Foreign Policy 2021 02 Spring

SPRING 2021 Biden’s 100-Day Report Card Twenty-five leading thinkers grade the new president. CA N Y ELLEN A N D DR AGHI SAV E T HE CEN T ER? by Adam Tooze

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SPRING 2021 Features Arguments 23 The Biden Progress Report 32 The Most Vital 5 U.S. Policy Must 100 Days Since FDR Center Racial Justice MICHAEL HIRSH ALEXANDRA BYRNE, BILEN ZERIE, AND 36 The Diplomat as KELEBOGILE ZVOBGO Commander in Chief 7 Western Companies MARK PERRY Should Leave China 40 Janet Yellen’s and ELISABETH BRAW Mario Draghi’s Final Acts 9 The Rise of the ADAM TOOZE Patriotic Blockbuster Debunker AMANDA MORRISON 71 The Anthropocene 11 The New Anti-China Is Overrated Alliance Will Fail DAV I D S E P KO S K I KISHORE MAHBUBANI Review 12 British Prime Minister 84 The Trailblazing Women Is a Broken Job Who Reported on War MARK GARNETT JA N I N E D I G I OVA N N I 14 Where Face Masks Are Decoder Required but Burqas Are Banned 112 Narendra Modi and RIM-SARAH ALOUANE the Art of the Jumla 16 The Arab Moment NIKHIL KUMAR Has Passed VA L I NA S R 19 Latin America Is Caught in the Middle of a Tech War OLIVER STUENKEL Cover and above illustration by NICOLÁS ORTEGA / Issue creative consulting by Nick Mrozowski 1F O R E I G N P O L I C Y. C O M

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FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS Rim-Sarah Alouane is a legal scholar, commentator, Kishore Mahbubani is a and Ph.D. candidate in distinguished fellow at the National comparative law at Toulouse University of Singapore’s Asia Capitole University in France, Research Institute and the author focusing on religious freedom, of Has China Won? The Chinese civil liberties, constitutional law, Challenge to American Primacy. He and human rights. was selected as a FOREIGN POLICY Global Thinker in 2010 and 2011. David Sepkoski is the Thomas M. Siebel chair in the history of science Janine di Giovanni is an author, at the University of Illinois at foreign correspondent, senior Urbana-Champaign, specializing in fellow at Yale University’s Jackson transnational history of biological, Institute for Global Affairs, and environmental, and information columnist at FOREIGN POLICY. sciences, including data practices. Her latest book is The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches Amanda Morrison is a fellow with From Syria. the University of Pennsylvania’s Project on the Future of U.S.-China Nikhil Kumar is a writer and Relations and a documentary journalist based in New Delhi and producer currently directing a film a former bureau chief in South Asia about Chinese feminist activism. for Time magazine and CNN. Foreign Policy, 1750 Pennsylvania Ave., Second Floor, Washington, DC 20006 PUBLISHING OFFICE (202) 728-7300 SUBSCRIPTIONS (800) 535-6343 ADVERTISING (202) 728-7310 Ann McDaniel CEO, THE FP GROUP Ravi Agrawal EDITOR IN CHIEF Andrew Sollinger PUBLISHER FP Analytics EXECUTIVE EDITOR Amelia Lester SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT Diana Marrero MANAGING DIRECTOR Allison Carlson EXECUTIVE EDITOR, NEWS AND PODCASTS Dan Ephron VICE PRESIDENT, STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT Susan Sadigova DIRECTOR OF ACADEMIC PARTNERSHIPS Sherri Greeves SENIOR ADVISOR Antoine van Agtmael CREATIVE DIRECTOR Lori Kelley DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT Roger Bain STRATEGIC ACCOUNTS MANAGER Claire Furbush SENIOR POLICY ANALYST Fouad Pervez EDITOR AT LARGE Jonathan Tepperman DIRECTOR OF GROUP LICENSES Rachel Mines POLICY ANALYSTS Christian Perez, Isabel Schmidt, DEPUTY EDITORS Cameron Abadi, James Palmer, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT REPRESENTATIVE Hannah Lynch Sasha Polakow-Suransky, Kathryn Salam, Helen You Stefan Theil MARKETING DIRECTOR Bryan Flynn DEPUTY NEWS EDITOR Keith Johnson MARKETING ASSOCIATE Jena Al-Barzinji © 2021 BY THE FP GROUP, a division of Graham Holdings ASSOCIATE EDITOR Audrey Wilson Company, which bears no responsibility for the editorial ASSISTANT EDITOR Elizabeth Miles VICE PRESIDENT, DATA REVENUE OPERATIONS Jason Lee content; the views expressed in the articles are those of the SENIOR CORRESPONDENT Michael Hirsh DATA OPERATIONS ASSOCIATE Francis King authors. No part of this publication may be reproduced in SENIOR STAFF WRITER Colum Lynch CUSTOMER SUCCESS ENGINEER Jessica Yoo any form without permission in writing from the publisher. STAFF WRITERS Jack Detsch, Robbie Gramer, SUBSCRIPTIONS SUBSCRIBER SERVICES: Foreign Amy Mackinnon MANAGING DIRECTOR, FP STUDIOS Rob Sachs Policy, 1750 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Second Floor, Washington, SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR Kelly Kimball PRODUCTION COORDINATOR, FP STUDIOS Rosie Julin DC 20006; ForeignPolicy.com/subscription-services; email: NEWSLETTER WRITER Colm Quinn [email protected]; (800) 535-6343 in U.S.; (845) COPY CHIEF Shannon Schweitzer EVENTS DIRECTOR Veronika Zubo 267-3050 outside U.S.; publications mail agreement No. DEPUTY COPY EDITORS Nina Goldman, Alexandra Sharp STRATEGIC EVENTS COORDINATOR Leah Danville 40778561. Rates (in U.S. funds): $199.99 for one year. EDITORIAL FELLOWS Chloe Hadavas, Allison Meakem BUSINESS OPERATIONS MANAGER Kara Francois BACK ISSUES: $10.95 per copy. International airmail add $3 INTERNS Cailey Griffin, Katie Livingstone, Christina Lu, per copy; online: ForeignPolicy.com/buy-back-issues; email: Sofía Sánchez CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Kent Renk [email protected]. SYNDICATION REQUESTS: DIRECTOR OF FINANCE James Nelson Contact Andrew Sollinger; Andrew.Sollinger@foreignpolicy. ACCOUNTING COORDINATOR Asli Derib com. OTHER PERMISSION REQUESTS: Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (978) 750-8400; www.copyright.com. HR DIRECTOR Laurel Fioravanti FP ISSN 0015 7228 SPRING 2021, issue number 240. Published four times yearly, in January, April, July, and October, CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER Adam Griffiths by The FP Group, a division of Graham Holdings Company, SENIOR DEVELOPER Andrew Baughman at 1750 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Second Floor, Washington, WEB DEVELOPERS Zgjim Gjonbalaj, Ash White DC 20006. Subscriptions: U.S., $199.99 per year; Canada and other countries, $199.99. Periodicals Postage Paid INTERNS Sarah Urtz, Annie Blatchford, Asim Siddiq in Washington, D.C., and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send U.S. address changes to: Foreign Policy, 1750 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Second Floor, Washington, DC 20006. Printed in the United States. 2 SPRING 2021

FROM THE EDITOR ORIANA FENWICK ILLUSTRATION WHEN U.S. PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN TOOK OFFICE on Jan. There’s much more in the magazine. In the front, 20, I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for him. you’ll find our selection of the very best Argu- He was, after all, assuming power after a deadly ments of the quarter. The Argument is FOREIGN siege on the Capitol—a horrific event that marked POLICY’s signature piece—a pithy and hopefully the country’s first-ever violent transfer of power. persuasive point of view on an issue in the news. Biden was also entering the White House amid In addition to the new administration’s report the deadliest pandemic in a century and the worst card, we also have a feature from Mark Perry on job market in decades. His task was to not only fix Biden’s at times uneasy relationship with the mil- those historic crises but rebuild Washington’s alli- itary (Page 36) and a magisterial essay by Adam ances abroad, tackle climate change, and address Tooze on the parallel trajectories of U.S. Treasury the growing challenge presented by China. Plus, Secretary Janet Yellen and Italian Prime Minister to deal with all these issues, he had to somehow Mario Draghi, two central bankers whose latter unite a deeply divided Congress, even as polls turns to politics may wind up redefining the role revealed that 3 out of 4 Republicans believed he of finance in government (Page 40). was not the legitimate winner of the election. Our latest columnist Janine di Giovanni, one of That’s a lot of bad luck. the world’s foremost foreign correspondents, con- On the other hand, Biden was in a sense lucky to siders the necessarily extraordinary paths of three follow a president who left office with an approval trailblazing women in the uber-macho world of rating of 34 percent—the lowest ever polled by war reporting (Page 84). And in our latest Decoder, Gallup since it began tracking U.S. presidents in Nikhil Kumar explains the meaning of the sud- 1938. With eight years as vice president and 36 as denly ubiquitous Hindi word jumla. As Kumar a senator, Biden is among the most experienced writes, jumla has come to stand in for all the tall new presidents in U.S. history. And he’s more a tales told by Narendra Modi—and considering its doer than a talker, decent rather than bombastic; usage gives us a clue as to why the Indian leader in short, a man for the moment, a familiar face seems to keep getting away with them (Page 112). who won as the change candidate. As FP’s Michael Hirsh writes in this issue (Page As always, I hope you’re staying safe and are 32), the only other president with such an epic either vaccinated or soon to be so. Here’s to shots task ahead of him was Franklin D. Roosevelt, who in the arm and brighter days ahead. took his oath in the throes of the Great Depres- sion. It was FDR who came up with the tidy, now Ravi Agrawal global, concept of judging a leader’s promise by his or her first 100 days. And grading Biden is what we’ve set out to do in this issue’s main feature (Page 22). It’s a bit gimmicky, sure, but it’s also an important early assessment and a useful way for us policy wonks to discuss and debate everything from U.S. alli- ances to the economy, the pandemic response to the global decline of democracy, Russia and China, climate change and immigration, and more. Twenty-five experts and practitioners bravely assigned the new White House a grade and an explanation for how they got there. There are A’s, B’s, and even some C’s, I’m afraid. But the good news is it’s just the first semester, and healthy feedback can often lead to improved performance. 3F O R E I G N P O L I C Y. C O M

ARGUMENTS CHINA | ASIA | EUROPE | MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA | AMERICAS UNITED STATES Thousands of people gather at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on Aug. 28, 2020, to call for reforms to policing and criminal justice. Biden’s Policy As soon as they were high on the list of issues that they iden- Must Center inaugurated, U.S. Presi- tified as most pressing and requiring Racial Justice dent Joe Biden and Vice action in their first 100 days. President Kamala Harris By Alexandra Byrne, Bilen Zerie, started making good on On Jan. 26, Biden rolled out his and Kelebogile Zvobgo their campaign promises. They reen- administration’s first steps to advance tered the Paris climate accord, renewed racial equity and promote national U.S. support for the World Health unity and reconciliation. He issued Organization, and ended the Trump four executive orders spanning issues administration’s travel bans targeting that affect multiple racial and ethnic nationals of select Muslim-majority and minority groups in the United States, African nations. Racial justice was also namely Black, Latino, Indigenous, Asian, and Pacific Islander Americans. 5F O R E I G N P O L I C Y. C O M

The first executive order directed The anti-apartheid activist Nelson early policies, including $100 billion PREVIOUS PAGE: DAVID BUTOW/REDUX PICTURES; THIS PAGE: ALEXANDER JOE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES the Department of Housing and Urban Mandela hugs a girl in Soweto, South in grants and tax incentives to build Development to remedy racism in fed- affordable housing. But subsidies with- eral housing policy and practice, while Africa, on Oct. 4, 1990. Mandela’s out a strategy aren’t enough. the second instructed the Justice Depart- government made progress—and faced ment to end contracts with private pitfalls—on housing discrimination. It wasn’t until the 1998 People’s Hous- prisons. The third renewed the federal ing Process—four years after Mandela government’s “commitment to tribal and what the implications are for the came into office—that South Africans sovereignty and consultation,” and the United States today. in need were given a voice in the devel- fourth ordered the Justice Department to opment of their homes. The Biden combat anti-Asian racism and xenopho- First, Mandela and the ANC intro- administration should not make the bia. Beyond the four orders, Biden and duced several policies to redress dis- same mistake; it must put community Harris have called for a whole-of-govern- crimination in housing—from granting needs at the center of its efforts in order ment approach to redressing structural developer subsidies to ending redlining, to produce better-quality housing and racism and systemic inequality. the practice of denying housing loans avoid years of wasted time. to entire communities. At the time, the Biden opened his remarks on signing country faced a housing shortage of Second, the new South African gov- the orders by acknowledging racial dis- roughly 1.5 million units and a shambles ernment ushered in a number of prison parities in health and the economy, not- of a public housing system. To fill in the reforms. It moved quickly to abolish the ing disproportionate rates of coronavirus gaps, the new government relied heav- death penalty and reduce inhumane infections and deaths, food insecurity, ily on private sector investment and the treatment of inmates, which again dis- and job losses among Americans of color. work of nongovernmental organizations. proportionately affected Black South He invoked the memory of George Floyd, Africans. The government also began who was killed by Minneapolis police But progress on these policies stalled. educating prison staff on human rights in May 2020 and whose death, Biden Government subsidies did not pro- and attempted to transform the correc- affirmed, marked a turning point for duce housing quickly enough, and tional system from one based on pun- the United States. The president urged, disagreement among local, provin- ishment to one based on rehabilitation. “Now is the time to act … because that’s cial, and national governments further For petty offenders especially, the gov- what faith and morality call us to do.” slowed momentum. What housing was ernment sought to prioritize skills train- developed was far from centers of eco- ing, education, and diversion programs. The administration is off to a strong nomic opportunity. Above all, residents start, but it has a long way to go. Fortu- denounced the lack of community con- Regrettably, many of the ANC’s nately, Biden and Harris’s team doesn’t sultation in the process. efforts to reform prisons were ultimately have to reinvent the wheel. Rather, it can hampered by political pressure to take a look to historical cases of transitional jus- Biden’s executive order is the first harsher stance amid a rising crime rate. tice in racially divided societies. step of many in responding to the U.S. Facing an outcry from the white pop- housing crisis, whose effects have been ulation, the government established To give two examples of how transi- especially devastating for Americans maximum security private prisons and tional justice could work in the United of color. The Biden-Harris campaign’s encouraged judges to grant longer sen- States—and the impact it could have on housing plan echoed many of the ANC’s tences. This tougher approach led to racial justice—consider policy reforms increasingly overcrowded prisons that in South Africa during the transition remain racially imbalanced: As of 2016, from apartheid and white-minority rule nearly 98 percent of prisoners were to democracy and Black-majority rule Black or coloured, much higher than in the mid-1990s. their 85 percent share of the population. After nearly 50 years of violence Biden’s move to eliminate private and discrimination against Black and prisons and his campaign’s broader other nonwhite South Africans, the first criminal justice plan are just the begin- post-apartheid government, led by Pres- ning when it comes to dismantling a ident Nelson Mandela and the African fundamentally racist and overly puni- National Congress (ANC), undertook tive incarceration state. Some of his a range of reforms relating to housing proposed initiatives parallel mea- and criminal justice. Parts of the Biden sures supported by the ANC in early plan resemble these early initiatives. post-apartheid South Africa, includ- ing a focus on rehabilitation and an Here’s what worked, what didn’t, 6 SPRING 2021

ARGUMENTS interest in alternatives to detention. CHINA H&M, Hitachi, HP, HTC, Jaguar, To succeed, however, the new admin- L.L.Bean, Lacoste, Land Rover, Mer- Western cedes-Benz, MG, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, istration must resist the dog-whistle Companies Mitsumi, Nike, Nintendo, Nokia, Panaso- politics behind many Republicans’ Should nic, Polo Ralph Lauren, Puma, Samsung, tough-on-crime stances. And, in con- Leave China Sharp, Siemens, Skechers, Sony, TDK, trast to South Africa, Biden should Tommy Hilfiger, Toshiba, Uniqlo, Victo- tackle structural inequities that per- By Elisabeth Braw ria’s Secret, Vivo, Volkswagen, and Zara. petuate racial disparities in the prison system today. In a February survey, 96 percent In short, corporate giants’ under- of German businesses active in standable desire for access to China So far, it appears that the Biden-Harris China said they planned to stay also involves the risk of coercion and team is committed to reforms to deliver there. That’s because there’s brand damage. racial equity. Still to be revealed is money to be made. There is, whether the administration is also com- alas, also the matter of image. In a 2020 Here’s a modest proposal for the many mitted to repairing historical inequity. report, the Australian Strategic Policy Western consumer-product companies In South Africa and many other coun- Institute (ASPI) reported that 27 factories doing business in China: Get out. Initially, tries that have undergone political tran- in nine Chinese provinces were using it may cause you production headaches sitions—some violent, like the one the Uyghur workers from Xinjiang, includ- and loss of revenue. But global consum- United States recently underwent— ing forcibly interned ones. “Those facto- ers will reward you. And you won’t have reforms have been accompanied by ries claim to be part of the supply chain to worry about ending up in the increas- truth commissions, judicial account- of 82 well-known global brands,” ASPI ingly busy line of geopolitical fire. ability for wrongdoers, and economic found, and “some factories appear to and symbolic reparations. These are be using Uyghur workers sent directly The survey of German businesses, part of what scholars and practitioners from ‘re-education camps.’” conducted by the German Chamber call the transitional justice toolkit. of Commerce in China, also found Although Beijing does not allow out- that 72 percent of German companies Among these, reparations are very side observers access to the camps, active in the country planned further important. Biden’s plan is nicely poised ex-inmates who have managed to investments. This may be connected to prevent harm in the future—and leave China have provided harrowing to the fact that 77 percent of German that’s important. But so, too, is reme- accounts of systematic rape of female companies active in China expect the dying harm that took place in the past. detainees and other crimes. The brands market there to develop significantly How will the administration repair identified by ASPI include Abercrom- better than in other economies this what has been broken and provide res- bie & Fitch, Acer, Adidas, Amazon, year. That’s a logical assumption, con- titution—for victims of housing dis- Apple, Asus, BMW, Bosch, Calvin sidering that the International Mone- crimination, the incarceration state, Klein, Cerruti 1881, Cisco, Dell, Elec- tary Fund predicts China’s GDP to grow encroachments on sovereign Indige- trolux, Gap, General Motors, Google, by 7.9 percent this year. nous land, xenophobia, and more? A few months after the ASPI report’s Scholars have developed detailed release, a BBC correspondent asked suggestions. Whether Biden and Har- Volkswagen’s China CEO, Stephan Wöl- ris, in partnership with the U.S. Congress, lenstein, about the matter. Wöllenstein adopt them remains to be seen. But a replied that he couldn’t be sure that crucial lesson from South Africa is that none of the Uyghurs in Volkswagen’s the lack of a serious and comprehensive plant in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital, had reparations plan can decrease affected been transferred there from one of the communities’ confidence in reforms camps. Soon social media was explod- and diminish their trust in the govern- ing with comments by angry consumers ment more generally. That undermines vowing to boycott the carmaker. national unity and reconciliation. Q Other Western firms including Nike, ALEXANDRA BYRNE and BILEN ZERIE are Apple, and Coca-Cola—which operates research fellows at William & Mary’s a bottling plant in Xinjiang—have in International Justice Lab, where recent months acquitted themselves KELEBOGILE ZVOBGO is the founder and rather poorly in the court of public opin- director. ion. The three mighty brands have lob- bied the U.S. Congress to weaken the 7F O R E I G N P O L I C Y. C O M

Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, The activist Irade Kashgary waves a Uyghur though without much success: Last flag during a protest outside an Apple Store September, the House passed the bill by an overwhelming majority, and it’s in Washington on July 30, 2020. reported to have majority support in the Senate as well. strategy for long-term health. that “organizations should view them- JEMAL COUNTESS/GETTY IMAGES FOR SUMOFUS Australia is already making the shift. selves as human entities that mirror— The icons of Western market econo- and support—the values of those they mies should brace themselves for more “Whether China continues to reduce are built to serve.” And it reports that China-related woes. Beijing has been its purchases of Australian food and consumers are paying close attention pressuring Ericsson’s CEO, Borje Ekholm, agriproducts in coming years—as we to businesses’ activities: 79 percent of to lobby the Swedish government for a think likely—or not, the risks of supply- consumers polled recalled instances of reversal of the country’s Huawei ban. ing this market have definitely increased. brands positively responding to COVID- Starbucks is in a similar situation. One 2021 will likely mark a watershed year, in 19 to help their customers, workforces, can only guess how many similar cases which Australia starts to reduce its reli- and communities. That translated to haven’t come to the public’s attention. ance on China, voluntarily or otherwise,” 23 percent saying their perception of Tim Hunt, the head of food and agribusi- the brand changed and 19 percent say- Is the Chinese market worth such ness research at the Netherlands-based ing it strongly influenced their brand risks? It sounds like a crazy question: global bank Rabobank, said in January. purchase behavior. But the opposite is A market with 1.4 billion people and true as well: 66 percent of consumers outstanding manufacturing infrastruc- Citizens all over the West, mean- recalled instances of brands behaving ture that has made China known as “the while, have taken a radically dimmer negatively, 31 percent reported that it world’s factory” can’t be beaten. Which view of China than was the case even a affected their perception of the brand, other country would be able to offer few years ago. In a poll conducted last and 26 percent said it strongly influ- attractive incentives to a range of car- summer by the Pew Research Center, enced their purchase behavior. makers, appliance-makers, and others 81 percent of Australians had unfavor- whose plants require enormous invest- able views of China, up from 32 percent What could be more negative than ment in technology? in 2017. So did 85 percent of Swedes, up being associated with 21st-century con- from 49 percent; 74 percent of Britons, centration camps? Sure, not too many That is the wrong question. A more up from 37 percent; 73 percent of Amer- Western consumers keep a tally of appropriate one for Western business icans, up from 47 percent; 73 percent of which brands have factories that might leaders is this: How can executives and Canadians, up from 40 percent; and 71 be using Uyghur labor, but there will boards of Western companies map busi- percent of Germans, up from 53 per- likely be more damaging news cover- ness strategies when they face the risk cent. The Chinese government’s recent age like the Wöllenstein interview and of being coerced by Beijing as it seeks ban on the BBC won’t win any hearts or Uyghur rape victims’ accounts. Indeed, to extract concessions from their home minds—quite the opposite. Disney’s much-touted Mulan movie last governments? If they’ve received invest- year gained headlines for entirely the ment incentives for their plants, busi- Such views matter. Western consum- wrong reasons. Not only had the film nesses are even more vulnerable to ers are not only taking a stronger interest been shot in Xinjiang; in the credits, the pressure. And it’s hard to develop strat- in current affairs but want the busi- studio also thanked the Turpan Munic- egies when Beijing disrupts even the nesses they buy from to do the same. In ipal Bureau of Public Security, which best-laid plans through wanton mea- its 2021 Global Marketing Trends report, sures in retaliation against their home the consulting firm Deloitte advises governments, as has happened to a plethora of Australian food exporters. The only way to halt this snowball- ing process of corporate coercion is for one of the West’s leading consumer brands to leave. Yes, it’s a risk, but the company would liberate itself from the constant risk of geopolitically moti- vated coercion and punishment. And if it’s one of the foreign brands identified by ASPI, it could cleanse the brand in the process, too. It is, in other words, a 8 SPRING 2021

ARGUMENTS operates the concentration camps and wealth fund sold its fossil fuel holdings. industry was facing a “colossal” finan- was sanctioned by the U.S. Commerce cial crisis because of the dominance Department in 2019. Which company is going to be the of party-line ideological films that few people actually wanted to watch. If a brand has even the faintest whiff first consumer brand to make the leap? of concentration camp, one-quarter State-run companies were responsi- of Western customers are—based on The reward would not only be long-term ble for delivering patriotic productions, Deloitte’s figures—likely to defect. Such or “main melody films,” which became negativity can damage the brand, and stability but immediate positive head- mandatory viewing for students during what’s more, it will make institutional Jiang Zemin’s patriotic education cam- investors nervous. In the 1980s, apart- lines as well. That’s more than can be paign in the 1990s. Meanwhile, China heid South Africa had become so toxic opened its doors to Hollywood in 1994 that powerful institutional investors expected for those brands that stay on a revenue-sharing basis, which accel- including Harvard University partially erated the development of the domestic divested from firms with links to the and greet every day in the knowledge industry. To stave off unwelcome for- regime. All this poses a risk to firms’ eign influence, the first official censor- share price. And when the share price it could bring evidence of Chinese coer- ship system was implemented in 1996. dips, the board notices. cion or more damaging revelations of Just one year later, the Chinese gov- Admittedly, packing up and leaving ernment banned Disney, Columbia, and involves some effort, even for apparel concentration camp labor. Not even 7.9 MGM because of certain movies, such as firms that don’t have highly complex Kundun and Seven Years in Tibet, that equipment. And there’s a big difference percent growth rates can offset such were deemed biased against China. A between giving up manufacturing in memo issued by the then-Ministry of China and not selling to the Chinese headaches. Q Radio, Film, and Television (today, after market. For a food and drink chain several name changes, the National such as Starbucks, leaving China would ELISABETH BRAW is a fellow at the Amer- Radio and Television Administration, clearly mean forgoing Chinese consum- ican Enterprise Institute and a colum- or NRTA) stated, “In order to protect ers altogether. nist at FOREIGN POLICY. Chinese national overall interests, it has been decided that all business coopera- Yet many businesses are already mov- The Rise of tion with these three companies [will] be ing parts of their production elsewhere, the Patriotic ceased temporarily without exception.” primarily to other Asian countries, not Blockbuster for political reasons but because China Both now and then, Chinese author- is losing its allure as the world’s factory. By Amanda Morrison ities bring down a cleaver to send a Vietnam is becoming a clothes-making resounding message. But most of the hub and has since 2018 been Adidas It’s no coincidence—or secret— time, the state acts—in the notable and Nike’s main manufacturing base. that China is churning out patri- words of the East Asian studies pro- Thailand is attracting carmakers, and otic blockbusters, which have fessor Perry Link—as an “anaconda in India is solidifying its position as a hub overtaken Hollywood films at the the chandelier.” The giant snake does for tech and pharmaceuticals. In Jan- Chinese box office in recent years. not move, but everyone in its shadow uary, the Serum Institute of India, the But it’s not as explicit as Beijing handing fears provoking it. world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, out orders. Instead, the government has received permission to make AstraZen- shifted its approach from direct inter- As the industry developed, privately eca’s COVID-19 vaccine. vention to indirect incentivization by owned film companies—not state-run shaping the economic conditions of the studios—began spearheading the pro- And, yes, initially a consumer brand film industry to favor patriotic cinema. duction of nationalistic cinema. Two leaving the world’s largest consumer decades ago, party-approved message market would lose shareholders inter- The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) films were viewed as the source of the ested only in instant gains. But it faced a trade-off between economic lib- industry’s failure. As recently as 2013, would possibly gain better ones, with eralization and social control of the film three films celebrating the soldier and an interest in long-term performance. industry, especially after the Tianan- propaganda icon Lei Feng flopped And let’s not forget that major investors men Square uprising in 1989. Rejecting despite state directives urging cin- are beginning to focus more on ethics, the contradiction, the party pursued emas to promote them. Yet the state even if only to please public opinion. both—a balancing act that would come redoubled its efforts to nurture the mar- In 2019, Norway’s powerful sovereign to define the Chinese development ketable patriotic blockbuster. experiment across sectors. In 1990, the head of the Ministry of Radio, Film, and Television’s film bureau told the New York Times that the Chinese film 9F O R E I G N P O L I C Y. C O M

From public apologies to anti-cor- tightened even further under the 2015 “any means necessary” to maximize ruption crackdowns, the CCP has tight- Foreign Investment Law. box office returns for a propaganda war ened its grip over the film industry film to evoke “feelings of patriotism and using many of the same tools it wields Meanwhile, members of the polit- national sentiment.” State directives to assert control across sectors and soci- ical elite, such as Jiang’s son and for- also ordered the media to praise patri- ety. In 2018, the state called for “self- mer Vice President Zeng Qinghong’s otic films and prohibit coverage of films examination and self-correction” in the brother, have stepped in to share the considered disagreeable. A sensitive industry and demanded movie moguls tremendous profits of China’s film film is not a threat if no one watches cough up $1.7 billion to the government. industry, memorably described as “the it—not because it’s banned but because new playground for princelings.” Pro- no one even knows of it. But for those who toe the line, there’s paganda officials have reportedly asked plenty of profit to be had, as a slew of their children to produce films that Audiences appear to welcome and big-budget films dubbed “too red to fail” they then approve. even favor films infused with patriotic proved in 2019. What does it mean to be themes—although with options increas- “too red to fail”? Film authorities ensure In China’s saturated film market ingly limited and critical film sites often that big box office receipts go to films (2,308 films were produced in 2019), blocked, it’s hard to gauge genuine opin- that align with the state’s interests. Indi- the state influences the visibility—and, ion. “Being patriotic is fashionable,” rect censorship mechanisms become in turn, profitability—of the releases. wrote one Chinese student on her blog financial incentives for profit-seeking Distribution remains largely controlled while studying abroad. “I don’t want to producers to create content that will by state-owned enterprises. Cinema be the uncool person in my generation.” succeed in the economic environment managers collude with state-run distrib- Directors are playing into the depend- crafted by the state. utors to ensure that optimal screening able formula, dropping social commen- schedules are reserved for those films, tary for patriotic fanfare. A cohort of The people running the Chinese film while independent films may secure as up-and-coming directors—including industry increasingly represent state few as 0.2 percent of national cinemas. Peter Chan, Stephen Chow, and John interests. New restrictions on foreign Wu—have moved away from genre films investors mitigate outside influence, In 2018, the then-State Administra- aimed at global appeal to produce films which grew in the 2000s when the tion of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, exclusively for the Chinese market. investment landscape enjoyed a rela- and Television, now the NRTA, desig- tively free flow of capital, technology, nated 5,000 cinemas as the “People’s Stars behind and in front of the cam- expertise, and ideas. Since 2011, foreign Theater Line” to receive subsidies era are chasing and propelling the trend. investors have been prohibited from to promote screenings of main mel- “Popular Chinese actors are converting investing in film distribution compa- ody films. A leaked administration in droves to serve as red avatars that nies and theater chains. Restrictions directive in 2015 revealed that it had instill positive energy in the audience,” ordered movie theater chains to use reported an article in the state-run tab- loid Global Times about the industry’s Moviegoers watch patriotic makeover. The celebrity Fan a film in Taiyuan, Bingbing posted an image on Weibo of China, on Feb. 12, a map of China including Taiwan and the first day of the the “nine-dash line” with the hashtag Lunar New Year. “China, not even a dot can be missing.” China’s box office Her overt support of China’s territorial revenue hit a record claims in the South China Sea came on $9.2 billion in 2019. the heels of an apology after she was accused of evading taxes and disap- peared from the public’s eye for three ZHANG YUN/CHINA NEWS SERVICE VIA GETTY IMAGES months in 2018. Disney’s recent live-action remake of Mulan fell victim to the state’s need for control. In 2019, the film’s star, Liu Yifei, proclaimed her support for the Hong Kong police on Weibo, calling the pro-democracy demonstrations a “shame” for Hong Kong. Her comments 10 S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

ARGUMENTS —whether genuine or strategic—gave Propaganda is most effective when have different geopolitical interests and rise to the hashtag #BoycottMulan, people are swayed one way but believe vulnerabilities. Second, and more fun- which resurged in January when view- they arrived there on their own. Nation- damentally, they are in the wrong game. ers decried the recognition of Xinjiang alism is most enduring when it bubbles The big strategic game in Asia isn’t mili- government entities in the film’s credits. up from the bottom. The production of tary but economic. Chinese authorities promptly banned patriotic cinema is undergoing a simi- the hashtag and ordered media outlets lar phenomenon: Producers are making Australia is the most vulnerable. not to cover the release. it, and audiences are viewing it on their Its economy is highly dependent on own accord. And in so doing, a chorus of China. Australians have been proud The state instead threw its weight voices is replaced by a single melody. Q of their remarkable three decades of behind The Eight Hundred, a Chinese recession-free growth. That happened war epic that was the first major film to AMANDA MORRISON is a fellow with the only because Australia became, func- screen in movie theaters since COVID- University of Pennsylvania’s Project tionally, an economic province of China: 19 caused monthslong closures nation- on the Future of U.S.-China Relations. In 2018-2019, 33 percent of its exports wide. In June 2019, the film was pulled went to China, whereas only 5 percent from the Shanghai International Film ASIA went to the United States. Festival minutes before its premiere for glorifying the Nationalist—not the The New This is why it was unwise for Australia Communist—army in the final scene. Anti-China to slap China in the face publicly by call- The Huayi Brothers studio, at risk of Alliance ing for an international inquiry into the losing its $80 million investment in Will Fail origins of COVID-19. It would have been the film, removed 13 minutes from the wiser and more prudent to make such film, which granted its grand release last By Kishore Mahbubani a call privately. Now Australia has dug summer. It also helped that the com- itself into a hole. All of Asia is watching pany committed to “integrate party- A ustralia, India, Japan, and intently to see who will blink in the cur- building work into every aspect and the United States have rent Australia-China standoff. In many step of the process of film and TV con- perfectly legitimate con- ways, the outcome is predetermined. tent creation.” cerns about China. It will If Beijing blinks, other countries may be uncomfortable living follow Australia in humiliating China. If you come around on their terms, with a more powerful China. And it’s Hence, effectively, Australia has blocked the authorities are usually ready to wel- equally legitimate for them to hedge by it into a corner. come you back into their good graces. cooperating in the Quadrilateral Secu- When Disney was expelled from China rity Dialogue, informally known as the And China can afford to wait. As the in 1997, the entertainment titan apolo- Quad. Unfortunately, the Quad will not Australian scholar Hugh White said: gized and hired former U.S. Secretary of alter the course of Asian history for two “The problem for Canberra is that State Henry Kissinger to help normalize simple reasons: First, the four countries China holds most of the cards. Power relations for the second time—but this in international relations lies with the time between the Magic Kingdom and country that can impose high costs on the Middle Kingdom. “In Chinese law, another country at a low cost to itself. if you own up to your mistakes, your This is what China can do to Austra- sentence gets reduced,” a film industry lia, but [Australian Prime Minister] insider in Beijing told the Washington Scott Morrison and his colleagues do Post in February 1999. not seem to understand that.” Signifi- cantly, in November 2019, former Prime The state’s deliberate jostling of the Minister Paul Keating warned his fel- industry has not come without push- low Australians that the Quad would back. Amid the pandemic in June 2020, not work. “More broadly, the so-called the vice president of Bona Film Group ‘Quadrilateral’ is not taking off,” he told jumped to his death in Beijing after the Australian Strategic Forum. “India decrying the government on social remains ambivalent about the U.S. media for failing to support the waver- agenda on China and will hedge in any ing film industry. But dissension rarely activism against China. A rapproche- lasts as businesspeople consent to the ment between Japan and China is also hand-in-glove relationship that paves in evidence … so Japan is not signing the way for their future success. up to any program of containment 11F O R E I G N P O L I C Y.C O M

of China.” While India has clearly number of face-to-face encounters interests and historical vulnerabilities hardened its position on China since between Chinese and Indian soldiers Keating spoke in 2019, it is unlikely to along the border. Such encounters of the four countries will make the ratio- become a clear U.S. ally. always lead to accidents, one of which happened in June 2020. Since then, a nale for the Quad less and less tenable. Japan is also vulnerable but in a dif- tsunami of anti-China sentiment has ferent way. Australia is fortunate to have swept across India. Over the next few Here’s one leading indicator: No other friendly neighbors in the Association of years, relations will go downhill. The Southeast Asian Nations. Japan has only avalanche has been triggered. Asian country—not even the staunch- unfriendly neighbors: China, Russia, and South Korea. It has difficult, even tense, Yet China will be patient because est U.S. ally, South Korea—is rushing to relations with all three. It can manage time is working in its favor. In 1980, the difficult relations with Russia and South economies of China and India were the join the Quad. The future of Asia will be Korea; both have smaller economies. same size. By 2020, China’s had grown But the Japanese are acutely aware that five times larger. The longer-term rela- written in four letters, RCEP, and not they now have to adjust to a much more tionship between two powers always powerful China again. Yet this is not a depends, in the long run, on the relative the four letters in Quad. Q new phenomenon. With the exception sizes of the two economies. The Soviet of the first half of the 20th century, Japan Union lost the Cold War because the KISHORE MAHBUBANI is a distinguished has almost always lived in peace with its U.S. economy could vastly outspend fellow at the National University of more powerful neighbor, China. it. Similarly, just as the United States Singapore’s Asia Research Institute. presented China with a major geopoliti- As the East Asia scholar Ezra Vogel cal gift by withdrawing from the Trans- EUROPE wrote in 2019, “No countries can com- Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agree- pare with China and Japan in terms ment in 2017, India did China a major British Prime of the length of their historical con- geopolitical favor by not joining the Minister Is tact: 1,500 years.” As he observed in Regional Comprehensive Economic a Broken Job his book China and Japan, the two Partnership (RCEP). Economics is countries maintained deep cultural where the big game is being played. By Mark Garnett ties throughout much of their past, but With the United States staying out China, with its great civilization and of TPP and India out of RCEP, a mas- If and when British Prime Minister resources, had the upper hand. If, for sive economic ecosystem centered on Boris Johnson leads the Conser- most of 1,500 years, Japan could live China is evolving in the region. Here’s vative Party into another election, in peace with China, it can revert to one statistic to ponder on: In 2009, the contest will almost certainly that pattern again for the next 1,000 the size of the retail goods market in be dominated by his handling of years. However, as in the famously slow China was $1.8 trillion compared with the coronavirus pandemic. Prior to his Kabuki plays in Japan, the changes $4 trillion for that market in the United government’s seemingly effective vac- in the relationship will be very slight States. Ten years later, the respec- cination campaign, Johnson’s perfor- and incremental, with both sides mov- tive numbers were $6 trillion and mance did not have many defenders: ing gradually and subtly into a new $5.5 trillion. China’s total imports in Britain suffered proportionally more modus vivendi. They will not become the coming decade will likely exceed deaths in each of the successive waves friends anytime soon, but Japan will $22 trillion. Just as the massive U.S. of outbreaks than many countries in signal subtly that it understands Chi- consumer market in the 1970s and Europe and endured more severe lock- na’s core interests. Yes, there will be 1980s defeated the Soviet Union, the downs as well. For Johnson’s critics, bumps along the way, but China and massive and growing Chinese con- this was more than a product of poor Japan will adjust slowly and steadily. sumer market will be the ultimate decider of the big geopolitical game. India and China have the opposite problem. As two old civilizations, they This is why the Quad’s naval exer- have also lived side by side over millen- cises in the Indian Ocean—or its plans, niums. However, they had few direct announced in March, to support corona- contacts, effectively kept apart by the virus vaccine production in Asia—will Himalayas. Unfortunately, modern not move the needle of Asian history. technology has made the Himalayas Over time, the different economic surmountable. Hence, the increasing 12 S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

ARGUMENTS LEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGES luck but rather entirely in keeping with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson challenges like the coronavirus pan- his eccentric personality and absent- takes questions during a news demic. Having convinced herself that minded approach to governance when Britain’s political establishment was denied his preferred role as the purveyor conference at No. 10 Downing St. complicit in, and indeed had com- of positive news. in London on Feb. 22. pounded, the country’s postwar decline, she identified unelected bureaucrats Johnson hasn’t made it easy for is a consequence of globalization, of as the easiest target for reform and his supporters to defend his manage- which the United Kingdom had been a embarked on a coordinated assault. rial skills. But there is another line of pioneer in the 19th century but which, Over time, this turned public servants defense available, one that the British inexorably, would have reduced its rel- devoted to the long-term national inter- public deserves to consider. The prob- ative status even without the impact of est into unquestioning enforcers of the lem might not be solely that Johnson two ruinous world wars. The country’s whims of the party that happened to has performed the job of prime minister acute vulnerability to developments hold office at any given time. poorly during this latest national crisis outside its borders should have been but rather that the job of prime min- common knowledge among 2016 vot- This hollowing out of the British ister, even in normal circumstances, ers, thanks to the damage inflicted by state was partly institutional; gov- has become too dysfunctional for any- the credit crunch that began to affect ernment departments were broken one to fulfill. financial institutions in 2007. up into numerous semi-autonomous agencies purportedly in the interests One of the most serious problems The prime minister at the time, Gor- of efficiency. However, the only ben- British leaders face is almost entirely don Brown, demonstrated Britain’s eficiaries of this process were elected self-inflicted. Every prime minister continued relevance by promoting a ministers, who could now pass the since 1945 has succumbed, to differ- coordinated global response to this eco- buck for glaring errors committed ent degrees, to a self-defeating compul- nomic disaster. However, his efforts within their departmental remits. At sion to overestimate Britain’s capacity to were not appreciated by British vot- the same time, the reduction of direct influence global developments. Succes- ers, who had been taught that the world control over policy outcomes made it sive prime ministers and their speech- automatically looked toward Britain in more difficult for the elected heads of writers have indulged in rhetoric times of trouble. Far from congratulat- government departments to claim any suggesting the country has vast stores ing Brown on his initiatives, before the credit for policies that (through accident of international influence. Intended to 2010 general election, Cameron and more than design) achieved their stated please the public, it has instead merely the Conservatives were widely believed objectives. As a logical consequence, set the country up for disappointment. when they blamed the prime minister ministers began to equate success with Nationalist rhetoric formed a significant and his colleagues for economic devel- favorable short-term media responses part of the mood music that convinced opments that were far beyond Britain’s to policy announcements. Rather than a narrow majority of voters in 2016 that control. consulting civil servants with relevant Brexit would be a risk-free venture. knowledge, they closeted themselves The hobbling of the office of prime with special advisors and spin doctors, Even relatively levelheaded Prime minister accelerated profoundly during who were paid from the public purse to Minister David Cameron regularly the tenure of Cameron’s Conservative massage their tender egos. This ten- expressed this type of nationalism, predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, from dency began under Thatcher but found which contributed to his own inabil- 1979 to 1990. By inspiring an attack on its full fruition during the premiership ity to eventually rebuff the Brexiteer the competence of the British state, she of Tony Blair (1997-2007), who estab- slogan of “Take Back Control” in the contributed to its deterioration and lished the ethos for every member of his 2016 referendum. Cameron was better ultimately left it incapable of meeting administration by letting it be known placed than anyone to argue that the that he only wanted to be associated British state had limited capacity to take with positive news stories. control of anything beyond the pay and pensions of its employees—but if he had The undermining of state authority attempted this crucial step into the real is not unique to Britain among liberal world, he would have looked like one of democracies, but it is more notewor- the so-called defeatists who, allegedly, thy since the British state (unlike its had sold Britain short since 1945. continental counterparts) was highly reputed for its wartime performance In large part, of course, the inability and this feeling took much longer to of the British state to exercise more than a modicum of control over its decisions 13F O R E I G N P O L I C Y.C O M

fade away. Even during the Thatcher of televised leader debates in 2010. How- malfunctions that have turned palpably years, individual ministers were well- ever, the weekly Prime Minister’s Ques- underqualified individuals like Johnson known figures who commanded con- tions (PMQs), though still ostensibly a and Corbyn into plausible applicants siderable public respect, and many parliamentary occasion, have become for the top job in British politics in the people continued to think that “White- presidential bids for electoral support first place and how public expectations hall knows best” (a reference to the seat since the proceedings of the House of of governments and their leaders have of the British civil service). Since then, Commons were first televised in 1989. been lowered so far that Johnson’s polit- ministerial profiles have declined in Johnson has completed the task of ical career might still survive his disas- tandem with the undermining of the making PMQs into a weekly version of trous handling of the pandemic. Q state so that under Johnson the best- electoral leader debates by refusing to known figures tend to be the ones answer questions from Labour’s Sir Keir MARK GARNETT is a senior lecturer in the who are held up to the greatest ridi- Starmer, the leader of the opposition, department of politics, philosophy, cule because of ill-advised utterances and instead asking what Starmer would and religion at Lancaster University or failed policies. The old idea that the do if his party were in office. and the author of The British Prime British prime minister should be “first Minister in an Age of Upheaval. among equals” in a functioning cabinet Compared with the situation before system can no longer be squared with 1979, Britain is now a country that does Where Face developments that no senior politician not lend itself to two-party politics. Pro- Masks Are can resist. Only the Treasury retains any portional representation in general elec- Required but of its old reputation because its deci- tions is only opposed by people with a Burqas Are sions have a direct impact on the public vested interest in the continuation of Banned rather than being implemented through a system that forces the best informed a network of arm’s-length institutions and least tribal voters to vote against By Rim-Sarah Alouane that may or may not comply with a min- the party they dislike the most. A well- ister’s bidding. advised prime minister would cam- Switzerland, hard-hit by the paign energetically for reform (unlike coronavirus pandemic, has As the cabinet has lost repute indi- Cameron, who spoke against even a been in a partial shutdown vidually and collectively, the prime modest departure from the first-past- since January. Face masks minister has become ever more prom- the-post system in a 2011 referendum) are mandatory in most inent in media coverage of British pol- since the current situation of perpetual public spaces, including on mass transit itics—without enjoying a modicum of head-to-head campaigning against the and the country’s idyllic ski slopes. But the power to realize the expectations opposition leader is a demeaning exer- that reality didn’t stop a slim majority of the public. Above all, the popular- cise that impairs the governance of the of Swiss voters from approving a ban ity of the prime minister has come to country. Once the current global crisis on full-face coverings in public spaces be viewed as the key factor in the elec- is over, parties should also remove the in a March 7 referendum. toral fortunes of his or her party. The final choice of leader from their grass- hollowing out of the state’s governing roots party members. These reforms, The new ban wasn’t motivated by anti- capacity has coincided with demo- adopted by both major U.K. parties since mask sentiment. In fact, it won’t apply graphic changes that have eroded the 1979 in desperate attempts to keep their to facial coverings worn for health rea- old link between social class and par- members happy, have done nothing for sons—now or after the pandemic. Rather, tisan allegiance. Since few voters now the morale of ordinary voters, who are the measure was aimed at a minuscule give automatic support to the party now faced with unpopularity contests minority of Muslim women who wear that supposedly upholds the interests like the December 2019 general election the burqa or niqab. And while similar of their class, increasingly they base between Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn. initiatives in neighboring countries have their electoral choices on perceptions always been controversial, the deeply of competence. The most convenient Johnson’s supporters continue ironic timing of Switzerland’s burqa ban way to assess the competing parties is to insist that British voters dodged a to judge the qualities of rival leaders. bullet by siding with the incumbent prime minister rather than the former Thus, even though Britain retains a Labour leader. One would hope that parliamentary system of government, there were other, more objective observ- since 1979 it has gradually adopted pres- ers who spent their enforced solitude idential-style elections. The key land- during Johnson’s repeated semi-lock- mark in the process was the introduction downs wondering about the systemic 14 S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

ARGUMENTS FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES proves once and for all that efforts to ban A woman walks past parties such as the Federal Democratic face coverings were never about secu- a poster reading Union of Switzerland and the Ticino rity concerns. At their core, burqa bans “Stop extremism!” League. Because this fixation has con- have always been an attempt to margin- in German in Zurich, tributed to countless electoral victories alize Muslim women—and they have Switzerland, on for the SVP—transforming it into one of succeeded in bringing anti-Muslim sen- March 3, just before the most powerful parties in the coun- timent into the mainstream. a nationwide vote try—others have adopted its strategy. to ban full-face Switzerland’s referendum was the coverings in public. In left-wing circles, too, there is now product of a people’s initiative launched a narrative claiming that Islam violates by the Egerkinger Komitee, an advocacy be explained without the broader democratic standards and practices. group that includes members of the regional context: namely, Europe’s cri- Many Swiss leftists believe that Muslims right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) and sis of identity in a globalized, multi- are particularly susceptible to the use aims to organize against “political Islam cultural world. Switzerland is only the of violence and that they seek to create in Switzerland.” Arguing that “free peo- latest country to express and assuage a society based on religion as a pillar of ple show their face” and “the burqa and this cultural insecurity by managing the sociocultural and political order. niqab are not normal clothes,” the group the visibility of Islam in the name of In Geneva, the far-left is split between in 2017 collected the required 100,000 safeguarding European values. advocates of hard-line secularism—like petition signatures to put the issue to a the Swiss Party of Labor and its coalition referendum. On March 7, just over 51 per- Muslims have been part of the fabric partners—and those supportive of an cent of Swiss voters approved it. of Europe for centuries, but they con- inclusive model that recognizes mul- tinue to be misunderstood and misrep- ticulturalism, like the Solidarity party. Clamping down on the visibility of resented in media and politics, where Muslims in Switzerland is nothing new. Islam is often framed as an inherently The nascent Swiss debate about sec- Swiss Muslims have been under scrutiny violent religion and Muslims are por- ularism mirrors that of its more estab- since 2004, when Switzerland held a pair trayed as incapable of integrating lished French neighbor. In France, the of referendums on measures that would into European societies. While there promotion of laïcité—the French brand have eased access to citizenship for sec- is certainly some cultural anxiety— of secularism—has become a rallying ond- and third-generation immigrants. the natural result of rapidly changing cry for the political and intellectual elite The SVP’s strong mobilization against demographics on the continent—most who wish to erase Muslim visibility and the initiatives transformed them instead of the sensationalism is constructed, enforce assimilation under the guise of into cultural referendums on whether encouraged, and egged on by political legal neutrality. Muslims were part of the Swiss national parties that have a vested interest in community, a notion the majority of creating a supposed “Muslim problem.” Once a liberal tool that protected Swiss voters rejected. Then, in 2009, the The purveyors of these ideas seek to religious freedom and freedom of con- Egerkinger Komitee proposed an initia- convince the broad populace that Islam science, laïcité has been weaponized tive to ban minarets on the grounds that and Muslims are at odds with Western they symbolized “political Islam.” It was values. Right now, they are winning. approved by 57.5 percent of Swiss voters despite opposition from religious groups. In Switzerland, demonizing Mus- lims as hostile to human rights and free- In December 2014, the SVP first dom—of expression, religion, and sexual sought to prohibit full-face coverings orientation—has long been a pillar of the via a parliamentary initiative, arguing SVP’s electoral strategy, as well as that that burqas were a threat to national of other populist national conservative security. But the Swiss Council of States rejected it in March 2017 because the small number of burqa-clad women in Switzerland meant public order was not disturbed. There was also concern that a ban would have a negative impact on tourism from Gulf countries. Though the SVP and Egerkinger Komitee have been active for decades, Switzerland’s burqa referendum can’t 15F O R E I G N P O L I C Y.C O M

to target the public expressions of even more visible, only contributing to only jeopardize the very liberal values Islam that are deemed incompatible an increase of racism and Islamopho- it claims to stand for. Switzerland’s burqa with French values, however vaguely bia. The process is cyclical. ban is proof that the continent has yet defined. In recent years, both the right to view its Muslim citizens as capable and the secularist left have expressed While Muslims are targeted as a col- of autonomy and self-determination. If support for a more restrictive under- lective, veiled Muslim women bear the Europe really wants to save itself from standing of laïcité that effectively makes brunt of Islamophobic outrage—framed cultural decline, recognizing Muslims religious Muslims—especially women— as being victims of patriarchal norms or as full citizens is where it should start. Q disappear from public spaces. blindly following religious dictates. But far from liberating, burqa and burkini RIM SARAH ALOUANE is a Ph.D. The French debate about laïcité and bans often only serve to exclude Mus- candidate and researcher in Islamic dress reached a fever pitch in lim women from public life. Politicians comparative law at Toulouse the summer of 2016, when several cit- claim to want to “free” Muslim women Capitole University in France. ies across France banned the wearing without including them in that process. of burkinis, or full-body swimsuits. The And if these women do speak up, there MIDDLE EAST bans, which have since been overturned is a systematic distrust of the true free- AND AFRICA by the Council of State, were introduced dom of their choice and therefore of as an ostensible effort to curb “political their moral autonomy. The Arab Islam.” Likewise, in Switzerland, the Moment new burqa ban was won through allu- In all of this, it is important to remem- Has Passed sions to the specter of political Islam. ber that the number of Muslim women Across Europe, the term has proved an who conceal their faces remains van- By Vali Nasr effective electoral weapon. ishingly small in Europe. In 2009, the French newspaper Le Figaro estimated F or more than two decades, The problem is that political Islam is that only 2,000 women in France—out the United States has seen a vague notion that can mean virtually of a total population of 65 million—wore the politics of the Mid- anything when alluded to under the a face veil for religious or philosophi- dle East as a tug of war mantra of fighting terrorism. For some, cal reasons. In Switzerland, population between moderation and wearing a visible Muslim religious 8.5 million, that number is estimated radicalism—Arabs against Iran. But for garment, eating halal food, or simply between 21 and 37. These are fractions the four years of Donald Trump’s pres- having conservative social beliefs is con- so small they barely register. idency, it was blind to different, more sidered a step too far. As a result, author- profound fissures growing among the ities can interpret a mandate against If the statistical insignificance of region’s three non-Arab powers: Iran, political Islam very broadly, which risks Europe’s burqa-clad population seems Israel, and Turkey. curtailing civil liberties. France’s contro- surprising, that’s because anti-Muslim versial new bill “strengthening republi- parties across the political spectrum For the quarter century after the can principles,” which purports to fight have successfully inflated the Muslim 1956 Suez crisis, Iran, Israel, and Tur- “separatism,” is a case in point. population in order to provoke fear key joined forces to strike a balance in voters. In a 2017 survey conducted against the Arab world with U.S. help. Keeping political Islam ill-defined by Tamedia, a Swiss media company, is also a boon for Islamophobes. The respondents estimated—on average— SVP’s initiatives have succeeded largely that Muslims made up 17.2 percent of because the party has been able to con- the Swiss population. In reality, that vince broad swaths of the public that number lies at 5.1 percent, according Muslims who choose to make their to the Swiss Federal Statistical Office. presence visible by practicing their reli- gion—whether by constructing a mina- Besides burqa bans, it’s hard to think ret or wearing a burqa—are attempting of another instance where the public to Islamize the Swiss public. Then come would support a government initiative referendums aimed at erasing any sign that targets so few people. But it makes of a Muslim presence in Switzerland, sense in a climate where political suc- with the implication that Muslims must cess depends on fear—convincing vot- remain invisible to fit into Swiss society. ers that the traditional culture of Europe But these bans create an inevitable par- (whatever that may be) is in decline. adox: Targeting Muslims makes them What Europe must recognize is that the hypersecuritization of Islam will 16 S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

ARGUMENTS But Arab states have been sliding deeper U.S. interests and Israel are now famil- are also eyeing expanded roles in the into paralysis and chaos since the U.S. iar. What is new is Turkey’s emergence Horn of Africa and Lebanon while Arab invasion of Iraq in 2003, followed by as an unpredictable disrupter of stability rulers worry about Turkish support for the failed Arab Spring, leading to new across a much larger region. No longer the Muslim Brotherhood and its claim fault lines. Indeed, the competition envisioning a future in the West, Turkey to have a say in Arab politics. most likely to shape the Middle East is is now more decidedly embracing its no longer between Arab states and Israel Islamic past, looking past lines and bor- Each of the three non-Arab states has or Sunnis and Shiites—but among the ders drawn a century ago. Its claim to the justified such encroachments as nec- three non-Arab rivals. influence it had in the onetime domains essary for security, but there are also of the Ottoman Empire can no longer be economic motivations—for example, The emerging competitions for power dismissed as rhetoric. Turkish ambition access to the Iraqi market for Iran or and influence have become severe is now a force to be reckoned with. pole positions for Israel and Turkey enough to disrupt the post-World War in harnessing the rich gas fields in the I order, when the Ottoman Empire was For example, Turkey now occupies Mediterranean seabed. split into shards that European powers parts of Syria, has influence in Iraq, and picked up as they sought to control the is pushing back against Iran’s influence Predictably, Turkish expansionism region. European rule deepened cleav- in both Damascus and Baghdad. Turkey runs up against Iranian regional inter- ages of ethnicity and sects and shaped has increased military operations against ests in the Levant and the Caucasus in rivalries and battle lines that have sur- Kurds in Iraq and accused Iran of giving ways that evoke Turkey’s imperial past. vived to this day. The colonial experience refuge to Turkey’s Kurdish nemesis, the also animated Arab nationalism, which Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo- swept across the region after World War gan has been for some time suggesting II and placed the Arab world at the heart Turkey has inserted itself in Libya’s that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was wrong of U.S. strategy in the Middle East. civil war and most recently intervened to give up Ottoman Arab territories as decisively in the dispute in the Caucasus far south as Mosul. In reviving Turkish All of that is now changing. The Arab between Armenia and Azerbaijan over interest in those territories, Erdogan is moment has passed. It is now the non- Nagorno-Karabakh. Officials in Ankara claiming greater patriotism than that of Arab powers that are ascendant, and the founder of modern Turkey. it is the Arabs who are feeling threat- ened as Iran expands its reach into the A protester holds Turkish and Libyan flags in Tripoli on region and the United States reduces its Jan. 10, 2020, during a demonstration against Libyan commitment. Last year, after Iran was Gen. Khalifa Haftar and in support of the U.N.-recognized identified as responsible for attacks on Government of National Accord (GNA). Turkey’s influence tankers and oil installations in Saudi in Libya has grown after its military intervention in support Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi cited the Iranian threat as a of the GNA in the country’s civil war. reason to forge a historic normalization agreement with Israel. But the Abraham Accords are as much a bulwark against Turkey as they are against Iran. Rather than set the region on a new course toward peace, as the Trump administration claimed, the agreement signals an intensification of rivalry among Arabs, Iranians, Israe- lis, and Turks that the previous adminis- tration failed to take into consideration. In fact, it could lead to larger and more dangerous regional arms races and wars that the United States neither wants nor can afford to get entangled in. Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear capabil- ity and its use of clients and proxies to influence the Arab world and attack 17F O R E I G N P O L I C Y.C O M

In the Caucasus, as in Syria, Turk- Turkey’s military support for Azerbaijan unless those are fully resolved, their dif- ish and Iranian interests are interwo- now aligns with Israel’s support for Baku, ven with those of Russia. The Kremlin’s and Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have ferences could cause another breach. interest in the Middle East is expanding, found themselves in agreement worry- not only in conflicts in Libya, Syria, and ing about the implications of Turkey’s Iran is a harder problem. U.S. offi- Nagorno-Karabakh but also on the dip- successful maneuver in that conflict. lomatic scene from OPEC to Afghani- cials will have to first contend with the stan. Moscow maintains close ties with As these overlapping rivalries criss- all of the region’s key actors, sometimes cross the region, competitions are likely future of the nuclear deal, but sooner tilting in favor of one and then the other. to become more unpredictable, as will the With U.S. attention on the wane, Mos- pattern of tactical alliances. In turn, that rather than later Tehran and Washing- cow’s complex web of ties is poised to might invite meddling by Russia, which play an outsized role in shaping the has already proved adept at exploiting ton will have to talk about Iran’s expan- region’s future. the region’s fissures to its advantage. China, too, may follow suit. The United sionist push in the broader region and Israel, too, has expanded its footprint States thinks of China in terms of the in the Arab world. In 2019, Trump recog- Pacific, but the Middle East abuts Chi- its ballistic missiles. Ultimately reining nized Israel’s half-century-old claim to na’s western frontier, and it is through the Golan Heights, which it seized from that gateway that Beijing will pursue its in Iran’s proxies and limiting its missiles Syria in 1967, and now Israeli leaders are vision for a Eurasian zone of influence. planning out loud to expand their bor- can be achieved through regional arms ders by formally annexing parts of the The Biden administration could West Bank. But the Abraham Accords play a key role in reducing tensions by control and building a regional security suggest that the Arabs are looking past encouraging regional dialogue and— all of that to shore up their own position when possible—use its influence to end architecture. The United States should against Iran and Turkey. They see in conflicts and repair relations. Israel a crutch to keep them in the great facilitate and support that process, but game for regional influence. Although relations with Turkey have frayed, it remains a NATO ally. Wash- regional actors have to embrace it. The tensions between Iran and Israel ington should focus on improving ties have escalated markedly in recent years between not just Israel and Turkey Whether the Middle East’s future as Iran has reached further into the Arab but also among Turkey, Saudi Arabia, world. The two are now engaged in a war and the UAE—and that means push- is peaceful hinges on what course the of attrition, in Syria and in cyberspace. ing Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to truly mend ties with Qatar. The Gulf rivals United States follows. If the Biden But the scramble for the Middle East have declared a truce, but fundamen- is not just about Iran. Turkey’s current tal issues that divided them persist, and administration wants to avoid endless regional posture—extending into Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and the Horn of Africa U.S. engagements in the region, it must while staunchly defending Qatar and the Tripoli government in Libya’s civil war— counterintuitively invest more time is in direct conflict with policies pursued by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt. and diplomatic resources there now. This all suggests that the driving force It has to start by taking a broader view in the Middle East is no longer ideology or religion but old-fashioned realpolitik. of regional dynamics and making the If Israel boosts the Saudi-Emirati posi- tion, those countries that feel threat- lessening of new regional power rival- ened by it, such as Qatar or Oman, can be expected to rely on Iran and Turkey ries its priority. Q for protection. But if the Israeli-Arab alignment gives Iran and Turkey rea- VALI NASR is the Majid Khadduri son to make common cause, Ankara’s professor of Middle East studies and aggressive posture in the Caucasus and international affairs at Johns Hopkins Iraq could become a worry for Tehran. University’s School of Advanced International Studies and the author of The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat. Russian President Vladimir Putin (from left), Turkish President Recep MIKHAIL SVETLOV/GETTY IMAGES Tayyip Erdogan, and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani meet in Ankara, Turkey, on Sept. 16, 2019. Moscow’s close ties to the region’s key actors could play an outsized role in shaping the future of the Middle East. 18 S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

ARGUMENTS AMERICAS tain constructive ties with the United American governments have largely States and China simultaneously. In sought to position themselves above Latin America Colombia, right-wing President Iván the fray as the U.S.-Chinese diplomatic Is Caught Duque preserved Bogotá’s historically relationship has worsened, quietly con- in the Middle close security cooperation with the solidating ties with both sides. This of a Tech War United States but also made clear his year, however, that strategic neutral- administration had no plans to pre- ity faces an unprecedented challenge. By Oliver Stuenkel emptively exclude Huawei as the coun- After being subject to diplomatic pres- try prepares to build its 5G network, sure from both the United States and F or most policymakers in a stance surely welcomed in Beijing. China over the past few years, numerous Latin America, the best Latin American governments will have way to react to grow- Even Brazilian President Jair Bolson- to finally decide whether to allow Hua- ing geopolitical tensions aro, who projected himself as Trump’s wei to provide equipment for the con- between the United States greatest ally, tasked his vice president, struction of their 5G cellular networks. and China is obvious: stay neutral. Hamilton Mourão, with protecting Bra- This pits the Chinese firm, which has a Given Latin America’s geographic zil’s ties to China. Along with most of long-standing presence in Latin Ameri- proximity to the United States, grow- Brazil’s foreign-policy establishment, ca’s main markets, directly against U.S.- ing economic dependence on China, Mourão has long been an advocate of backed competitors—and there will be and historic aversion to long-standing neutrality as tensions between Wash- no pleasing both sides. alliances that limit strategic autonomy, ington and Beijing have intensified. leaders across the ideological spectrum So even as Bolsonaro made deals with Across the region, 5G technology and have largely decided to embrace a prag- Trump—including an agreement to Huawei’s role have increasingly entered matic stance and maintain friendly facilitate trade and to consolidate the the public debate, shaped both by fre- ties with both Washington and Beijing. United States’ role as a leading inves- quent U.S. warnings about Huawei and tor in the country, a space cooperation Beijing’s repeated denials of allegations With few exceptions, this strategy agreement allowing the United States that the Chinese telecommunications was largely seen to be a winning for- to use a launch site in Brazil, and the company would help China spy on Latin mula in recent years. Chile’s right- designation of Brazil as a major non- American citizens and governments. wing president, Sebastián Piñera, for NATO ally—the country’s economic As the U.S. government ramped up its example, sought to present himself as dependence on China deepened con- vaguely defined threats about “conse- the region’s most trusted interlocutor siderably. China is now the destination quences” if Latin American countries for both former U.S. President Don- of almost a third of Brazil’s exports, did not bar Huawei from their networks ald Trump and Chinese President Xi while only about 10 percent go to the and pick Western technology instead, Jinping. Mauricio Macri, Argentina’s United States, the second biggest buyer Chinese diplomats began to lash out center-right former president, and his of Brazilian products. against the United States; China’s center-left successor, Alberto Fernán- ambassador to Chile, Xu Bu, accused for- dez, have likewise been keen to main- China has also become the most mer U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo important trading partner for Chile, of having “lost his mind” after the for- Peru, and Uruguay. In Mexico, on the mer official attacked Huawei during a other hand, the United States remains visit to Chile in 2019. Huawei’s founder, the largest trading partner by far, Ren Zhengfei, said during an interview even though China has recently made with a Brazilian newspaper that “the inroads. Although trade with third par- United States treats Latin America as ties like the European Union remains its backyard. …Our goal is to help Latin important to Latin American economies, America get out of this trap and main- the last two decades saw Europe lose tain the sovereignty of each country.” significant market share in the region. No matter which side Latin Ameri- Given the importance of both China can governments eventually take, it will and the United States to Latin Amer- inevitably harm one of their two most ica, it makes sense that policymakers important geopolitical relationships. in the region would try to maintain a productive relationship with both. Some countries have made it clear But it is unclear how sustainable the that they will simply side with the high- strategy will be in the long term. Latin est bidder—but even that calculation 19F O R E I G N P O L I C Y.C O M

can be tempered by diplomatic priori- responses to political crises suggest. ties. In Ecuador, for example, the U.S. International Development Finance Yet the geopolitical toll of diverging 5G Corp. negotiated a framework deal in January that involved helping Quito decisions could be greater still, creating to repay billions of dollars in loans to China in exchange for excluding Hua- irreversible obstacles to greater regional wei from Ecuador’s telecom networks, but the deal has been criticized for cooperation in the future. After all, a potentially creating the incentive for countries to build up debt, among other significant part of the global economy things. In Brazil, the Trump adminis- tration convinced Bolsonaro to join the will be tied to new technologies—from U.S.-led Clean Network initiative to exclude Huawei, which so far includes autonomous cars and drones used for more than 50 countries, but in a humil- iating backtrack Bolsonaro later toned transport and warfare to communica- down his rhetoric against the Chinese firm and decided not to limit Hua- tion and global finance—and all of them wei’s role in Brazil in what was seen as an effort to avoid delays in the delivery will be subject to the new rules of the of Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines. emerging tech war. Mexico faces similar pressures. Although President Andrés Manuel Although the global tech industry López Obrador has not joined the Clean Network initiative so far—other than will be the most exposed, other sec- Brazil, only Ecuador and the Dominican Republic have done so in the region— tors will feel the pain as well. Growing the United States does possess signif- icant leverage over Mexico given the restrictions on technological firms have country’s far greater economic depen- dence on its northern neighbor. The quickly seeped into other related areas: Dominican Republic also decided later on to backtrack. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro Broader restrictions in banking and ven- listens to Chinese President Xi Jinping Paraguay, for its part, has opted for ture capital funding are already emerg- a somewhat peculiar compromise during his visit to Brasília on Nov. between Washington and Beijing. 13, 2019. Bolsonaro backtracked on ing, a trend that will inevitably grow to Although it maintains full diplomatic plans to limit Huawei amid a need for ties with Taiwan, it imports more from Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines. include other industries. For example, China than from anywhere else, and the government in Asunción is thought to only for 5G but also with regard to any the United States might be expected to strongly favor working with Huawei in its technological innovations that follow, 5G rollout, largely due to its competitive such as artificial intelligence and quan- consider limiting intelligence sharing pricing compared with its main rivals. tum computing. Huawei has filed more standard essential patents for 5G than with Latin American countries that use The decisions made now could any other 5G-related company. And color relations for decades. The debate China submits more technical docu- Huawei technology, a move that could around initial 5G building contracts is ments to the International Telecom- merely the starting point of a broader munication Union—which serves as affect the fight against the region’s pow- standoff. The United States and China the basis for debates about new stan- are on track to build their respective dards—than any other nation, a move erful drug cartels. technological spheres of influence with seen as an attempt to internationalize different technological standards not its own standards and make its compa- After Chile began its 5G auction last nies more competitive. year without banning Huawei from sup- The U.S. response—seeking to iso- late Huawei and push for its own stan- plying components, most Latin Amer- dards—has raised concerns about the negative consequences of two separate ican countries are now in the process technological spheres. Perhaps even worse for Latin America in particular, of defining the rules of their own bid- it is possible that the region’s nations will opt to join different spheres, which ding processes. Aware of the poten- could make their technologies largely incompatible further down the line. tial backlash their decisions may have Latin America has already paid a heavy price for its inability to jointly tackle on ties to Beijing or Washington, gov- challenges, as raging transnational crime, refugee crises, and incoherent ernments will likely either attempt to include caveats—for example, not ban- ning Chinese suppliers but establishing monitoring mechanisms in an attempt to appease Washington—or attempt to negotiate generous financial sup- port from Washington in exchange for limiting or banning Huawei outright. Whatever they decide, it is bound to have far-reaching consequences not only for individual nations but for Latin SERGIO LIMA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES America as a whole. Q OLIVER STUENKEL is an associate professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo. 20 S P R I N G 2 0 2 1





THE BIDEN PROGRESS REPORT We asked 25 experts to grade the new team’s start on foreign policy. 23

President Joe Biden’s foreign-policy motto is “America is back.” And he is losing no time: In perhaps the busiest start of a new administration since Ronald Reagan’s in 1981, Biden and his nascent national security team have corralled allies in Asia and Europe, rejoined global institutions, and turned up the heat on authoritarian regimes. He has moved quickly to revoke the Trump administration’s immigration bans and pledge cash to vaccinate the world’s poorest. What’s more, he has done all that amid what is still a devastating pandemic—and following the first violent presidential transition in U.S. history. Around the world, Biden is being met with a wave of goodwill. That will affect, for example, the U.S. position on the trade In the aftermath of his election victory, 79 percent of Germans, agreements on which many countries’ prosperity depends. for example, said they trusted him to “do the right thing” in world affairs—compared with only 10 percent who said that The new administration’s speed at moving to heal alliances of President Donald Trump a few months earlier, according to and reassert the U.S. global role is a surprise to many at home polls by the Pew Research Center. The sense of relief is espe- and abroad who expected Biden to be busy nursing the coun- cially strong among allies in Asia and Europe, whose citizens try’s wounds—a botched pandemic response, a half-frozen watched the Jan. 6 insurrection in the capital of the world’s economy, and a society riven by racial and political divides— leading democracy with a mix of horror and fascination. before turning his attention outward. Instead, a strong and experienced team led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken It’s as if Trump has been forgotten—and not just because and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan (who, like many Twitter has taken away his megaphone. Rather, it’s the others in the new administration, has written in FOREIGN exigencies of global politics that have old allies and new POLICY) has unleashed a flurry of real and virtual diplomacy. partners looking to Washington for leadership again. An increasingly confident, aggressive, and technologically As a result, the contours of a Biden-era foreign policy are sophisticated China is challenging the Western-dominated fast coming into focus. Great-power competition between global order on a growing number of fronts. Across the dem- the United States and China—simultaneously a global con- ocratic world, angry populists continue to mobilize—and test between democratic and illiberal models of govern- the United States just gave them a model for challenging ment—has emerged as central to U.S. policy. Add to that a election results they don’t like. It’s a very different world new emphasis on climate change, human rights, and using from the last time Biden held office. trade to create jobs at home. Biden seeks to strike a new bal- ance between U.S. interests and values, between domestic There is skepticism as well. Some governments were very concerns and global engagement. happy with the Trump team’s policies, such as those of Israel and the Arab world, which struck historic, U.S.-brokered On the following pages, prominent experts from around peace deals in the Middle East. In Asia, Trump’s tough tone the world take a closer look at Biden’s foreign-policy on China had many fans. And it’s still unclear how Biden will agenda—from restoring alliances to handling China to bridge the chasms between the moderate political middle combating climate change. FOREIGN POLICY asked 25 think- for which he has long stood, the powerful progressive wing ers to give us their takes on his first steps on nine key issues of his party, and the challenge from the nationalist right. and grade the administration on its start. —Stefan Theil, deputy editor 24 S P R I N G 2 0 2 1 Previous spread: Illustration by NICOLÁS ORTEGA

A Alliances: Leadership Restored A G. JOHN IKENBERRY, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY BY ANDERS FOGH RASMUSSEN, FORMER NATO SECRETARY GENERAL AND THE CEO OF RASMUSSEN GLOBAL Biden has brought back the core convictions guiding U.S. foreign Despite a packed domestic agenda, go soft on their commitments to spend policy since World War II: The country Biden has made great strides to restore more on defense. advances its interests by building the United States’ determined global and leading the international order; leadership. The world needed it. But the Biden has taken the first steps to alliances and institutions make U.S. big tests are still ahead. rebuild and reform our multilateral power more effective, durable, and world, not least by rejoining it. He needs legitimate; and global engagement Biden’s personnel choices are fault- to build on these steps to drag multi- sustains this order. So far, these less. Having worked with many of them, lateralism out of its malaise. We need convictions are promissory notes, I can attest to their skill and under- strong action by the free world to for- but the new team is looking very standing of their country’s indispens- mulate new multilateral standards—for creditworthy. able role in the world. example, in the regulation of emerging technology. A ANDREA KENDALL We’ve already seen the Biden admin- TAYLOR, CENTER FOR A istration coordinate more closely with Biden’s commitment to building the NEW AMERICAN SECURITY allies, from Secretary of State Blinken’s global democratic alliance is personal intensive conversations with European and unwavering. Some say he should The Biden administration is working Union foreign ministers to Biden’s vir- first focus on rebuilding U.S. democ- to revitalize alliances and multilateral tual appearance at the Munich Secu- racy at home rather than convening his institutions. Its actions are generating rity Conference and first-ever summit promised Summit for Democracy later helpful headwinds to Russia’s and meeting of the Indo-Pacific Quad. This this year. I disagree. The events in Wash- China’s efforts to weaken cohesion administration has set out clearly where ington on Jan. 6 gave us all a glimpse among democracies and dilute it stands on some critical fault lines of democracy’s fragility and the urgent U.S. influence in key regions and between freedom and autocracy, includ- need to form a common, mutually rein- international bodies. Already, the ing on Taiwan and Ukraine. forcing front line in its defense. How- combative responses from Beijing ever, we will soon need to see the Biden and Moscow suggest that Washington NATO is also finally in a position to administration flesh out a clear action has gotten their attention. move on and build its new strategic plan for how the summit will work in concept without having to worry about practice. The Copenhagen Democracy presidential tweets and tantrums. How- Summit on May 10-11 would offer that ever, Washington’s European allies are opportunity. also under no illusion that Biden will Illustration by KLAWE RZECZY 25F O R E I G N P O L I C Y.C O M

A- Economy: Tough Love on Trade B SHANNON K. O’NEIL, COUNCIL ON BY ESWAR PRASAD, PROFESSOR OF TRADE POLICY AT CORNELL FOREIGN RELATIONS UNIVERSITY AND SENIOR FELLOW AT THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION Biden’s team has smartly launched a Biden’s strategy for global reengagement on trade and investment. The admin- long-overdue review of global supply on economic policy has two elements. istration also intends to fold labor pro- chains. But its reflexive opposition to The first is reasserting U.S. leadership— tections, climate policies, and human trade is a knock against it. Exports subtly, not aggressively, as Washington rights into trade negotiations. Beijing’s create middle-class jobs. The needs to rebuild trust. The second ele- hopes of a de-escalation of trade dis- United States needs more free trade ment is to link trade with Biden’s other putes have already given way to the agreements—before other nations priorities, such as creating jobs and cut- prospect of rising tensions as Wash- rewrite the rules in their favor. ting emissions. Not only has he rejoined ington brings a broader range of issues the Paris climate agreement, but he also to the table. Some changes are in the A- MOHAMED A. plans to reengage with the World Trade air: Tough but substantive negotiations EL ERIAN, UNIVERSITY Organization—and work with allies to will replace the hotheaded rhetoric and OF CAMBRIDGE reform it. But while these actions reflect unilateral sanctions that defined the the administration’s affinity for mul- Trump administration’s approach to Biden’s historic fiscal relief package will tilateralism, Biden isn’t going soft on trade and economic disputes. Biden turbocharge U.S. growth and serve as a trade. His executive order reinforcing is likely to work with allies to pressure needed engine for the global economy. Buy American provisions for govern- China to change its economic practices. His team could quickly earn an even ment procurement signals his intent Contentious issues won’t necessarily be higher grade with measures to promote to forcefully protect U.S. commercial resolved more easily or quickly. But it productivity, defend against the interests. Biden’s agenda puts on notice will be a more rational and concerted growing risk of financial instability, and U.S. trading partners that might have approach—perhaps with more effective reinvigorate multilateral institutions. hoped for a less aggressive approach and durable solutions. B+ Pandemic: Making Up for Lost Time with an open checkbook but through- out the multilateral systems. Washing- BY LAURIE GARRETT, SCIENCE WRITER ton is discussing pharmaceutical patents AND COLUMNIST AT FOREIGN POLICY in the World Trade Organization and drug distribution at the Global Fund to Biden’s response to the COVID-19 pan- A- ASHISH JHA, Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. demic has unfolded at a breathtak- BROWN UNIVERSITY The Biden team is pushing to include ing pace and scope, domestically and health issues in the COP26 negotiations internationally. Even more important Biden is doing a great job maximizing in Glasgow, Scotland, in November and than the $4 billion he committed to the the response at home but could be backing the United Nations’ Sustainable COVAX Facility—which aims to level the more global-leaning. Engaging WHO Development Goals, which include a playing field for global vaccine access— and COVAX are good steps. What’s wide range of global public health pri- are his administration’s many diplomatic still needed is more aggressive action orities—from raising vaccination rates health engagements. For global health to combat the pandemic worldwide— to lowering child mortality to improving efforts that have long relied on U.S. lead- including by pressuring Brazil to access to clean water and nutrition. As ership for financing, innovation, and pol- better control its outbreak and by Biden said on Feb. 19: “You can’t build icy, Washington’s absence over the last ramping up global vaccine production. a wall or a fence high enough to keep a four years created a vacuum at the top. pandemic out.” He reminded us of what Now, America is back—not only inside should have been clear all along—that the World Health Organization and every country remains at risk as long as the coronavirus circulates and mutates anywhere else in the world. 26 S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

B Democracy & Human Rights: Enlist Europe B- NATHAN LAW, FORMER POLITICAL PRISONER BY ANNE MARIE SLAUGHTER, CEO OF NEW AMERICA IN HONG KONG Biden’s team gets an A for rhetoric— Which brings us to Biden’s greatest Biden had a decent start by putting democracy and human rights failing so far. The single most import- prioritizing democratic alliances at the forefront of public statements on ant thing he could do to promote and pressuring Beijing for its the Xinjiang genocide, the Myanmar democracy and human rights glob- human rights abuses. I expect coup, the destruction of democracy in ally is to reach a long-term accord with strong continuity on an assertive Hong Kong, the imprisonment of the the European Union so that serious China policy, including the crucial Russian opposition politician Alexey economic and regulatory pressure can implementation of the Hong Kong Navalny, and the assassination of the be coordinated. Europe is both Rus- Autonomy Act. But the Biden team Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. sia’s and China’s largest trading part- can do more to connect civil society Words matter: They create pressure ner. With U.S.-European alignment worldwide and treat the global to act when others demand that you on values, interests, and policies, the democratic recession with a clear live up to them. opportunities for successfully promot- vision, plans, and actions. ing democracy and human rights are Some of that action has been forth- far greater. Mobilizing the Quad is fine, B KELEBOGILE ZVOBGO, coming. The U.S. Treasury has imposed but it is a marriage of anti-China con- WILLIAM MARY or expanded sanctions against China, venience and lacks the ability to act Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, and others as an alliance. The Biden administration has taken while maintaining Trump administra- key steps promoting human rights at tion sanctions on many more, mostly Yet where is the EU in Biden’s plans? home and abroad, including executive related to democracy or human rights. No czar for Europe in the White House, orders to advance racial equity, no special envoy. Instead of going toe- rejoining the United Nations Human The problem is that these sanctions to-toe with Chinese officials in Alaska, Rights Council, and taking a tougher are not stopping or deterring democ- Biden would do better back-channeling stance vis-à-vis rights-violating racy suppression and human rights with Brussels, Berlin, and Paris, sending countries. But Trump-era sanctions abuses. Only when Washington and its top officials with the clout and credibil- remain against the International allies go all out and try to shut down a ity to start the long process of negotiat- Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor for country’s economy—as with Iran—can ing a serious long-term economic and her lawful investigations implicating a government be brought to the bargain- political alliance. It will be long, slow, Americans in alleged war crimes in ing table. The recent U.S.-Canadian- and frustrating—far less flashy than Afghanistan. European sanctions against China for macho displays of great-power com- its genocide of the Uyghurs were an petition but far more consequential. important but largely symbolic step. Illustration by KLAWE RZECZY 27F O R E I G N P O L I C Y.C O M

A- China: Accelerate the Pace B+ TOSHIHIRO NAKAYAMA, KEIO UNIVERSITY BY ELIZABETH ECONOMY, SENIOR FELLOW AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY’S HOOVER INSTITUTION AND THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS Overall, Biden’s China policy is off to a ship, among other pressing matters. The Biden administration has added good start. He has moved quickly to fill The administration has demonstrated smartness to Trumpian toughness key positions with top China experts. on China—a huge welcome to Quantity and quality are both high. refreshing unity in words and action, Washington’s allies and partners easily showing up both the early years in Asia. The more sophisticated the All the elements of a strong policy are of the Obama administration and all policy gets, the more complicated in place as Biden systematically follows four years of the Trump administration. the execution becomes. The end goal through on the pledges of his campaign. Biden quickly and effectively quashed is still not clear. Washington is rejoining international pesky rumors that the Pentagon was organizations and agreements, recon- pursuing its own strategy on China. He A- C. RAJA MOHAN, necting with Europe to reach a common scores extra points for not trashing— NATIONAL UNIVERSITY line on China, and reassuring Asian allies. either rhetorically or literally—the pre- OF SINGAPORE Biden has reaffirmed U.S. support for Tai- vious administration’s policies. wan and launched a review of U.S. mili- Essential continuity with the Trump tary needs for the 21st century, including But even if Biden was quick off the administration’s China policy is reas- in the Indo-Pacific. Just as importantly, starting block and has made all the suring for Asian partners facing threats he is keeping climate advisor John Kerry right first moves, he will need to accel- from Beijing, even as Biden better and his team in check until the terms of erate the pace to make it through his balances engagement and contesta- engaging with China are clear. to-do list. Because this is the A-team, tion. By integrating China strategy expectations are high. Coordinating with domestic economic and But Biden’s to-do list on China is long. vaccine diplomacy in Asia among the technological renewal, Biden lays the Progress is needed on technology pol- Quad was impressive, but the testy basis for a durable consensus at home. icy, the Trump tariffs, Xinjiang, and U.S. meeting between top U.S. and Chinese The appointment of a competent team participation in the 2022 Beijing Winter diplomats in Alaska in March revealed lends credibility to his strategy. While Olympics. There is North Korea, Hong that Biden has to move quickly to craft many China challenges await, a job Kong, the conflict over the South China a long-term China strategy that puts well begun is nearly half done. Sea, and the decision on whether to join Washington in the driver’s seat, some- the Comprehensive and Progressive thing both previous administrations Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partner- largely failed to do. 28 S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

C+ Middle East: No Damage, No Achievements B+ STEVEN A. COOK, COUNCIL ON BY MINA AL ORAIBI, EDITOR IN CHIEF OF THE NATIONAL FOREIGN RELATIONS AND COLUMNIST AT FOREIGN POLICY Biden says “America is back.” But in military support for Iraq. It’s early days, but Biden has kept his the Middle East, it’s not yet clear what Biden has created momentum in the commitments. His team is exploring being back will mean. ways to reenter the Iran nuclear deal, region by appointing a special envoy seeks to reform but maintain ties with As a candidate, Biden promised for Yemen and making it a priority. Saudi Arabia, and hopes to end the war to make reentering the Iran nuclear With the Saudi proposal to end the in Yemen. Biden is moving cautiously deal a priority in the Middle East. As war, Washington must now press Iran on Israel and the Palestinians. The president, he has gotten little traction and the Houthis to commit to peace. stage for Biden’s agenda is set—but putting the deal back on track—or con- To Riyadh, Biden has conveyed that beware that the best-laid Middle East taining Iran. Tehran has escalated he has concerns but that the alliance plans often go astray. and hardened its position, including will endure. restarting uranium enrichment. Fur- A- DENNIS ROSS, thermore, the regime’s proxies have He has an opportunity to build on WASHINGTON INSTITUTE escalated their activities across the the Arab-Israeli peace accords and FOR NEAR EAST POLICY region, from the Houthis’ rocket fire should seek to leverage the role the on Saudi Arabia to Iran-backed mili- United Arab Emirates can play as On Iran, Biden is sticking to his tias targeting U.S. personnel in Iraq. Washington reestablishes ties with principle of compliance for compliance the Palestinians. A two-state solution and no unilateral concessions. On Little has come from Washington but remains best but needs a concerted Saudi Arabia, Washington will not words. One notable exception was the U.S. effort to happen. check its values at the door but has Feb. 25 strike on a Syrian base housing clear interests in the relationship. On Iran-backed fighters in retaliation for Biden gets credit for the Middle East Israeli-Palestinian peace, the team attacks in Iraq. But a reactive, ad hoc team he has put together—including understands this is not the time for a approach is not yet a policy. experienced hands such as Barbara big peace initiative, but policies should Leaf at the National Security Council, still be geared toward preserving two Importantly, Biden and Secretary Brett McGurk as White House coordi- states as the outcome and actively of State Blinken chose Iraq as the first nator, and Tim Lenderking as special supporting the normalization process. Arab country to call. The gesture was envoy for Yemen. This is a knowledge- noted in Baghdad and the region, indi- able team that can bring about change cating diplomatic and perhaps even if it chooses to do so. Illustrations by KLAWE RZECZY 29F O R E I G N P O L I C Y.C O M

A- Russia: Engage, Deter, Speak Up C CONSTANZE STELZENMÜLLER, BY MICHAEL MCFAUL, DIRECTOR OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY’S BROOKINGS INSTITUTION FREEMAN SPOGLI INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES So far, we have Biden calling Putin In his first call with Russian President the pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch a “killer” and his secretary of state Vladimir Putin, Biden laid out clear Ihor Kolomoisky, and affirming the threatening Europeans with sanctions contours for his administration’s pol- U.S. commitment to deeper ties with over a pipeline. What’s needed is icy toward Russia: offering progress NATO. Fantastic start. Yet, ignoring a coherent trans-Atlantic strategy on arms control, reaffirming support Navalny’s pleas, Biden and his team addressing all the risks and threats for Ukraine, and raising concerns on decided not to sanction any of the Rus- posed by Russia in Eurasia and beyond. cyber-espionage, Russian bounties sian oligarchs underwriting Putin’s on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, inter- autocracy. They have not yet articu- A- ANGELA STENT, ference in the 2020 U.S. presidential lated a comprehensive strategy for sup- GEORGETOWN election, and the poisoning of Alexey porting democrats in Russia, Belarus, UNIVERSITY Navalny. In other words, engage with Ukraine, Georgia, and Armenia. One the Kremlin where interests overlap, way to help meet regional demand Biden will work with Russia on issues deter Putin’s belligerent foreign pol- for U.S. engagement would be to re- of vital national interest, including icies, and speak up on human rights appoint a special envoy to Ukraine— arms control and climate change, but abuses in Russia. Perfect. Biden’s team but expand the post’s writ to include push back against malign activities. then matched ambition with action, the whole region. But the administra- The rhetoric has been consistent extending the New START arms con- tion is still in its early days and operat- and tough. At best, this will remain a trol treaty for five years, sanctioning ing with a skeletal senior staff. Before compartmentalized relationship where some of those responsible for Naval- we give Biden the next grade, let him cooperation and competition coexist. ny’s poisoning and arrest as well as get his full team on the field. A Immigration: But Can He Fight? Mexico to invest in the Northern Trian- gle countries—El Salvador, Guatemala, BY JORGE CASTAÑEDA, PROFESSOR AT NEW YORK UNIVERSITY and Honduras—makes sense as long as AND FORMER MEXICAN FOREIGN MINISTER the amounts are meaningful. Granting Venezuelans in the United States tem- Biden’s first significant move was to undo C+ VIVEK WADHWA, porary protection status also deserves his predecessor’s disastrous and xeno- HARVARD LAW SCHOOL applause. Still, I have two doubts. The phobic policies: stopping construction first is that the bill in Congress does not of the border wall, eliminating the travel Biden gets an A+ for his humanity and address future migration flows that will ban targeting Muslims, restoring asy- compassion for the undocumented inevitably continue, mainly due to Mex- lum hearings on U.S. soil, reinstating and his determination to fix a ico’s tanking economy. A major tempo- protections for undocumented minors, primary cause of hemorrhaging U.S. rary worker program, or a significant and suspending at least some deporta- competitiveness—the exodus of increase in H-2A and H-2B employ- tions of nonviolent offenders. All these skilled talent. But his immigration ment visas, especially for Mexicans, is are laudable decisions. A second land- plan is a kitchen sink of demands that an indispensable complement to the reg- mark step was to send major immigration has almost no chance of passing in ularization of unauthorized individuals reform legislation to the U.S. Congress. the U.S. Senate. By demanding all or currently in the United States. Progress Legalizing the status of more than 11 mil- nothing, Biden will get nothing. on worker visas is also politically indis- lion undocumented people and giving pensable in order to secure some Repub- them a path to citizenship is, as Biden lican votes. Which leads to my second would put it, a big deal. Working with doubt: Is Biden really willing to fight— busting the filibuster if necessary—in order to get immigration reform done? 30 S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

B Climate: Practical, Not Grandiose B CONNIE HEDEGAARD, FORMER EU CLIMATE BY TED NORDHAUS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND ACTION COMMISSIONER CO FOUNDER OF THE BREAKTHROUGH INSTITUTE Rejoining the Paris Agreement, very Climate change will take many decades Energy departments. Thus far, his plans strong staff appointments, and John to effectively address, so it’s difficult to have ignored the call for emissions caps, Kerry’s first trip to Brussels have grade Biden just 100 days into his term. carbon taxes, and massive new regulation raised expectations that Washington Judged against his own rhetoric—that for a quieter but ultimately more effec- will not only say the right things— we are in an unfolding climate emer- tive climate policy: efforts to develop and but also start to do them. Getting an gency, have only a decade to address it, deploy technology and infrastructure, A would require concrete policies to and must completely decarbonize the sector by sector, with an eye toward the achieve further emissions cuts and electrical grid by 2035—Biden would get enormous engineering and system-level U.S. carbon neutrality by 2050. an F, the grade that the Sunrise Move- challenges associated with deeply decar- ment memorably gave his climate pro- bonizing a large, modern economy. A- JULIAN BRAVE posal in the heat of the Democratic NOISECAT, DATA primary season. Should Biden succeed in passing a FOR PROGRESS major infrastructure package with real But a failing grade would not so money to build long-distance power Biden quickly made the climate much reflect policy as the reality that transmission lines; expand railroads, crisis a top priority for his no U.S. president is actually going to public transit, and electric vehicle administration. While this has advance a climate agenda consistent charging infrastructure; commercial- been celebrated, bigger tests lie with the grandiose ambitions to which ize next-generation nuclear, carbon cap- ahead as a more complicated the activist community demands fealty. ture, geothermal, and energy storage political dance unfolds between Despite headline-grabbing executive technologies; and improve the envi- global collaboration, diplomatic orders and Biden’s decision to rejoin ronmental performance of U.S. agri- competition, and domestic the Paris Agreement, nothing on offer culture, I’ll raise his grade to an A. And compromise. This year, the from this administration will remotely if he is then willing to take on the third president’s climate legacy rides deliver on those demands. rail for U.S. greens—the various envi- on the outcome of the U.S.- ronmental statutes at the federal, state, hosted climate summit in April and Judged in relation to what is actually and local level that make it extremely congressional negotiations on clean possible, however, Biden’s start looks a difficult to build any of this infrastruc- energy infrastructure. good deal more promising. He has put ture in a timely fashion—I’ll be happy in place a strong and experienced team to make it an A+. in the White House and at the State and Illustration by KLAWE RZECZY 31F O R E I G N P O L I C Y.C O M

THE MOST Just like Roosevelt, Biden must show that VITAL 100 DAYS government still works. SINCE FDR BY MICHAEL HIRSH 32

Did any U.S. president ever “more divided now culturally, regionally, and on matters of have a more ominous first American identity—who we are—than we have been since hundred days? Fearing Lincoln and the Civil War.” In a way, Milkis said, Biden faces assassination, he slunk a more treacherous situation than Roosevelt: “There was no into Washington under the cover of night, in disguise, and insurrection at the Capitol during Roosevelt’s tenure, and few registered without public notice at a hotel near the White people questioned whether he was the legitimate president.” House. No sooner had he taken the oath of office than he began to violate it, suspending habeas corpus and arrest- Sean Wilentz of Princeton University also pointed to ing dissidents without trial. Meanwhile, no matter what he Trump’s trampling of the U.S. Constitution and postwar tried, the nation literally fell apart around him. global system. “The whole status of the executive branch is Yet that president, Abraham Lincoln, is today considered in shambles, and you need to rebuild that quickly,” he said. one of America’s greatest—the greatest in the eyes of many “Most salient is the mistrust in the Justice Department, given historians. That in turn suggests that the first hundred days the events of Jan. 6 at the Capitol. No modern president has metric is hardly an accurate measure of presidential success. inherited this kind of situation institutionally.” First used by Franklin D. Roosevelt three score and eight years after Lincoln’s death—when FDR rushed through emergency Against these high stakes, the consensus among nearly a legislation in record time to defeat the Great Depression— dozen presidential experts interviewed for this article is that many historians today disdain it as largely a media contriv- Biden’s first hundred days have been mostly successful, even ance designed to conjure headlines. as he has failed to bridge the partisan gap left over from the But neither can we dismiss the hundred days standard bitterly divisive Trump years. Starting on his first day in office, entirely, especially now, with Joe Biden replacing Donald Biden signed at least 50 executive orders, about half of them Trump at a time of multiple crises: a pandemic that has cost reversing Trump policies, including his withdrawal from the more than half a million American lives, a rolling cataclysm of Paris climate pact, immigration policies, border wall construc- natural disasters exacerbated by climate change, an economy tion, and the travel ban targeting Muslims. “I’m not making still bleeding millions of jobs, and a foreign policy that remains new law. I’m eliminating bad policy,” the new president said inchoate and aimless as America’s global leadership is in doubt. bluntly. (In fact, in his first two weeks in office, Biden signed A number of prominent historians and political scientists nearly as many executive orders as Roosevelt—who still holds who study the presidency suggest that this period is different: the record—signed in his entire first month.) that Biden’s first hundred days have mattered a great deal, perhaps as much as Roosevelt’s did in fighting the Depres- Then, on March 11, Biden signed into law the giant COVID- sion. (FDR coined the term in July 1933, when he gave a radio 19 relief package, passed on party-line votes in the House address reflecting on “the crowding events of the hundred days and Senate. It was perhaps the biggest job creation and which had been devoted to the starting of the wheels of the New anti-poverty program since the New Deal. His adminis- Deal.”) What the two share in common is the urgent need to tration has also dramatically expedited the distribution of show the American people and the world that, amid turmoil vaccines. On infrastructure and clean energy, the 46th pres- accompanied by widespread disillusionment with Washing- ident has also pledged to spend an additional $2 trillion, ton, government can still work at the most fundamental level. more than any predecessor has promised. As Transporta- tion Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in late February, “Now is “YOU’D BE HARD PRESSED TO FIND A PRESIDENT since Roosevelt the time to be aggressive.” At his first news conference, on who’s had a more important first hundred days,” said Sidney March 25, Biden himself invoked the hundred days stan- Milkis, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia. dard, vowing “200 million [vaccine] shots in 100 days.” Milkis had in mind Biden’s many executive orders reversing Trump’s policies and his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, but This frenzy of activity echoes FDR’s as he sought to reverse he added that these actions also take place in a nation arguably the laissez-faire approach of his own predecessor, Herbert Hoover, to the Great Depression. Richard Immerman, a presi- dential scholar at Temple University and former senior intelli- gence official under President George W. Bush, pointed out that both men also installed a “brain trust” of experts—for Biden, “a team that may be unparalleled in terms of their experience.” Despite a slow start in getting cabinet nominees confirmed— thanks in part to the impeachment trial of Trump in January and the former president’s refusal to concede and take part in a transition—Biden managed to install a series of longtime respected professionals to top posts. They include Lloyd Aus- tin for defense secretary, Antony Blinken as secretary of state, and Janet Yellen as treasury secretary. Biden pledged that Illustration by KLAWE RZECZY 33F O R E I G N P O L I C Y.C O M

his attorney general, Merrick Garland, would be the nation’s Social Security Act of 1935, for example, was part of FDR’s lawyer, not the president’s, as Trump appeared to believe. extraordinary “second hundred days.” What was actually a total of 177 days in 1935 also included legislation strength- Most of all, experts agreed that the sense of urgency to fix ening the Federal Reserve Board; the creation of the Rural the system is what most likens Biden to FDR. “There are so Electrification Administration; and the Wagner Act estab- many crises: the pandemic, an economy that in many ways lishing the National Labor Relations Board. Those funda- will have fundamentally changed during it—and of course mental reforms changed U.S. capitalism forever. global warming, an existential crisis … which the previous administration did nothing about,” said Joseph Ellis, another Like Biden, FDR faced continuing challenges from popu- well-known presidential historian. “Biden is doing the right list forces well after his first hundred days. Populism, of any thing by identifying those crises.” strain, is often a response to the perceived failures of the estab- lishment, and Roosevelt faced skepticism about his sweeping Despite Biden’s parallels to one of America’s greatest presi- policies. Even after his titanic success with the New Deal, FDR dents, it takes far longer than a hundred days for any consen- met with recalcitrance from the Supreme Court. This led to sus on presidential success to form. Biden’s foreign policy, his disastrous court-packing plan, a forerunner of what pro- for example, has barely gotten off the ground, despite urgent gressives are urging Biden to do in response to Trump’s three issues such as Iran’s nuclear program and ending the “for- conservative appointments. Roosevelt also faced a popu- ever wars,” as he has pledged to do. Trying to reverse Trump’s list challenge from a bloc led by fascist voices including the immigration restrictions, he also faces a new crisis involving anti-Semitic Rev. Charles Coughlin and, most threateningly, a surge of migrants at the southern U.S. border. Sen. Huey Long, the demagogic “Kingfish of Louisiana.” But Biden faces structural, social, and political challenges FDR evaded the fascistic threat when Long was assassi- that many presidents before him did not. Two decades ago, nated in 1935 at the height of his power and influence. But the great presidential historian Richard Neustadt famously Long’s “Share Our Wealth” program (which restricted annual denigrated the hundred days standard as bad history, arguing income to $1.8 million and guaranteed no less than $2,000 that FDR’s tenure was the exception because of the gravity per adult) was enormously popular, and, had he lived, his- of the crisis he faced, the incompetence of his predecessor torians believe he might have mounted a serious challenge to address it, and—crucially—his total control of Congress. to Roosevelt in the 1936 election. FDR enjoyed large majorities in both legislative bodies and called Congress into emergency session until June 1933. Biden could well face his own populist resistance ahead of Consequently, in the three months following his inaugura- the midterms in 2022. And, at 78, it’s not clear he’ll serve long tion on March 4, 1933, Roosevelt was able to ram 15 major enough to enact lasting change. Thus the gravest danger is bills through a compliant Congress, including the Emer- that at a time of what seems permanent polarization, “the first gency Banking Act, the National Industrial Recovery Act, hundred days has become merely a period of demonstrating and legislation creating the Tennessee Valley Authority, that you’re repudiating the previous administration,” said Federal Emergency Relief Administration, and Civilian Con- Julia Azari, a presidential historian at Marquette University. servation Corps. The humorist Will Rogers joked at the time: “They are passing bills so fast [in Washington] they don’t This has become especially true in foreign policy following even vote on them; they just wave at them as they go by.” By the breakdown of the postwar and Cold War consensus on contrast, Biden’s Democratic Party has a thin margin in the America’s role in the world. In the three most recent presi- House and a 50-50 split in the Senate. dencies, Bush repudiated what Bill Clinton did, inveighing against “nation building” (at least until he invaded Iraq); Other well-regarded presidents had slow starts, including Barack Obama in turn sought to reverse what Bush did (call- John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. “At some level, the hun- ing Iraq a “dumb” war); and Trump tried to destroy Obama’s dred days is an important notation in the sense that you’re see- legacy, in particular the Paris climate pact, his nuclear agree- ing the president’s initial leadership style,” said Lara Brown, a ment with Iran, and his trade agenda. political scientist at the George Washington University. “But in terms of actual performance—is this person going to be suc- This may be the most unsettling cessful or not—I think it’s tremendously shortsighted. I would dimension to the hundred days argue that for most presidents in the modern era, the first framework: Because so many hundred days is the beginning, not the end, of their stories.” modern presidents hew to it, it sends a message of dysfunction That’s true even of Roosevelt. His 15-bill onslaught in the to the rest of the world. first hundred days did much to bring the republic back from the brink of ruin, but his most important achievements didn’t come until later. The key surviving elements of the New Deal emerged only in the middle of his first term. The 34 S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

“Especially in a time of polarization, if you try to hit the For some presidents, playing up their first hundred days ground running with a fast start, you’re going to do more to help your opponents to unify than not,” Brown said. That appeared is good publicity. In his 1993 inaugural address, Clinton—an to be the case with Biden’s relief plan. Despite the president’s numerous attempts to reach out to Republicans—whom he admirer of FDR—sought to invoke the Rooseveltian standard courted for 36 years as a senator—not one voted for his plan. even if it didn’t particularly apply to his times. “Let us resolve And this may be the most unsettling dimension to the hun- dred days framework: Because so many modern presidents to make our government a place for what Franklin Roosevelt hew to it, it sends a message of dysfunction and unsteadiness to the rest of the world, with the very idea of U.S. leadership called ‘bold, persistent experimentation,’” he said, though all kicked back and forth, term after term, like a wayward football. Clinton faced was a mild recession. Even Trump at first tried THINGS WEREN’T ALWAYS THIS WAY. For most of U.S. history, no one made much of the beginning months of presidential terms; in to put out what his campaign called a “game-changing plan the 19th century, very few presidents even exercised their veto power. “Presidents were measured in the 18th and 19th centu- for his first 100 days in office.” But nearing the end of his self- ries the same way: The Constitution presumed the initiative would be taken by Congress, and Congress was usually gone imposed benchmark, he repudiated it on Twitter. for six months at a time,” said H.W. Brands, a historian at the University of Texas at Austin. “Over time, presidents would Yet now America’s very system of governance has been slowly come to recommend things to Congress.” called into question in a way that hasn’t been seen since the President Zachary Taylor, for example, spent the first months of his brief term in 1849 traveling around the newly expanding Great Depression. And first impressions—those first hundred country. He and his successors until Lincoln mostly equivo- cated on big issues and deferred to Congress while it fought days—matter once again. For Biden to win popular support, over the spread of slavery—ultimately leading to the Civil War. the key is to make clear to the American public that his admin- Hence, few 19th-century presidents are remembered for their achievements—neither in their first hundred days nor istration is mounting crisis responses, not new ideological even during their entire terms. The nation’s third president, Thomas Jefferson, was an exception in large part because standards or existential threats to the very system—and to sell his Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the new country. them that way. Obama, for example, failed to explain that he So, too, was James Monroe, who established hemispheric U.S. dominance as a principle, and Andrew Jackson, who aggres- was acting mainly to save the economy from collapse, by most sively asserted presidential power by opposing a national bank and forcing the migration of Native Americans but ended up accounts, loading up his 2009 stimulus plan with progressive wrecking the economy with the Panic of 1837. Perhaps the only other highly regarded president from that period was James ideas such as new green technologies and pushing for health Polk, who successfully expanded U.S. territory to the Far West. care reform even as the Great Recession raged on. Most of all, That limited concept of presidential power changed for good in the 20th century with Theodore Roosevelt, who took Obama failed to sell his plan as a major crisis response, set- office in 1901 after the assassination of William McKinley. Roosevelt was the first, Brands said, “to hit the ground run- ting him up for a big backlash in his first midterms in 2010. ning. He didn’t wait for Congress. He took executive action PREVIOUS SPREAD PHOTOS: STOCK MONTAGE/SCOTT OLSON/MICHAEL EVANS/THE WHITE HOUSE/HULTON ARCHIVE/BETTMANN ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES by launching antitrust actions and sent the message that his So far, the more experienced Biden has avoided this path, would be an activist administration.” Presidents, he added, “have been held to that standard ever since.” saying flatly that he’s going all out to publicize his economic Some presidents have sought to warn the public against rescue package. “I kept saying [to Obama], ‘Tell people what rushing to judgment; most famously, perhaps, Kennedy in his inaugural address told Americans that his New Frontier would we did,’” Biden recalled at an event in March, referring to his “not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this administration, nor advice when he was vice president in 2009. “He said, ‘We even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.” don’t have time. I’m not going to take a victory lap.’ And we paid a price for it, ironically, for that humility.” What matters about Biden in the end may not be what he accomplishes by his hundred-day mark but what his stature will be going into the 2022 midterms. According to Brown, that and Biden’s third-year agenda will likely provide the best assessment of his presidency—and whether he can win reelection in 2024. Perhaps no one knows this better than Biden, with his long legislative experience in the Senate. For example, he gave in easily when his $15 minimum wage demand was separated from the COVID-19 relief bill, say- ing he would work with Republicans on future legislation. “At the end of the day, the third year is the year presidents must figure out what their election is going to be about. That is their year to position or pivot,” Brown said. “The first hun- dred days are meaningful in that it is when typically the public gives the president the benefit of the doubt. But overall you’re better off kind of going slow, trying to co-opt your opposition.” But Biden, the oldest U.S. president ever to take office amid some of the nation’s worst crises, may not feel he has that luxury. Q MICHAEL HIRSH is a senior correspondent at FOREIGN POLICY. 35F O R E I G N P O L I C Y.C O M

THIS IS NOT A DRILL A lifelong diplomat laces up his boots. BY MARK PERRY 36

ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES Early in his term as pres- with military leaders, because he certainly did, but his pri- ident, Donald Trump mary contacts were with diplomats, not generals.” famously called Ameri- ca’s military leadership One thing the military knows about Biden is that he “knows “my generals.” It was a description that might have rubbed the State Department and knows it well,” said Adams, now a the military the wrong way were it not for his decision to fellow at the Washington-based Stimson Center. “And that increase defense spending by some $100 billion over three has shaped his views. He doesn’t view military policy as for- years. The spending spree, which included pay raises for eign policy.” In his years leading the Senate Foreign Relations those in uniform, solidified Trump’s standing at the Defense Committee from 2001 to 2003 and again from 2007 to 2009, Department and in the field. Many in the military, even in Biden saw up close the ways that diplomatic priorities could its most senior and skeptical ranks, supported Trump and easily be distorted by agendas set by the military. celebrated his off-the-cuff derision of progressives. As President George W. Bush began pushing for military The love affair didn’t last. Trump’s reproachful and mocking action against Iraq in 2002, Biden drafted a bipartisan reso- manner—“You’re all losers,” he said during his first full meet- lution that emphasized diplomacy over military force. But ing with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in July 2017. “You don’t know Biden’s resolution was unceremoniously buried, the victim how to win anymore.”—so undermined his standing as com- of then-Secretary of State (and former Joint Chiefs Chair- mander in chief that, by the end of his term, the military was man) Colin Powell’s pledge that America’s march to war sick of him, with 2020 election polls showing a preference for wouldn’t be a sprint, by Bush’s promise that he would pri- Joe Biden among all ranks, an astonishing slippage in Trump’s oritize diplomacy over force, and by military leaders’ reas- support among a group that voted overwhelmingly for him four surances that a war in Iraq was the last thing they wanted. years prior. “I was really shocked by how many of my former Powell, Bush, and the military all said they agreed with colleagues voted for the former president and openly supported Biden in favoring what Antony Blinken, Biden’s top for- him,” said retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, who point- eign-policy aide at the time, called “tough diplomacy.” Biden edly refused to mention Trump by name. “But when he [Trump] believed them and so voted in favor of giving Bush broad war turned on the military, well, the military turned on him.” powers—a stance he has been trying to explain ever since. And so it is that, even inside the military, President Joe Biden Biden attempted to recover his position in 2007, when is defined not so much by who he is but by who he isn’t—namely, the Iraq War was already a quagmire. He opposed the Bush Donald Trump. The difference between Biden and Trump isn’t administration’s troop surge to rescue the U.S. military’s that Biden is loath to confront the military—quite the opposite. position; proposed that Iraq be partitioned into Kurdish, For decades, his dealings with officers have been marked by an Sunni, and Shiite states; and supported Nouri al-Maliki as insistence on showing he’s not intimidated by them. But the Iraqi prime minister. But his opposition to the surge proved new president is steeped in the ways of Washington rather than a mistake when additional troops helped stabilize Iraq; his reality television. Before Biden has had any chance of applying proposal for a partition of Iraq was caricatured by military his deal-making powers abroad, he has already been using his officers as naive and uninformed; and his support for Maliki full range of diplomatic skills at the Pentagon. seemed ill-advised when the Iraqi leader’s anti-Sunni policies seeded the rise of the Islamic State. This sobering record led BIDEN REMAINS LARGELY A MYSTERY TO THE MILITARY, and there’s former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates to issue a harsh, a good reason why. While Biden served for 36 years in the and very public, critique of Biden’s record. “I think he has U.S. Senate, his experience with the military’s upper eche- been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national lons has been incidental. “We have to remember that Biden security issue over the past four decades,” Gates wrote in his headed up the Senate judiciary and foreign relations com- 2014 memoir, recounting his time in government. mittees,” said Gordon Adams, a former White House official for diplomacy, foreign assistance, defense, and intelligence Given Biden’s record, it’s hard to disagree. Yet, in nearly budgeting. “That’s not to say that Biden didn’t know or talk every instance, Biden not only favored diplomacy over mili- tary intervention, but he tirelessly argued for increased State Department funding—an always popular mantra that has actually done very little to curtail America’s penchant for choosing the military as its tool of choice in responding to foreign-policy challenges. From President Lyndon Johnson’s decision to send U.S. troops pounding into South Vietnam in 1965 to the present day, the State Department has played sec- ond fiddle to the Pentagon in dollars ($50 billion in spending compared with $740 billion in 2020) and in prestige—where the chairs of the congressional armed services committees 37F O R E I G N P O L I C Y.C O M

wield outsized influence and the once powerful head of the officers, but that turned out not to be true—at least in part. Senate Foreign Relations Committee toils in near anonymity. When Petraeus was named the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan in June 2010, Biden suggested they have din- Biden’s involvement with electoral politics has freed him ner together. The invitation took Petraeus by surprise, partic- from dependence on either the military’s largesse or its pres- ularly considering their earlier tussle over Afghanistan policy. tige. “We have to remember,” Adams said, “Delaware isn’t one But the disagreement was hardly mentioned by Biden when of those states that is dependent on Pentagon spending. It’s the two met in Tampa, Florida, where U.S. Central Command not as if Biden was pounding on the military to provide Dela- is headquartered. According to published reports, Petraeus ware with defense dollars.” Indeed, Delaware has consistently served Biden and Blinken (who is now Biden’s secretary of ranked near the bottom of states in receiving defense personnel state) sea bass, cucumber soup, Florida salad, and banana and contract spending—a paltry $651 per resident as of 2019. flambé—and ended the evening with a tour of his library. The message to Petraeus was obvious and welcome: Biden It’s hardly a surprise then that, after 36 years in the Senate wasn’t the kind of person to hold a grudge. and two stinging missteps on Iraq, Biden began his tenure as Barack Obama’s vice president with a deeply ingrained skep- That certainly wasn’t true for McChrystal, Biden’s most ticism about what the military said it could do—and what it contentious opponent during the Afghanistan debate. In could actually get done. That may help explain his strident June 2010, the journalist Michael Hastings documented how disagreement with the military intervention in Libya in March McChrystal, who was still rubbed raw by Biden’s opposition 2011, his high-profile disagreement with the raid that killed to his Afghanistan troop plan, greenlit his staff’s reckless Osama bin Laden in May of that year, and his staunch support and insubordinate comments on Biden and other Obama for removing all U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of 2011. It also administration figures in a controversial profile for Rolling helps explain why, even as Biden polled well with the mili- Stone. At the heart of Hastings’s account was an alcohol-fu- tary during the presidential election, senior military officers eled screed about Biden, including their nickname for him. retain a wait-and-see attitude on what he will do as president. Joe Biden wasn’t Vice President Biden, Hastings reported. He was “Joe Bite Me.” While McChrystal scrambled to save his BIDEN’S SEVERAL WELL DOCUMENTED PERSONAL CONFLICTS with job in the wake of the article’s publication, Biden telephoned military officers as vice president shed light on his diplo- half a dozen senior officers to assess whether they believed matic approach to dealing with the Pentagon. The common he should be fired. They did—and Biden endorsed Obama’s thread in those confrontations has been the way Biden has decision to replace him. But, as in the case of Petraeus, Biden insisted on holding his ground while also refusing to resort not only didn’t hold a grudge (“I didn’t take it personally at all. to scorched-earth tactics. I really, honest to God, didn’t,” he said in July 2010); he invited McChrystal to serve as a military advisor on his transition team. The most well-reported conflict came in the summer and fall of 2009, when Biden crossed swords with the military More than 10 years after Hastings’s revelations, McChrys- during the Obama administration’s review of U.S. policy tal supported Biden’s suggestion that retired Army Gen. on Afghanistan—where the conflict with the Taliban had Lloyd Austin be his administration’s first defense secretary. reached a tipping point. On one side of the debate was the The fact that Biden’s son Beau was a good friend of Austin senior military leadership (including Army Gen. Stanley (and regularly attended Catholic Mass with him) and that McChrystal, the newly minted commander of coalition Biden himself got to know the general during several trips forces in Afghanistan), who favored a substantial surge of to the Middle East also helped. Biden was impressed by upwards of 80,000 troops (a “fully resourced, comprehen- Austin’s low-key but well-informed approach to the region’s sive counterinsurgency campaign,” as Army Gen. David conflicts and his succinct but precise military briefings. Petraeus described it) that would tip the war in America’s Biden was also impressed by Austin’s command of arcane favor. On the other side was Biden, who argued that the military subjects when the two talked after the election. United States should focus on its original mission of defeat- ing al Qaeda, what the then-vice president called “coun- Crucial, though, was Biden’s growing conviction that Aus- terterrorism plus.” Through nine intensive meetings that tin wouldn’t be another James Mattis. Mattis surrounded began in September 2009, Biden cast doubts on the coun- terinsurgency strategy, offered alternatives to it, attempted Biden retains the fears that he to recruit like-minded military officers to his viewpoint— expressed during the Obama and lost. While the military did not get all of what it wanted years—that, in the end, a president (Obama settled on 30,000 troops), the president endorsed can be rolled by those in uniform. the counterinsurgency plan, a repudiation of Biden’s views. Biden’s outspoken opposition to the military’s proposal should have soured his relationship with America’s senior 38 S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

himself at the Pentagon with many of the same senior mili- Yet Biden inherits a military that is not only scarred by 20 tary figures who had served with him when he was the head of Centcom, which made the Pentagon’s E-ring (where all the years of war but, according to a recent poll, losing the confi- important decisions are made) seem more like the bridge of a Marine Corps amphibious ship than a civilian-run depart- dence of the American people—a stark contrast with previous ment. “I think it’s pretty clear, in retrospect, that James Mattis wasn’t a very successful defense secretary, even though he was polls that showed the military was one of the most trusted viewed as the original adult in the room,” a senior Pentagon civilian and Joint Chiefs advisor said. “The truth is that while institutions in the country. While a majority of Americans Jim Mattis showed up every day at the Pentagon in a suit, he wasn’t really fooling anyone. He was still in uniform; he was (56 percent) retain their confidence and trust in the military, still in command, and he was still General Mattis. That isn’t true for Austin, who has a highly refined sense of the relationship that figure has nosedived from the 70 percent registered in between civilians and the military. He knows where the line is.” 2018—an unprecedent double-digit dip in just three years. Finally, it was Austin’s support for Biden’s focus on diplo- macy over military intervention that most impressed the The Jan. 6 insurrection, during which the military seemed president-elect, according to a Pentagon official who was privy to Biden’s decision-making process. “Despite Biden’s slow to stop the violence at the U.S. Capitol, is one of the vote in favor of the Iraq War, he’s not an interventionist, he’s just not, and neither is Lloyd Austin,” the official said. reasons for this loss of confidence. But it isn’t the only one. While Biden’s progressive critics say there’s actually scant The military has been hit by a number of high-profile scan- evidence of this—they point to Biden’s saber rattling on China and the intervention in Syria—the new president’s first dals, including one involving a Navy Seal accused of war offerings on the proposed U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan reflect his focus on diplomacy. “It ought to be clear by now crimes—whom Trump pardoned—and the spectacle of its that reupping troop numbers on Afghanistan is not in the cards,” the Pentagon official said. “The first thing out of the most senior commander, Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Mil- box was a Biden proposal on recasting the Afghan govern- ment. This is all diplomacy. It’s right in his wheelhouse.” In ley, escorting Trump to St. John’s Episcopal Church during this sense, some former senior officials and military officers believe that Biden’s first year in office will look a lot like Bill last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests. Both current Clinton’s. “Clinton came into White House and appointed Congressman Les Aspin to take over the Pentagon. And the and retired senior military officers are quietly reflecting on message to Aspin was absolutely clear: Keep these guys under control and out of the headlines while I take care of domestic the events of the Trump-Mattis era, when senior military policy,” Adams said. “‘It’s the economy, stupid’ wasn’t just a campaign slogan. It was Clinton’s policy. My bet is that Biden commanders engineered workarounds of Trump policies, gave a similar message to Austin. That’s his role.” including a U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria and Trump’s DESPITE POLLING WELL WITH MILITARY PERSONNEL in the last elec- tion, Biden knew that among his first acts as president he proposed May 1 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. needed to shore up his support in the Pentagon. It was one of the reasons he reversed Trump’s ban on transgender per- “I don’t think there’s any doubt that we’re in the midst of a sonnel and then nominated two women (Air Force Gen. Jac- queline Van Ovost and Army Lt. Gen. Laura J. Richardson) civilian-military crisis,” said retired U.S. Army Col. Andrew to elite, four-star commands—a popular move inside of an establishment in which about 1 in 5 of those in uniform are Bacevich, a West Point graduate and president of the Wash- female. Just as important, the White House quietly told report- ers that, despite pressure from progressives in his own party, ington-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft the new president would maintain a level defense budget in line with Pentagon spending for 2021—easing fears that, in (where I also work). “It undermines, it erodes the single most his first year in office, Biden would slash military spending. important pillar of democracy that we have as a nation. That crisis has to be the first thing on the new president’s agenda.” Eaton, the retired Army major general, remains confident that Biden’s fundamental decency, his experience as a con- tentious skeptic during the Obama years, his appointment of Austin as defense secretary, his focus on diplomacy over intervention, and his intellect will help resolve the prob- lem. “Smart soldiers will always follow smart commanders,” Eaton said. “And the view in the military is that, no matter what they might think about his policies, Biden is smart.” Then, too, Biden retains the fears that he expressed during the Obama years—that an inexperienced president might be unduly influenced by the military’s ever confident, can-do mentality. That, in the end, a president can be rolled by those in uniform. Biden’s constant doubts, relentless questioning, and privately expressed niggling at the military’s claims during that era left an indelible impression. “The military doesn’t [screw] around with me,” he reportedly told aides as vice president. “I’ve been around too long.” Put simply, the military and its officers were able to defy Trump because he was in awe of them. Biden isn’t. Q MARK PERRY is a senior analyst at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author of 10 books on foreign policy and military history. 39F O R E I G N P O L I C Y.C O M

TWILIGHT TECHNOCRATSOF THE BY ADAM TOOZE 40

JANET YELLEN AND MARIO DRAGHI SHAPED THIS ECONOMY, BUT CAN THEY CONTROL WHAT COMES NEXT?

I On both sides of the Atlantic, disappointed expectations n recent years, the world has been regaled and fears about the future are helping to stoke disruptive with stories about the crisis of expertise. The era of the lib- nationalist and right-wing politics. If broad-based growth eral technocrat was over, we were told, killed off by the finan- cannot be restarted, the implications are alarming. cial crisis and populism. But if democracies find it hard to live with expertise, it seems they can’t live without it either. Of course, it would be absurd to blame either Draghi or At the start of 2021, two of the most contentious capitalist Yellen personally for the sequence of shifts and shocks that democracies in the world, Italy and the United States, turned has destabilized capitalist democracies since the 1990s or to familiar experts to chart a way out of novel political situ- the crisis of confidence these have triggered among cen- ations. If there is such a thing as a technocrat, Janet Yellen, trist liberals. But as people of huge influence and as repre- the new U.S. treasury secretary, and Mario Draghi, Italy’s sentatives of a class of experts who have ruled the roost for new prime minister, are it. the last 30 years, they can hardly plead innocence either. It For the last 30 years, both Yellen and Draghi have held posi- was on their watch that growth slowed, inequality between tions of high authority, culminating in the period between social classes and regions became ever deeper, and the risk 2014 and 2018 when they overlapped as the heads of the of inflation tipped into that of deflation. It was on their watch U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank (ECB), that the financial system was allowed to become a flywheel respectively, the two most powerful central banks in the of mass destruction. It was on their watch that the risks of world. They were chosen to wield power based on their exper- climate change and pandemic threats went unaddressed. tise and judgment but also because they aligned with the prevailing brand of centrist politics—Yellen more on the left, Whereas the market revolutionaries of the 1970s and Draghi more on the center-right. They have now been called ’80s were radicals, squashing the last bastions of the old back to the ramparts, at an age that would normally suggest left and bulldozing organized labor out of the way, Draghi retirement, to take on roles that are more political than ever. and Yellen came to the fore in the 1990s as managers of Yellen, the first woman to lead the U.S. Treasury Department, what is now known as the Great Moderation. That is not to is set to preside over the most audacious round of stimulus of say they idolized the status quo. As Yellen once remarked: any democracy in peacetime. Draghi, as prime minister, faces “Will capitalist economies operate at full employment in the the challenge of returning Italy to growth with the help of an absence of routine intervention? Certainly not. Do policy- unprecedented allocation of 209 billion euros ($254 billion) makers have the knowledge and ability to improve macro- from the European Union’s new Next Generation EU fund economic outcomes rather than make matters worse? Yes.” that was bargained at the outset of the pandemic. But their idea of policy intervention took the existing insti- Those are extreme tasks, demanded by the extreme tutional horizon as given. Not for nothing they came into situation the United States and Europe find themselves in. their own as independent central bankers—the political position perhaps least accountable to democratic politics and the quintessential policy lever of the neoliberal era. Inheritors of the market revolution, committed to manag- ing and improving the status quo, Draghi’s and Yellen’s march through the institutions has been glorious, but their careers have also been defined by constant adjustment to political and economic shocks that they did not foresee and could not con- trol. These shocks have driven Yellen and Draghi to explore the political and economic boundaries of technocratic power. Draghi faced that challenge first. It was the power vested in him as boss of the ECB that enabled him to change the course of history with a single sentence. Draghi’s defiant exclamation in the summer of 2012 that he would do “what- ever it takes” to save the eurozone was what philosophers of language call a performative utterance. Through his declara- tion, Draghi established the anchoring monetary authority that the eurozone had hitherto lacked. For much of the period since the 1990s, American experts of Yellen’s ilk regarded the project of European monetary union with deep skepticism. Condescendingly, they benchmarked it against the U.S. experience and announced that Europe was still awaiting its Hamiltonian moment. But since 2008, at the 42 S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

PREVIOUS SPREAD: CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES/EMILY WABITSCH/DPA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES/FOREIGN POLICY ILLUSTRATION latest, the tables have turned. Yellen and her colleagues in the macroeconomic problems. Those rigidities in wages and United States have come face to face with structural problems prices, in turn, also enabled macroeconomic policy to work. of their own—in the U.S. financial system, the country’s pro- It was because markets were slow to adjust that unexpected found social inequalities, its inadequate welfare state, and movements in interest rates, taxes, and government spend- its deeply polarized politics. The tensions facing the Biden ing could have real effects. Big, 1930s-style crises were not administration by the time it took office were so extreme that on the agenda. They were something that happened in the “whatever it takes” might as well be its motto, too. developing world. In the United States, secured by a solid and well-understood framework of macroeconomic policy, Yellen and Draghi are no doubt qualified, but the question the challenging problems were of fine-tuning. facing both in 2021 is blunt. Can they get a grip on the basic political and economic forces shaping their countries? The Draghi’s work at MIT was less intellectually generative fact that they are in the positions that they are in, under the than Yellen’s. But his dissertation is nevertheless revealing. circumstances we currently face, is not a reward for lifetime It includes a chapter in which he describes how planners try- achievement. It is a wager that they can deliver an escape ing to manage an economy subject to short-run fluctuation from the terrifying mess that 2020 found us in. Can they, are more successful if they focus on long-run goals. Long- in perhaps their last act, vindicate the last half-century of range strategy, regardless of short-term cost, will do better centrist expertise of which they are such prominent expo- than a hectic effort to optimize at every moment. nents? And will that require leaving most, if not all, of its basic organizing assumptions behind? Though they owe little to the Chicago school, it does not follow that Draghi and Yellen were not exponents of neolib- YELLEN AND DRAGHI ARE BOTH PROTOTYPICAL SUCCESS STORIES of eralism. On the contrary: They were strong advocates of mar- the postwar period. They were born just over a year apart: Yel- kets. Competition and properly designed incentives were the len in Brooklyn, New York, in August 1946, Draghi in Rome in recipe for productivity and growth. In the world economy, September 1947. In the 1970s, they both earned Ph.D.s from they favored the free capital movement and flexible exchange powerhouse economics departments on the East Coast of rates that defined the so-called Washington Consensus of the the United States: Yellen from Yale University in 1971, Draghi 1990s. It was Rudiger Dornbusch, the pope of international from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1976. macroeconomics at MIT and one of Draghi’s chief mentors, who described the project of his generation as being the tam- Yellen and Draghi were both trained as Keynesians. Their ing of “democratic money.” In the wake of the collapse of the careers and those of their collaborators are a standing refuta- Bretton Woods financial order and the U.S. dollar’s gold peg, tion of the cliché that the last 50 years of economic policy— the chief enemies of good economic governance were short- the period normally referred to as the neoliberal era—were sighted trade unions pushing for higher wages and vote-chas- defined by conservative Chicago-school monetarism or ing politicians. Once trade unions were curbed and politicians dogmatic rational-expectations economics. At MIT and confined to their proper tasks, monetarists hoped that prices Yale in the 1970s, they imbibed what was known as the could be stabilized by mechanical monetary rules. neoclassical synthesis. The central idea was that though the microeconomics of markets were important, markets But by the early 1980s, that had proved naive. For the would function properly only so long as the macroeconomic MIT crowd, what keeping money safe from democracy environment was set correctly. Keynesianism and market amounted to was placing it under the control of competent economics were not opposites but complements. experts credibly committed to providing markets with the stable framework they needed. The independent central In the 1980s, Yellen played an important part in shap- bank was their institutional bastion. ing the further development of the neoclassical synthesis known as New Keynesian economics. Working along- BY THE EARLY 1990S, YELLEN WAS AN INFLUENTIAL FIGURE in New side the likes of Joseph Stiglitz and George Akerlof, she Keynesian circles. It was no surprise when she was head- mapped how labor market imperfections could give rise to hunted by Laura D’Andrea Tyson, the chair of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, herself a MIT Ph.D. Their positions are not a and Yellen’s colleague at the University of California, Berke- reward for lifetime achievement ley. In 1994, Yellen was appointed along with Alan Blinder to but a wager that they can the Federal Reserve Board. Their role was to counterbalance deliver an escape from the the Wall Street-centered approach of the Fed chair and Ayn terrifying mess of 2020. Rand disciple, Alan Greenspan. It was a bruising experience. In 1994, Greenspan was determined to crush any possi- ble revival of inflation. He hiked interest rates, unleashing a violent bond market sell-off. The ensuing “bond market 43F O R E I G N P O L I C Y.C O M

1946 1971 1994 1997 2004 Yellen is born in Yellen receives her Yellen is appointed Yellen becomes Yellen becomes Brooklyn, New York. Ph.D. in economics as a member of chair of Clinton’s president of the from Yale. the Federal Council of Economic Federal Reserve Reserve Board. Advisers. Bank of San Francisco. 1947 1976 1984 1991 2002 Draghi is born Draghi receives his Draghi becomes Draghi becomes Draghi joins in Rome. Ph.D. in economics Italy’s executive director-general Goldman Sachs as from MIT. director at the of the Italian a vice chairman and World Bank in Treasury. managing director. Washington. massacre” scarred the first term of the Clinton administra- Democratic Party could consolidate a majority. The party tion. This was the moment when Clinton’s political advisor was increasingly dominated by the educated class, and socio- James Carville declared that he wanted to be reincarnated demographic trends in U.S. society seemed to be on its side. as the bond market because you could intimidate anybody. Clinton won in 1992 and again in 1996. But Congress was In fact, the drama was not in the economy, where inflation another matter. The 1994 midterms were a disaster that was ebbing, or inside the Clinton administration, which handed power to the insurgent right wing of the Republican was falling over itself to prove its fiscal conservatism. It was Party led by Newt Gingrich. For all their sense of having his- inside the Fed. It was Greenspan who was acting the maestro. tory on their side, what the modernizing technocrats of the Democratic Party faced, in fact, was a resurgence in conser- Unable to exercise any influence, Blinder left abruptly in vatism. It turned out that America’s rapid social, cultural, and 1996. Yellen departed in 1997 to take over as chair of Clinton’s economic transformation was splitting the country in half. Council of Economic Advisers. With the gloss on Ronald Rea- gan’s morning in America looking worn, Robert Rubin and GINGRICH LIKED TO TALK OF REVOLUTIONS. It was always a pose. Larry Summers sought to offer a new economic model—one What he was waging was more like trench warfare. The Italian that combined fiscal discipline with growth and full employ- political scene of the 1990s, in which Draghi rose to promi- ment. Yellen was a true believer in this “new economy,” insist- nence, was closer to an actual revolution. ing that private investment would drive a surge in productivity growth. To encourage competition, Clinton’s economic team Italy, too, was divided over the legacies of the 1960s and pushed the North American Free Trade Agreement. They also ’70s, but there the end of the Cold War and the Tangentop- smoothed the path for financial modernization, which meant oli corruption scandal of 1992 swept away the existing three- repealing New Deal-era regulations like the Glass-Steagall Act party system, in which Christian Democrats competed with and letting Wall Street off the leash. Environmental policy was communists and socialists. The collapse of the Christian also part of the mix. In 1998, Yellen played an inglorious part Democrats spawned the rise of a new right wing, headed by in the effort to get the Kyoto Protocol past a furious Congress. Silvio Berlusconi and the Northern League. Meanwhile, for It was her calculations that showed that the United States those Italians who since the 1970s had gravitated toward a could keep its costs down by buying in carbon credits from historic compromise between Eurocommunism and the left the bankrupt countries of the former Soviet bloc. wing of Christian democracy, the EU was the answer. Italy would be modernized by the discipline of vincolo esterno, or The reform program of the 1990s was a long-run project. external constraint. Enlightened rules set in Brussels and a The key question was whether Clinton’s new version of the 44 S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

2007 2014 2015 2021 Yellen says she does Yellen becomes Yellen Yellen becomes U.S. “not consider it very likely chair of the announces treasury secretary. that developments Federal Reserve. the decision to relating to subprime raise interest 2021 mortgages will have a rates. big effect on overall U.S. Draghi becomes economic performance.” Italy’s prime minister. 2006 2007 2011 2012 2015 Draghi Draghi gives a speech Draghi becomes Draghi famously Draghi launches a becomes that acknowledges the president of the says he would do quantitative easing governor of crisis in the securitized European Central “whatever it takes” program, marking the Banca mortgage business but Bank. to save the eurozone. what might be called d’Italia, Italy’s insists that it’s up to the “Americanization” central bank. the private sector to of the ECB. sort it out. REUTERS/GETTY IMAGES unified European single market, ultimately completed by a joint decision-making and labor mobility. It was a project not currency union, would set a high bar for competition and of stabilizing the status quo but of historic transformation. root out corruption and inefficiency. As far as Italy was concerned, after the signing of the Maas- Reform-minded Italians discuss in heated terms their attach- tricht Treaty in 1992, it looked like a very long shot. The coun- ment to such external props. It goes back to British and French try’s politics were in turmoil. In an unprecedented attack, the sponsorship of Italian unification in the 1850s. But the search for Mafia assassinated the distinguished magistrate Giovanni constraints wasn’t merely an Italian curiosity. The global finan- Falcone. Public finances were in chaos. In September 1992, cial order developed by economic elites—from the 19th-cen- Italy and the United Kingdom both crashed out of the Euro- tury gold standard to the gold-pegged dollar of the Bretton pean Exchange Rate Mechanism, the halfway house to mon- Woods system to the worldwide preoccupation with indepen- etary union. Draghi was in the middle of the fight. dent central banks after Bretton Woods dissolved—has always involved imposing constraints on policymakers. In the 1980s, Back home in the late 1970s, watching his family inher- devices such as exchange rate pegs were all the rage in Asia as itance being eaten up by rampant inflation, Draghi had well as Europe for signaling self-discipline to financial markets. bounced around Italy’s highly politicized university sys- tem until 1984, when he became an executive director at the The advice from economists, however, was equivocal. World Bank in Washington. He was not lured back to Rome Tying yourself to a conservative anti-inflation anchor like until 1991, when he was asked to take the job as director-gen- Germany’s Bundesbank had obvious attractions, but as much eral of the Italian Treasury. He was appointed by then-Prime as mainstream macroeconomics campaigned for price sta- Minister Giulio Andreotti, the spider in the web of Christian bility, both the Chicago and MIT schools favored floating Democratic politics, but Draghi’s loyalties were with the vin- exchange rates. All that was really needed for price stability colo esterno camp. Faced with the 1992 crisis, the choice was was responsible national monetary policy. clear. Unlike the U.K., Italy would do whatever necessary to rejoin the convoy toward monetary union. To redress the From the vantage point of the United States, that made national budget deficit, Draghi curbed expenditures. To bring sense, but it took the existing order of nation-states for down the debt, he drove large-scale privatization of Italy’s granted, which was precisely what European integration huge state-owned enterprises. Always a man of the markets, put in play. Support for monetary union implied a gamble on Draghi also pushed the Italian Treasury to adopt techniques eventual convergence and the creation of a more elaborate of financial engineering to juggle its debt mountain. structure of common fiscal policy. Ultimately, it assumed the emergence of a European polity and society that would facilitate It came at a considerable cost. Growth slowed to a crawl. 45F O R E I G N P O L I C Y.C O M

Many of Draghi’s former teachers at MIT, led by Franco Clinton-era “new economy” looked around for their vincolo Modigliani, his Ph.D. supervisor, went public with their esterno. They remembered only too well the pressure they doubts about the stringent Maastricht criteria for euro mem- had been under by bond markets in 1994. Surely, the Bush bership. But the Europeans persisted, and as far as Italy was administration’s recklessness with deficits would soon face concerned, in the early 2000s, the plan seemed to be working. its comeuppance. The most likely scenario seemed to be Though fiscal austerity slowed Italy’s growth and hindered that it would come in the form of a wallop from China, the productivity gains, the straitjacket held. Though Berlusconi largest holder of U.S. debt. Beijing would sell. The dollar took office for the second time as prime minister in 2001, his would crash. Interest rates would surge. That would teach room for maneuver was constrained. Meanwhile, Italians were Republicans that no one was above the economic rules. But not merely subject to European constraint; they achieved the external check, America’s vincolo esterno, never arrived. considerable prominence in Brussels. Romano Prodi, as The dollar remained king. The shock came from within. European Commission president between 1999 and 2004, oversaw the introduction of the euro. Mario Monti shaped IN 2008, A FINANCIAL CRISIS DID SWEEP REPUBLICANS OUT of office. EU taxation and competition policy. At the ECB, Tommaso But it was not the crisis that Democratic technocrats had Padoa-Schioppa was widely seen as the intellectual father of anticipated. It wasn’t the government bond market that the euro. Vincolo esterno was not merely a surrender; it was a blew up. It was mortgage-backed securities and banks. way for Italy to secure leverage on the larger European stage. The embarrassment was that whereas on fiscal policy Draghi, meanwhile, after a few years at Goldman Sachs, and the trade deficit one could point the finger at irrespon- was called back by Berlusconi in January 2006 to head the sible Republicans, on the financial sector there was really Banca d’Italia, Italy’s central bank. Though the bank was no room between the parties in the United States—or for in turmoil thanks to allegations of impropriety against his that matter between the Americans and the Europeans. In predecessor, Draghi inherited a complacent scene. Markets the Clinton administration, the charge on financial sector were calm. For Italy, as for Greece, borrowing costs were at deregulation was led by Summers at the Treasury Depart- historic lows. The symbiotic relationship between public ment, but as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, finances, markets, and investment banks that Draghi had Yellen had raised no objections. Nor had there been any helped forge seemed to be working well. resistance from the other side of the Atlantic. By contrast, what made itself painfully evident in the United At least Yellen had not made Draghi’s faux pas of work- States in the early 2000s was precisely the lack of any external ing for Goldman Sachs or signing up for a hedge fund like restraint on policymaking. Driven by the radicalization of the Summers or running Citigroup like Rubin. From her vantage nationalist right wing, U.S. politics became not just polarized point at the San Francisco Fed, she did take note early of internally but divorced from the norms prevailing in Europe. the signs of a housing crisis; in California, you could hardly It is rightly said that Berlusconi was the godfather of the mod- miss them. But as late as July 2007, Yellen opined: “From the ern oligarchic populist style. But though it toyed with climate standpoint of monetary policy, I do not consider it very likely skepticism, Italy never broke from the European mainstream. that developments relating to subprime mortgages will have It wasn’t in Italy that fundamentalist religion was welcomed a big effect on overall U.S. economic performance, although in the halls of power. In the United States, by contrast, even they do add to downside risk.” A few months later, Draghi, elementary democratic norms no longer seemed safe. as head of Italy’s central bank and chair of the international Financial Stability Board, would give a speech on the trans- In 2000, though Al Gore had won the largest number of formation of the European financial industry in Frankfurt popular votes, Supreme Court judges nominated by George that acknowledged the crisis going on in securitized mort- W. Bush’s father handed him the election victory. Uncon- gage business but insisted that it was up to the private sector strained by any domestic check, the budget was blown out by to sort it out. He failed to highlight the systemic risks in the ruthless, inegalitarian tax cutting and Bush’s wars of choice. investment banking operations of Europe’s megabanks or the Figures like Paul Krugman, a contemporary of Draghi’s at MIT, were driven into radical opposition. For all their inside status and expertise, neither Yellen Yellen was more restrained. Rather than taking to the streets, nor Draghi gave any public she took charge as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San sign of anticipating the Francisco in June 2004. She was chosen in part because she crisis that was to come. had forged a reputation, in the words of Berkeley’s chancellor at the time, as an “outspoken advocate for fiscal responsibility.” In 2004, that was a liberal stick to beat the Republicans with. While Yellen immersed herself in the day-to-day of policymaking, other true-believing disciples of the 46 S P R I N G 2 0 2 1

doom loop connecting European banks and sovereign debt. prime minister demanding he make drastic cuts, sanctioned For all their inside status and expertise, neither Yellen nor if necessary by the application of emergency laws. When Ber- lusconi demurred and lost his grip on Parliament, an alterna- Draghi gave any public sign of anticipating the crisis that tive candidate was ready and waiting. Draghi himself had been was to come. The same was true for the vast majority of their discussed on several occasions as a possible prime minister, cohort, whether MIT or Chicago. The scale of the systemic but he was now on his way to the ECB to succeed Trichet. The risk posed by the financial system of the advanced econo- fix for the Italian premiership was Mario Monti, the economist mies simply did not register until it was too late. and former EU commissioner who in the 1970s had studied at Yale with James Tobin, Yellen’s Ph.D. supervisor. Once the crisis arrived, the appropriate economic policy was obvious, at least in outline. The United States needed It was not the only technocratic substitution with an Amer- fiscal stimulus—the only question was how big. The shad- ican flavor performed in Europe in the fall of 2011. At the ows of the 1990s lingered over President Barack Obama’s eco- same time, in November, Greece and its latest austerity pro- nomic policy team, which was recruited, in the main, from gram were put in the hands of Lucas Papademos, who held a the circle around Rubin. Concerns about debt sustainability bachelor’s degree in physics, a master’s degree in electrical never lifted. As critics like Krugman soon began to warn, the engineering, and a doctorate in economics, all from MIT. Obama stimulus of 2009 was nowhere near large enough— about half the size that would have been necessary to fill the Working closely with Spain, Monti anchored a push for output gap. Christina Romer, Yellen’s close colleague at Berke- fundamental moves on banking union that over the sum- ley and another MIT Ph.D. who was serving as Obama’s chair mer of 2012 opened the door to Draghi’s famous “whatever of the Council of Economic Advisers, correctly gauged the it takes” line. The financial markets were calmed. But the challenge, but she was overridden. The public protests in price was paid in the destabilization of European democracy. the media from conservative economists didn’t help. But it was Summers, once the golden boy of MIT and Yellen’s one- Initially, the public reaction to Berlusconi’s replacement time student, who clinched the argument from the inside, in by Monti was overwhelmingly favorable. The crisis, the Ital- his position as director of the National Economic Council. A ian public conceded, required a democratic exception. But stimulus in excess of $1 trillion was, in his words, “non-plan- the honeymoon did not last. Feeding off the indignation etary.” Meanwhile, the Republican opposition in Congress, provoked by Monti’s hard line on fiscal policy and apparent the heirs to Gingrich, hemmed the Obama administration indifference to the social crisis afflicting Italy, in the Febru- in until, during the 2010 midterms, they were able to retake ary 2013 parliamentary election, the Five Star Movement, power. As Democrats assembled their multiracial, expert-led avowedly skeptical of the EU, surged to 25 percent of the coalition for a new America, the temperature on the right— vote. And the populist backlash was now spreading across from Gingrich to Sarah Palin to the Tea Party—kept rising. Europe. The Alternative for Germany party emerged on the scene in 2013 as a challenge to Draghi’s rule at the ECB. For lack of fiscal stimulus, the Fed was left to pick up the The National Front in France gained enormously in popu- pieces. Ben Bernanke, a Republican appointee from the larity. Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece both openly same MIT cohort as Draghi, worked well with the Obama espoused leftist populism. Draghi became an object of hate, administration. To reinforce his dovish tendencies, in April but the real target was vincolo esterno, the abstract mech- 2010 Obama nominated Yellen to the Fed board, this time anism of constraint that now stifled all initiative. in the hot seat as vice chair. Faced once again with Republi- can control of Congress and fiscal paralysis, Yellen became FOR ALL OF DRAGHI’S FINE WORDS, the ECB did not actually act one of the loudest voices pushing for more monetary policy in 2012. The eurozone slid deeper into recession. It was the stimulus to sustain the recovery. Fed that did act. In September 2012, the Fed announced QE3, an open-ended bond-buying program to keep inter- Fortunately for Italy, it was not on the front line in 2008. est rates at rock bottom. With fiscal policy paralyzed by Its long-run growth path since adopting the euro may not the standoff between the Republican-led Congress and the have been promising, but its banks were not entangled in Obama administration, Bernanke, with Yellen’s support, the mortgage boom. What the Italian Treasury could ill-af- committed to keeping his foot on the gas until unemploy- ford, however, was a general panic in eurozone sovereign debt ment fell below 6 percent. markets—and that’s precisely what started in 2010 in Greece, Ireland, and Portugal. By 2011, Draghi found himself in the By this point, the left wing of the Democratic Party was heart of the desperate effort to stave off disaster in the euro- getting restless. When the question came of Bernanke’s zone. This required dealing with the Berlusconi problem by replacement, the idea that Summers was the anointed more direct means than vincolo esterno. What was needed heir stirred indignation. Despite her own Clintonian past was inside pressure. In August 2011, Draghi and ECB President and despite the fact that she was a card-carrying member Jean-Claude Trichet teamed up to write a secret missive to the of the Fix the Debt campaign, Yellen emerged in February 47F O R E I G N P O L I C Y.C O M

2014 as the compromise candidate backed by the likes of Yellen prepares to take questions from the media following CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown. a meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee She had reached the pinnacle of economic policymaking in Washington on March 15, 2017. She announced that on the basis of her track record both as an academic and a the Fed was raising its benchmark interest rate for the policymaker but also because of her astute political posi- tioning. In an increasingly polarized political environment, third time since the 2008 financial crisis. there was no such thing as neutral expertise. And, at least at first, Yellen showed every sign of repaying the trust of the left by Japan were not something that the Fed wanted to contem- by maintaining quantitative easing (QE) until October 2014, plate. There was just one problem: the sudden deterioration of when unemployment was around 5 percent. the world economy. In 2015, commodity prices were plunging. China was looking shaky. Financial markets were wobbling. Though the recovery in the United States was painfully slow, the situation in Europe was far worse. Draghi’s “whatever it Nevertheless, on Dec. 16, 2015, Yellen announced the takes” approach had stopped the acute bond market crisis, decision to raise rates. “I feel confident about the funda- but by 2014 the eurozone was teetering on edge of deflation mentals driving the U.S. economy, the health of U.S. house- and renewed recession. Draghi, who had previously been a holds, and domestic spending,” she declared. “There are staunch advocate of fiscal consolidation, was now pleading pressures on some sectors of the economy, particularly for an active fiscal policy. “Whatever it takes” from the cen- manufacturing and the energy sector … but the underlying tral bank could only go so far. What was required was a proper health of the U.S. economy I consider to be quite sound.” At balance of monetary and fiscal policy. But in Berlin there were that point, on the basis of the broad measure of unemploy- no MIT Ph.D.s. With then-German Finance Minister Wolfgang ment known as U-6, 16 million Americans, or 9.9 percent of Schäuble doggedly pursuing budgetary surplus, rather than fis- the workforce, were still unemployed or underemployed. cal stimulus, vincolo esterno was now garroting the eurozone. After years of undershooting, core inflation was at 2 per- cent, but excluding housing, which was recovering from The consistent failure to deliver adequate fiscal policy the real estate crisis, it was closer to 1 percent. responses to the crisis after 2008 went against all the pre- conceptions of 1970s MIT-style macroeconomics. Where With the ECB pushing in the opposite direction, the torque were the spendthrift politicians when you needed them? applied to the U.S. economy was painful. Over the first three The fiscal undershoot by the Obama administration could years of Yellen’s term at the Fed, the dollar appreciated by perhaps be explained by miscalculation and Republican par- more than 26 percent in trade-weighted terms. Manufactur- tisanship. But the fact that a centrist majority in the heart ing was hit hard. Large parts of the United States entered the of Europe, faced with dangerous populist challenges from 2016 election year in a mini-recession. In many blue-collar the left and right, would choose to die on the hill of budget constituencies, plants were closing, and the outlook was balance was not part of the plan. dire. Sen. Bernie Sanders did not hesitate to attack Yellen in December 2015 for what he regarded as a grossly premature It was up to the ECB to act. In 2015, to the horror of German conservatives, Draghi finally launched a QE program. This was a technical economic measure. But it had spectacular political effects. It enabled the European Council to play hard- ball with the radical left-wing government in Greece without causing the bond markets to panic. It insulated Europe from the shock to confidence during the refugee crisis and to some degree against the sudden downturn in China. One might say it marked the Americanization of the ECB. But precisely at that moment, a fateful division was emerging between Europe and the United States. Draghi was pumping liquidity into the European financial system just as Yellen began to contem- plate the possibility of actually raising rates. Seven years on from the collapse of Lehman Brothers, a majority on the Fed board was swinging toward tightening. The point was not so much that the U.S. economy needed restraining as that they were deeply uncomfortable with inter- est rates remaining at zero. It stoked speculation in financial markets and gave the Fed nowhere to go if it needed to counter a downturn. Negative interest rates along the lines adopted 48 S P R I N G 2 0 2 1