Podcast: How a “President Biden” Could Reshape US Foreign Policy: Views From Anne-Marie Slaughter

TRANSCRIPT: How a “President Biden” Could Reshape US Foreign Policy: Views From Anne-Marie Slaughter

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

Well, the top priority will be to announce to the world that the United States they've known for decades is back, back in a different way, but still very much a member of the global community and a leader in the global community.

Ian Bremmer :

Hello and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast where you'll find extended versions of my interviews on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer. In case there's any chance you didn't realize, the US presidential election is fast approaching only for two years now. The countless robocalls, emails, tweets, and TV ads are there to remind you. And today we're talking about what the election means to the rest of the world and how US foreign policy could change if Joe Biden wins. I'll break it down with Anne-Marie Slaughter, who was a top level state Department official under President Obama and now runs the think tank New America. Let's get to it.

Announcer:

This GZERO World Podcast is brought to you by Walmart. Around the world, Walmart aspires to use its strengths to transform the systems on which we all rely, setting ambitious sustainability goals, supporting the communities we serve, and creating development and advancement opportunities for our 2.2 million associates. Learn more at corporate.walmart.com/globalresponsibility.

Ian Bremmer :

Anne-Marie Slaughter, a senior official in the State Department in the Obama administration and CEO, now, of the think tank New America. Welcome to GZERO World.

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

My pleasure. I'm glad to be here.

Ian Bremmer :

So much to talk about, but start big picture with me. If we have a Biden administration, what do you think the priorities are in foreign policy and how the United States engages with the rest of the world?

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

Well, the top priority will be to announce to the world that the United States they've known for decades is back, back in a different way, but still very much on the front lines of alliances, of multilateral institutions, of global problem solving, of being a member of the global community and a leader in the global community.

Beyond that, I think they will be focusing tremendously on domestic renewal. They would never call it America First, and they don't think that way. But they do think that America can't play the role it needs to play in the world unless it fixes a whole lot of things at home. They'll be updating deterrence, taking it from missiles to sort of modern warfare, but making very sure that we can deter the Chinese, the Russians, anyone who's thinking about harming us. And then I think they'll be putting a renewed emphasis on democracy, on what Biden calls the free world. But he says the free world is not just a 20th century relic. It's our future.

Ian Bremmer :

Now that certainly sounds very, very different and we can get into all those pieces, but I want to start with the idea that the America's back because, of course, Vice President Biden, eight years with the Obama administration, President Obama. I mean there were a lot of people around the world, a lot of leaders around the world that were concerned that the United States wasn't back at that point, that the US was less interested in playing the kind of leadership role that it had historically were it was less committed perhaps to some of the alliances even though it was still multilateral in orientation. How do you respond to them?

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

I think that they are right in the sense that people will look back and see the first part of the 21st century as a period of relative US retrenchment, at least certainly compared to the 1990s. Although, the 1990s are very forward-looking. It's the unipolar moment, intervention, responsibility to protect. People will see that the United States, in large part responding to domestic pressure, started to pull back from anything that looks like a global policeman role. And that certainly begins with Obama, who is deeply multilateral and very much committed to our alliances, but he is not interested in sending US troops around the world. He did, but in very, very careful ways in Afghanistan and then the Middle East. But in general, if you look at what he did on Syria, refusing to engage, if you look at his general posture with respect to the Middle East, it is a quieter, more domestically focused United States. Although, unlike Trump, it is one that wants to be very much there with the G20, with our allies, particularly when it comes to global problems like pandemics or climate change or migration.

Ian Bremmer :

Now you said it won't sound like America First. He's certainly not going to use that term. No question. And yet taking office in the middle of an enormous crisis, a pandemic, one whose pain is being felt primarily on the backs of the poorest in the United States ... you mentioned when I asked you about foreign policy that domestic renewal is a top priority. How do you not fall to claims of more isolationism, greater American retrenchment, away from international obligations, especially when you're taking office in the middle of such incredible domestic pain?

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

Well, I think you do it in two ways. One, you make domestic renewal part of our ability to compete abroad. And already, if you read Jake Sullivan, Jennifer Harris, other people who are around Biden, they've said that our competition with China will depend in many ways on how well we steward the domestic economy. And they argue for massive investment in infrastructure, in technology, in innovation, in education. I would include equity in that and that that's really part of our ability to compete. So you just fuse the two arguments. But the second is, I think, to redefine isolationism versus international engagement and to say, "Look, we absolutely want to be engaged in the world. We think the United States has a critical role to play." I'm not sure they'll go as far as indispensable, but a critical role to play, particularly with other liberal democracies, but that it is not our burden alone. So in that sense, they will be somewhat orthogonal to the Trump America First. They will say, "We need to be working with all of our allies. We, the United States, can't hold the bag for global problem solving."

Ian Bremmer :

Well, you mentioned the need to focus on domestic capacity to be able to compete more effectively. And when you think about competition, of course, the first thing you think about is China. And at least at first blush, what the Biden foreign policy team has to say and what Trump has been doing seemed to be reasonably well aligned when it comes to the United States and China. So talk me through a little bit of where we see that connection and where we'll see differences.

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

So that is the area, I think that of greatest convergence between the Trump posture and the Biden position, really Democrats and Republicans, more broadly. And it's the greatest shift from the Obama administration. And you saw it already with Hillary Clinton in 2016. You're seeing it much more now, and it is essentially the view that the decades-long consensus of let's help China grow and develop, let's welcome China into the post-war liberal order and China itself will adapt and loosen up and become more democratic if not a liberal democracy, that that has not worked that China has its own ideas. It is a great power. It's a returning power. It indeed will try to shape the liberal order and the regional order in Asia to suit its own interests, just as the United States and Britain and other liberal democracies used the post-war order. And so that instead of simply embracing China, we have to draw really clear lines about where China can legitimately pursue its interests and where we and we, the United States, but also our allies, are going to push back.

That means militarily in the South China Sea and the East China Sea making very clear that we are not going to simply sit by as China expands its territorial waters. It means in areas like trade, like intellectual property, certainly in terms of technological competition in various ways. I hope that the Biden administration will be more nuanced. I think they will understand that there are ways to cooperate with China on issues like global health or climate change or even some norms regulating the internet. But overall, they will be tougher than Democrats have been in the past.

Ian Bremmer :

I certainly don't expect that President Biden would be calling the coronavirus the China flu, but we do know that the Chinese have not in any way been transparent with the US or the international community around the pandemic. President Trump has not joined the Covax initiative on global vaccine production and distribution. He has said that the US will be leaving the World Health Organization because of China's influence over it. Is that an area where you think that Biden would be a radical departure or would do you think they'll be close?

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

No, that will be a radical departure. We will rejoin the WHO. We will certainly join the Covax initiative. We will once again be actively participating in global efforts because I think Biden certainly understands that to be absent from the field is really to leave the field to China and other nations who have very different views than ours.

I expect also that a President Biden will work much harder to make common cause with other liberal democracies. One of his advisors has talked about a cooperative network of democracies, a league of democracies. He said that he'll call a summit of democracies, and in that won't just be to sit around and praise democracy. It will be to try to push hard on issues like climate or pandemics. I also think that Biden's going to be careful about blaming the Chinese too much for the pandemic. The United States looks really bad when it comes to hiding information from our own people, much less looking at the rest of the world.

We're not going to be in a position to lecture other countries. Certainly we can continue to insist that China was responsible initially, but China's also played an important role in fighting the pandemic both at home within China and elsewhere in the world.

Ian Bremmer :

Can the creation of an institution to align democracies be effective at a time when US democracy promotion around the world has in so many ways been seen to fail and that democracy promotion at home seems to be, in many ways, so much more challenged than it is among other advanced industrial democracies are allies around the world?

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

Well, I have to say I'm much more skeptical than I was a decade ago. Back in 2006, John Eichenberg and I called for a community of democracies where-

Ian Bremmer :

I remember that.

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

... we very much wanted what is being proposed. I think there's no harm in calling together other liberal democracies, but I would very much caution against drawing the line in the world between democracy and autocracy for all the reasons you just said. In the first place, we're not on very strong ground at home. We have a lot of work to do to strengthen our own democracy, including really overhauling our electoral systems in many ways. But, also, there are many countries in the world that have democratic characteristics and autocratic characteristics who are not going to want to choose between us and China or whatever other autocracy is in their neighborhood.

I think a better divide is between the open world and the closed world where you stop focusing on whether people have voted for their government and you really focus on things like the degree of press freedom, the degree of freedom from internet surveillance, or technological surveillance, which is going to be a very important dividing line between more open economies and more state directed economies. Those seem to me much more suited to the 21st century world and don't lock us into a set of categories that we may not necessarily live up to on our own, but that also, I think, are going to seem quite outdated to many young people and to many countries today.

Ian Bremmer :

And so, Anne-Marie, just to be clear, you're saying the US would be on the open side of that, right?

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

Yes, yes. I think we can have a vision of an open and secure internet. We can have a vision of technology even more broadly when you think about cybersecurity disinformation, where we insist on the free and open flow of information, but safeguarded by human rights protections, as we have with other forms of technology in the past, I think we're stronger, really, being more granular about the different aspects of what you might call a liberal democracy than planting our flag on the free world versus the unfree world.

Ian Bremmer :

I wonder, do you think that the creation of architecture, the prioritization of a new order with the United States and others on the basis of who is open and who is not, to what extent do you worry that that could back us into a Cold War, back us into a much more confrontational stance with the Chinese, with the Russians, with others for whom, presently, the trajectory clearly is not good? But you also say there are areas we need to be able to work with these folks.

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

Yeah, I think that is the right question, and it's exactly why talk of a League of Democracies makes me nervous because it really starts to sound a little like NATO versus the Warsaw Pact. And you can imagine asking countries to choose and they're not going to want to choose. I think we can push norms of openness in many different ways, including in the international system.

Mira Rapp-Hooper and Rebecca Lit have a great book sort of talking about pushing for an open world, which I think is attractive. But again, if you don't do it in terms of are you on one side of this divide or another, but more what norms are you signing up to? Are you for the more open and freer flow of information? Are you for a more open economy? Are you for more open borders? None of these are absolute because none of us are going to have completely open. Or are you for a completely closed kind of world, what Joshua Ramo calls a gate land, you know, a gated community in your country. I think we can push that.

The other advantage we have, and this goes directly to your question, is that kind of open society gives much more scope for business to play a role, for universities, for civic organizations, and those are exactly the different actors who do engage with Russians, with Chinese, even with Iranians, certainly in Europe, where there's the possibility of social and economic engagement, even as you have lots of competition at the governmental level. And that to me is a very positive dimension of a focus on open society.

Ian Bremmer :

The multi-stakeholder clearly is one aspect that makes it more flexible. I think one thing that's interesting about the way you're thinking about it is ... the Chinese, on the one hand have a much more closed system. On the other hand, the international architecture that they're creating around Belt and Road is very flexible. Anyone can join if they want to, it doesn't matter, where the United States has in principle a much more open system, but when we put architecture together, it's usually a club. You're in or you're out. Right? I mean, I think it's interesting to see to what extent we're going to continue down that path.

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

Yeah, that's a very interesting distinction. I would say we want to be far less hostile to Belt and Road just as we were mistakenly very hostile to the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank. That was crazy. We should have been saying, "Sure, we'll join, or at least our allies will join, and that way we'll have more influence. But also, again, we will not force people to choose one side or the other." I just don't think the United States is in the best position to be asking people to choose, and I think it's stupid diplomacy.

Ian Bremmer :

No. Those things aren't closed. Are you saying a Biden administration should/would join Belt and Road and AAIB?

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

Well, certainly, I would encourage our allies and most of them have joined AAIB. Whether the Chinese want us to join would remain to be seen. But I would take a much more neutral to even welcoming stance. In the first place, for something like AAIB, you're investing in infrastructure in other countries, we should be on the side of development. We should be on the side of development, subject to better rules, more transparency, all sorts of stuff we pushed during the Obama administration, but it doesn't look good to say, "If it's their money, we don't like it."

And similarly, Belt and Road, in the first place, we're not going to stop it. And second, it's all the way to Eastern and Central Europe and to Greece and Italy. So we need to think in a much more sophisticated way about how you would engage with it and how you would push hard for certain norms and standards that, again, it might be harder for the Chinese to actually meet, but not to be simply overtly hostile because it comes from China.

Ian Bremmer :

No, and so far, the Chinese have said that they'd be welcome to it, but we'll see of course, if that continues to stand. Yeah. Let's move along a bit to the Middle East. Broadly speaking, of course, this is an area where we have these wars that have gone on for a very long time. President Obama wanted to put an end to them. Afghanistan's still going on, of course, a couple of decades later. To what extent has President Trump and the Trump administration's engagement with the Taliban, reduction of forces on the ground, saying that all troops are going to be gone shortly, is that path dependent? Is there much else that really can be done, especially given just how tired the American public is of this war?

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

Not a lot. I actually think that a President Biden would pursue a similar policy. It might get renamed. There would be certainly more emphasis on rights of women, education of women, not that we're necessarily in a position to enforce that, but to the extent we could offer economic incentives, some military. We would. But fundamentally, Vice President Biden was never supportive even of the surge back in 2010. He was far more realist about really making sure that our vital interests were protected in terms of supportive terrorism, but otherwise, getting out. So I don't see him reversing that now. Similarly, I think, in the Middle East, well, he'll rejoin the US-Iran, the European Iran agreement, the Iran Nuclear Agreement, for sure.

Ian Bremmer :

He will try to.

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

He will try to and I think the Europeans will certainly encourage that. He'll try to play a more active diplomatic role. Once you don't have troops there, it gets harder to play that role. And we are no longer seen as a neutral broker in the region. I mean, the region has changed so much, and it's going to continue to change. I don't expect to see huge changes there either other than to pull back from sort of unconditional support of Israel, regardless of what they do.

There'll be, again, an effort to raise Palestinian rights and the idea of a two-state solution. They'll come back to that but I don't see that being a major priority, certainly not initially. And I suspect when you look, other than US Iranian relations, when you look back at the end of a first Biden administration, you may not see that many differences.

Ian Bremmer :

I want to push back a little bit. When you said that the US no longer seen as an honest broker in the region, are you suggesting that under Obama-Biden that the US was seen as an honest broker in the region?

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

Okay, more. That's a fair, fair question. I think. I do think more so. Again, with the Middle East, it's always a question of whose point of view. But I do think, at least when you were looking at Palestinia-Israeli relations, if you remember, Obama got into quite a lot of trouble by insisting that the Israelis halt settlements. He wasn't able to hold that line, but he came in with it and he pushed it. He pushed it at the United Nations General Assembly. And when the Israelis pushed back and refused to play, things essentially stalemated. I do think, at least from the point of view of the Palestinians and various other countries who were still focused on the Palestinians, we had more of a neutral broker role, which is now completely abandoned.

But I also think, and this well, that as the other Gulf Arab states have focused much more on Iran, what we've seen with the UAE and Oman, that sort of willingness to engage with Israel, the entire region and whom you'd be a broker between has shifted pretty dramatically. I would expect a Biden administration to sort of stand back, take a look at what's there, put some markers down with respect to the Palestinians, and make clear that we're willing to do a deal with Iran, and then probably develop a different strategy, an updated strategy that would recognize the region as it is now.

Ian Bremmer :

I mean, I'm pushing you on this a little bit because we know how unpopular Trump is internationally. We know how much the foreign policy establishments, including a lot of Republicans inside the United States, really have been never Trump for a long time, but that's very different from saying, "Trump's gone and suddenly great. Everybody loves the United States now." That makes me want to ask the broader question, which is does American exceptionalism as a concept need to die?

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

I'll hedge, but it's a very important question.

Ian Bremmer :

Don't hedge. Tell me what you actually think.

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

American exceptionalism that I grew up with, the American exceptionalism of the Cold War, the American exceptionalism of the 1990s, I do think has outlived its usefulness.

Ian Bremmer :

[inaudible]

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

It is no longer really even inspirational, I think, for large numbers of the American people. And certainly abroad, it is most effective when it's a version of universalism, essentially universal human rights, the words of the Declaration of Independence, so the notion that all human beings are created equal, and they're all entitled to these basic rights much more so than this is the mission of the United States. The American exceptionalism of the 20th century, I think, really did see it as a mission, as a kind of missionary zeal, that the United States could bring the light of democracy to the rest of the world, Wilson, all the way through to Clinton. In various ways, that doesn't make sense to me now. I do think that the United States will do far better in the world if we're focused on living up to our values at home, and above all, on whether we can make the transition to being a plurality nation where we're no longer a white majority, which will happen within the next couple of decades, and will happen by 2027 for Americans under 30.

If we can actually make that transition and I improve inequality, strategies of equity, strategies of participation, strategies of genuine power shifting, that will do much more for the way the world sees the United States than any amount of kind of pushing democracy abroad. I don't think we should stop supporting the Democratic opposition in various countries in various ways, but I don't think that should be the focal point of our foreign policy.

Ian Bremmer :

We've talked about the American model and the challenges to it. We've talked about the Chinese model and how many have gotten it wrong. We haven't talked yet about the European model, and of course, that's an area that a lot of Americans on both sides of the aisle have been flummoxed for a long time. Kissinger is like, "Well, I can't talk to Europe because I don't have a phone number for them." How would a Biden administration's approach to Europe, not just Berlin and Paris and London, actually change?

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

Well, I certainly hope it will change. Even in the Obama administration, and certainly before that, it really has not been. The State Department is geared to London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Warsaw. And that is a problem. Every time I hear someone say, "China is the largest economy in the world by purchasing power parity," or, "The United States the largest economy," I want to say, "No, it's actually the European Union." And if you don't believe me, check the CIA Fact book for which you would need to.

Ian Bremmer :

That's even post-Brexit. It's even post-Brexit. Yeah.

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

Even post-Brexit.

Ian Bremmer :

Yeah.

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

And so the United States, particularly if we do want to make the most of our network of allies, whether we call them a league of democracies or not, has got to think of the EU as our counterpart and not just individual capitals, and really has to think very strategically in trade terms, which is the only place we really recognize the EU as the EU, because in trade they negotiate as the EU. But we have to start thinking in diplomatic terms and we have to think in terms of all the norms and the emerging regime that we have to shape governing the digital world.

We've got to work with the EU right now. The EU is the undisputed regulatory superpower in the world. EU regulations have far more impact than US regulations, and that then shapes how economies develop. We need to be working with the EU even militarily. Again, of course, there are troops that are drawn from member countries, but it's increasingly going to be the EU that will have the ability to help decide where they go. To me, that is a critical change that needs to be made, but you need people who really understand the EU and who've grown up thinking about it as an entity. And that's not most of us who grew up in the Cold War.

Ian Bremmer :

Anne-Marie Slaughter, thank you very much.

Anne-Marie Slaughter:

Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

Ian Bremmer :

That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World Podcast. Like what you've heard? Come check us out at gzeromedia.com and sign up for our newsletter Signal.

Announcer:

This GZERO World Podcast is brought to you by Walmart. Around the world, Walmart aspires to use its strengths to transform the systems on which we all rely, setting ambitious sustainability goals, supporting the communities we serve, and creating development and advancement opportunities for our 2.2 million associates. Learn more at corporate.walmart.com/globalresponsibility.

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