China’s very, very active in Africa, and the US will be interested in that. And also, in the sense of counterterrorism operations in the Sahel, but beyond that, I don’t expect it to rise to a very high level of importance.

On the allies’ question, I mean, again, I think there’s a bit of a tendency now to sort of see this as an all-or-nothing game, and I think what people need to recognise is there will always be disagreements with our closest allies and there always have been. That doesn’t mean that the alliances are broken. The whole point of a Biden administration’s approach is that we can talk to our allies, work co-operatively, maybe not agree on every issue, and agree to disagree on other issues, but you know, better to sort of agree and work together on 80% of the issues and disagree on 20, than to not even try in the first place, which I think is the sense of what was happening over the last four years.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Thank you, and Lord Adonis? I don’t think we can hear you. There we go.

Lord Andrew Adonis

If I can just pick up Susan’s point about China, which is clearly the big – this looks to me to be the really big issue of the coming years, ‘cause this is what could become a kind of rogue superpower issue. I mean, Xi is clearly, as a leader, in approaching the totalitarian stakes, unlike his predecessors, leaders of China. I’m a great believer in the fact that individual leaders matter a lot. Xi Jinping is not Deng. He is a fundamentally different character, with fundamentally different and much more internationally aggressive ambitions. So I think the issue on there, the critical issue, is what is Xi himself going to do? That’s the big issue. If it’s an extension of what’s happened over the last five years, then we are clearly in for a rough time, because he will be expansionist abroad and he will threaten fundamental Western interests, both values and also straightforward territory. He might try to play fast and loose with Taiwan. That’s perfectly possible.

Most of us – you know, I know people in Hong Kong very well. Susan herself, I know, is a great expert in Hong Kong. Didn’t believe it was remotely possible China would be as aggressive in Hong Kong as it’s being now. Not remotely, we thought the Two Systems, One Country would continue. It’s not. It’s One System, One Country, and that country is getting larger. So I think a great deal of what matters in respect of China depends upon what Xi does, just as in the 1930s the democracies had to respond to what Hitler in particular did, and my hero, Ernie Bevin, after 1945 had to respond to what Stalin did. So I think that’s the big thing. And on this point about events, it’s the events which are caused by what is now the world’s second greatest power after the United States, China, but in some respects co-equal power, that’s going to be vital.

So far as Britain’s concerned, I don’t think that we’ll be a big player. I think we can be rhetorically important, if there’s a flareup in Europe, obviously we’re important, and I think we can help host things like the G7 and things of this kind. But we’re not going to be a major player in respect of China and the big Asian battles ahead and I think it’d be a big error, on the part of British policymakers, to think that we’re going to be. And it’s a particular error to think that coming out of Brexit, which is going to weaken Britain economically and quite possibly diplomatically as well, that we can compensate by being a bigger player internationally. And though I think Dominic Raab and Boris Johnson might have aspirations to do that, I suspect that’ll be another case of the Emperor’s new clothes.

But it is certainly true that all policymakers in Britain now are under pressure on China because of the human rights issue. In the House of Lords, the first business that we’re going to consider, when Parliament resumes next week, is an attempt to force on the government, indeed, ironically on Dominic Raab, who has very anti-China rhetoric, fundamental amendments to the Trade Bill, that would require the government to reach a judgement on whether the Chinese are engaging in genocide against the Uighurs. And if so, not to engage in any further trade agreements with China, and to start revoking existing ones. Now, I don’t actually think that President Biden wants to go as far as that at the moment. So, I think that this human rights issue, which we started with and it may be as well we end on, is going to be important, but partly because it’s objectively important, if there is a genocide taking place in – against the Uighurs in the Western part of China, if democracy is being abolished in Hong Kong and if there’s a real threat to Taiwan. So, it’s important in the real world, but it’s also clearly in values terms, important to the Biden administration and to European powers.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Thank you so much. It’s interesting, it’s always – perhaps it’s because people are polite that the – that those in the UK are tougher on the UK than those who are in the UK and Washington but affiliated primarily with the US. But it is heartening, I think, at least to hear Heather and Lew talk about the importance of the UK to the US, certainly on the climate agenda, but also even, as Lew said, on China. Tempered, of course, by what you’ve had to say to us, Lord Adonis. It’s interesting also that the conversation about human rights – Heather, you slipped a really, you know, nice little few words in there, when you said, “These are not realist thinkers in the Biden administration.” That – we could unpack that for quite a long time. But there’s a lot on this panel from the domestic context, the Buy America debate, the Trump supporters and where they go. The use of the term ‘middleclass’ versus ‘working’, ‘lower middleclass’ versus ‘working class’. I think that’s the same thing, just for our audience, but it’s always a little bit of an interesting one in US-UK conversations.

I hope that we’ll come back to this, ‘cause a real – this was a very, very rich discussion and clearly by those of you who really are not only expert in various parts of the policy, on foreign policy, but also have watched Joe Biden from Delaware, from Washington, Africa and across the globe. So thanks to all of our viewers, our members, I should say, and we were on the record. I didn’t say that, but I’m sure that Ludivine did, and we will be seeing you again very, very soon for many more of these conversations. Heather, thank you for coming from Washington, Lew and Lord Adonis, thank you all so much. Bye.