ICYMI: Biden's International Achievements Are Trump's Opportunities

In a new column, Fareed Zakaria writes how President Biden's foreign policy approach, which has included a strategy of support for partners, as well as sanctions, diplomacy, and targeted military force, has put America's adversaries in a position of significant weakness.

Washington Post (Opinion): Biden's international achievements are Trump's opportunities
[Fareed Zakaria]

Can the incoming administration take full advantage of a set of weakened adversaries?

As Joe Biden's presidency enters its final month, one way to assess his foreign policy legacy is to look at how the United States' adversaries are doing. And the answer, almost overwhelmingly, is poorly. The "axis of upheaval" — Russia, China, Iran and North Korea — is in much worse shape than it was four years ago. Some of this is good luck, but some is the product of good strategy and painstaking work. In any event, this new reality offers some real opportunities for President-elect Donald Trump to make significant gains over the next year.

Iran might be in its weakest state in decades. The Islamic republic has developed a careful and complex asymmetrical strategy to undermine the U.S.-led security structure in the Middle East. Iran funded an array of militant groups — Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas — as well as the Syrian government to keep Israel, plus Saudi Arabia and other moderate Arab states, on edge. That strategy is now in tatters. Israel's attacks have devastated Hamas and Hezbollah and weakened Iran. Without those pillars of support, and with Russia distracted, Bashar al-Assad's regime collapsed.

Israel claims to have destroyed many of Iran's air defenses and ballistic missile capabilities. Rebuilding air defenses might be difficult because the most advanced ones come from Russia, which is bogged down in Ukraine. Iran's economy has been battered by sanctions, and inflation remains high. The supreme leader is 85 and in poor health, and the president is not trusted by regime hard-liners or the military.

Russia's weakness is also increasingly clear — something I wrote about last week. Many of its sources of revenue are declining, defense production cannot replace what it is losing on the battlefield, and inflation has also remained high. It can recruit young men to the army only by offering them first-year wages that are about four times Russia's average income. It has had to rely on North Korea for weapons and even men to keep going.

The China story is more complicated. China is still the world's second-largest economy, but it is clearly facing a series of huge problems: a collapsing real estate market (which has underpinned economic growth in that country for decades), a huge overall debt load, slowing productivity growth and very low levels of consumer confidence. As Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Cheng tweeted this week, "Recent trading in the country's bond market is screaming the D word … as in depression." Meanwhile, author and investor Ruchir Sharma notes that no country with demographic decline of the kind that China is experiencing has ever had sustained rapid growth.

China's malaise goes beyond just economics. Its army seems rife with corruption, as the latest of many crackdowns attest. Xi Jinping's foreign policy has been largely counterproductive, alienating countries near and far. As former U.S. national security adviser Stephen Hadley put it, China increasingly seems to be heading an "Axis of Losers."

How much of this can members of the Biden team take credit for? A fair amount. They rallied the world to oppose Russia's aggression in Ukraine and put in place sweeping sanctions. They have supplied Ukraine with weapons and encouraged Europeans to do the same on an unprecedented scale. (They could have done more, but they did a lot.)

In the Middle East, the Biden administration has supported Israel more strongly than many realize, even as officials often cautioned it to be more discriminating in its actions. The United States actively participated in the military defense of Israel against two Iranian missile attacks — a rare occurrence. It responded to the first one by also getting countries in Europe and the Arab world to join in that defense. It urged Israel to focus its attacks on Iran's air defenses and missile facilities, leaving the Islamic republic vulnerable to further attacks.

With China, the Biden team has brought both European and Asian countries together on a converging policy toward Beijing. It's sometimes forgotten that Europe had agreed in principle to a trade deal with China when Biden entered the presidency. The Biden administration brokered a rapprochement between Japan and South Korea, which has helped solidify the balance of power against China in Asia. And it has revitalized the domestic manufacture of high-end computer chips, making supply chains more secure in that critical area of technology.

The challenge for Trump, as Thomas Friedman recently noted, lies in handling our adversaries' weaknesses, not their strengths. Is there a way to keep pressure on Iran but also offer it incentives to cooperate — to cap its nuclear program and lessen its support for militias? Can Russia be squeezed to take a deal that allows Ukraine to thrive as a pro-Western democracy yet allows Russia to save face? Can China be weaned off its close alliance with Russia?

These are all difficult tasks, but Biden's achievements do provide Trump with opportunities. The president will not get a thank-you from his successor, but perhaps he will be treated better by history.