OPINION:
Joe Biden will become America’s 46th president on Jan. 20, 2021. After enjoying the pomp and ceremony of the inauguration, I’m sure he’ll enjoy himself at a few formal balls in Washington.
Waiting for him on the Resolute Desk the next morning, however, will be a cauldron full of smoldering foreign policy challenges awaiting action.
If President Biden adopts a realism-based foreign policy to address these many trials and embraces the prudent course of enlightened self-restraint, our future will be bright. If he subscribes to the status quo of establishment interventionism — whether neocon advocates from the right or liberal interventionists from the left — we could be in real trouble.
Before examining the extensive slate of existing problems Mr. Biden will have to address, it would be helpful to pull back to the 30,000-foot level to consider what the imperatives are upon assuming office.
In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton wrote that the presidency’s central functions were to be the protection of the “community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws,” and that the office-holder was expressly designated to be the “commander in chief.”
Despite these constraints on the role, many American presidents — even including Declaration of Independence author Thomas Jefferson — have gone abroad in search of monsters to destroy, but following World War II the effort became frequent and extensive.
After a temporary lull in overseas interventions following the collapse of the USSR, the events of 9/11 caused presidents to again spike in their use of foreign interventions. All done in the name of keeping America safe, virtually every use of force or attempt to nation-build in foreign lands has resulted in failure. Not only have they failed to make us safer, they have arguably harmed our national security.
When Mr. Biden takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, he will have a chance to rectify foreign policy errors of recent decades — but he will have a very difficult time doing so because of the substantial mess abroad he will inherit from his predecessors (going back through at least the George H.W. Bush administration).
Though this is far from an exhaustive list, on his first day in office, Mr. Biden will have to navigate: Active American combat or combat support operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and Niger. Not one of these operations is being conducted to meet the constitutional imperative of defending America from foreign attack. None of them create a more secure America, all of them exact extraordinary costs on us in blood and treasure; all of them can and should end.
American warships, military aircraft, and ground troops conduct frequent and aggressive combined training exercises in the vicinity of China, Russia, Venezuela, Iran and North Korea, including in the Strait of Hormuz, the Taiwan Strait, the Barents Sea, the Black Sea, Poland, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Currently not one of those countries are actively planning to attack the United States. Indeed, not one of them — Russia and China included — even have the physical capacity to launch a conventional attack on the United States homeland.
Should any of them try, our ability to project power around the globe would give us a decisive advantage against any country that would be foolhardy enough to try and attack us with conventional force. Our modern and powerful nuclear force deters all other nuclear-armed countries from attacking America. Mr. Biden can strengthen our security advantages and shed unnecessary risk by taking the following three actions.
First, we should end as quickly and professionally as possible our active combat operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and throughout Africa.
Second, over the next four years Mr. Biden could reduce U.S. troop concentrations in the Middle East by 50,000. The region is far less strategically relevant to our security than in decades past, and our standing Army, Navy and Air Force is more than adequate to ensure our interests remain protected and defended.
Third, Mr. Biden should return the preeminence of diplomacy to the formation and conduct of foreign policy, especially regarding Russia and China, while keeping the armed forces sharp.
If Mr. Biden enacts a realism-based foreign policy and maintains a properly equipped, trained and funded armed forces, our country will remain safe, secure and prosperous indefinitely. If, on the other hand, the incoming administration maintains the failed foreign policy status quo of the past several decades, our security will continue to weaken. Carried far enough, we may one day find ourselves fighting a war we should never have fought and which we may not be able to win.
• Daniel L. Davis is a senior fellow for Defense Priorities and a former lt. col. in the U.S. Army who deployed into combat zones four times. He is the author of “The Eleventh Hour in 2020 America.” Follow him @DanielLDavis1.
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