Analysis from Diplomats, Top Experts

President Joe Biden delivers this year’s State of the Union Address on March 1 during a particularly precarious moment for the United States and the world. The United States must confront the entrenchment of authoritarianism, hold together alliances in the face of an aggressive and revisionist Russia, manage relations with a rising China, and restore U.S. leadership on issues ranging from protection of human rights to nonproliferation and arms control arrangements.

The administration also faces challenges on multiple fronts at home as it seeks to deal with rising inequity, root out systemic racism, restart a sluggish economic recovery, and repair American democracy in a deeply divided political landscape. Meanwhile, the climate crisis remains an existential threat, and the COVID-19 pandemic rages on due to the emergence of new variants, a global failure to ensure vaccine equity across the world, and unfounded but entrenched vaccine skepticism.

As Biden acknowledged in his inauguration speech, this is a “time of testing” that will “challenge us in profound ways.”

Has the Biden administration risen to this challenge? As we reflect on the state of the nation and the world, Just Security asked former diplomats and top experts to assess the administration’s progress, obstacles and opportunities ahead, and implications for the midterm elections in 2022 and beyond.

[Editor’s note: some of our expert contributors commented on multiple political developments, which are organized thematically].

GREAT POWER COMPETITION

Lisa Curtis (@LisaCurtisDC), Senior Fellow and Director of the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. She previously served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for South and Central Asia on the National Security Council:

The world must respond decisively to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, both to maintain the European security order and to prevent China from perceiving it can get away with similar aggression toward Taiwan. Washington does not have the luxury of choosing whether it will stand up to either Russian or Chinese aggression. To preserve a rules-based order where countries are able to preserve their sovereignty and independence, the United States must work with like-minded partners and allies to meet the challenges from both countries.

The White House Indo-Pacific Strategy released on Feb. 11 lays out a blueprint for the United States to deter a rising and increasingly aggressive China and shows the Biden administration understands the critical importance of U.S. engagement and leadership in this vital region. Sec. of Defense Lloyd Austin made clear in a speech last December that China’s military is on pace to become a peer competitor to the United States in Asia and is seeking to usurp the U.S. leadership role in the Indo-Pacific.

One way the Biden administration is pushing back against Beijing is by elevating and expanding the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with Australia, India, and Japan. Though not a military pact like AUKUS (the Sept. 2021 Australia-UK-US pact), the Quad is asserting a shared vision for an open and free region and focuses on strategic issues like critical and emerging technologies, infrastructure development, and cyber security.

The Biden administration has discussed the concept of “integrated deterrence” in the Indo-Pacific but has yet to provide details on what this means in practical terms. To deter China and reassure the nations of the region that the United States is committed to defending their sovereignty, the administration must move forward expeditiously with plans to expand defense capabilities and its forward posture in the region, incorporating partners and allies into its force deployment strategies, operational planning, and naval maneuvers.

Christopher Walker (@walker_CT), Vice President for Studies and Analysis, National Endowment for Democracy:

In recent years, there have been any number of seemingly “game changing” events in the foreign policy context. Russia’s maximalist war in Ukraine represents a genuine game changer.

But Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor itself is the culmination of a more comprehensive and longer standing Kremlin project. Over 16 straight years of global democratic decline, the leadership in Russia has been an engine of authoritarian aggression, which has translated into escalating disruption and destruction internationally. And Russia is not alone in this project. Authorities in China have built up their international posture to present an unambiguous challenge to the liberal order. We may not be willing to fully acknowledge it, but we are already quite a ways into a new era.

For the United States and its democratic allies, the challenge is growing. Leaders in Russia and China have achieved what might be understood as a “shared consciousness” concerning their international policy approach that may crystallize into a closer partnership. The Chinese authorities’ reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has so far been a rhetorical hedge, but in practice has effectively allowed Moscow unbridled freedom of action. This attitude speaks to a larger, ongoing ambition, led by Beijing and Moscow, to reforge the global rules of the road. These regimes are offering an alternative, authoritarian-friendly set of norms, while simultaneously seeking to undermine key rules-based organizations. The recent ground gained by authoritarian powers in the battle to set international rules shows the risk of taking the foundations and endurance of the international system for granted, without purposeful action and support from the democracies.

Therefore, in the coming period the Biden administration will be obliged to find new avenues of cooperation with like-minded partners to defend democracy and retake the initiative. Democracies must respond to the depredations Russia is now inflicting upon the people of Ukraine. In the bigger picture, the United States and its democratic allies will need to come to grips with the advanced competition that has emerged to challenge democracy and the values that underpin it. This is a multidimensional challenge that will require democratic ambition and innovation in spheres that include but are not limited to: more successfully dealing with the transnational kleptocracy and strategic corruption that have metastasized in ways that subvert systems of all stripes; addressing a dysfunctional and unreliable information landscape; developing more effective capacities to communicate internationally in a far more complex and competitive information environment; and dealing with critical issues of emerging technology that will be integral to the future of freedom.

MULTILATERALISM

Fionnuala Ní Aoláin (@NiAolainF), U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism and Executive Editor at Just Security:

Writing a “State of the Union” reflection with a European war upon us and untold human suffering and misery unfolding in Ukraine is a testing task. It follows a trying summer, as the images of masses of frightened and vulnerable people fleeing Afghanistan were indelibly burned on our collective memory and remain prescient. The Taliban’s firm re-emergence underscores the fundamental failure of the so-called “war on terror,” and the twenty years of counterterrorism that contributed to state fragility and the conditions that produced the consolidation of power by that non-state power. Ownership of that failure belongs to multiple administrations. Its ugly end has been fatefully handed to the Biden administration and there is pressing work to do on human rights, women’s rights, and humanitarian protection and assistance. The unfinished business in Afghanistan, including a harshly unfolding humanitarian catastrophe constitutes a fundamental setback for national and international security.

In parallel, our international law-based order and the integrity of the collective security system established by the United Nations (U.N.) Charter is now under unrelenting and direct attack. We are in the eye of the storm – so assessing progress, setbacks, and opportunities in international law and foreign affairs can only be partially done. The challenge for this administration is to hold firmly to its vision of promoting democracy and the rule of law in the nitty gritty of day-to-day diplomacy, capacity building, technical assistance, security work, and partnerships with states. It will require breaking with those who do not fundamentally share those values, reject the rule of law, attack civil society, and use security discourse as cover for the worst of their human rights abuses. Instead, deep, profound, and close relationships with like-minded states will define the outcomes of these perilous times. It has never been more essential to support allies, democratic institutions, civil society actors, journalists, human rights defenders, and the values of international law continuously and consistently.

Positively, and to this end, the Biden administration is doing this work, walking the corridors of international institutions, rebuilding relationships, and showing leadership. The Biden administration’s presence at the U.N. Human Rights Council comes at a critical time when authoritarians and back-sliding democracies increasingly are finding international institutions to be welcoming and comfortable spaces. Enabling the country visits of two U.N. Special Rapporteurs (minority issues and contemporary forms of racism) shows an openness to scrutiny and critical self-reflection that is welcome, and shows exactly how democracies should behave and then encourage others to follow.

This moment in history demands a vision beyond responding to Russian aggression in Ukraine. We must understand that this is a symptom of ascendent authoritarianism and strikes at the…