U.S. president-elect Joe Biden speaks at his transition headquarters in Wilmington, Del., on Nov. 25, 2020.JOSHUA ROBERTS/Reuters
With the big fat guy in the red suit ready to make his annual appearance, Americans should be hoping he provides them with some bonding materials. The United States is so badly fractured – urban vs. rural, right vs. left, white vs. those of colour – that there is even talk, mindless talk, of secession.
In Texas, state Republican Party chairman Allen West, incensed by the Supreme Court decision rejecting his state’s lawsuit aimed at throwing out the Nov. 3 election results, is advocating a new union of “law-abiding states.” State representative Kyle Biedermann is proposing legislation to put the question of Texas secession on the state ballot. Randy Weber, the U.S. House Representative for Texas’s 14th congressional district, supports the move – as do hard-right militia groups.
Such malcontents fear that multiculturalism and Democratic conspiratorial plots will stifle their backwardness, They won’t get far. The looming departure of President Donald Trump, who stoked domestic rivalries with around-the-clock incendiary talk, will lower the temperature.
In the past, what’s tended to keep Americans from quarrelling with one another is foreign rivalries. Threats such as communism and terrorism have served as a unifying force, forging a consensus among Democrats and Republicans and the people.
That being the case, 2021 and beyond should provide ample potential for more harmony and unanimity in the land. Rarely has there been a time when American supremacy has been challenged as it is now, in cold-war confrontations with both Russia and China.
While the country has been preoccupied with the pandemic, the general election and Trumpian upheaval, relations with each authoritarian regime have spiralled downward.
Russia’s recent major cyberattack has reawakened everyone to Vladimir Putin’s unrelenting sinister intent. It demands far-reaching retaliation, which president-elect Joe Biden has said he will pursue when he takes the seals of office. Meanwhile, U.S.-China relations are, as renowned international scholar Joseph Nye says, “at their lowest point in 50 years.” Beijing’s intimidation of its neighbours in the Pacific, its oppression of minorities and democratic rights, its ending of Hong Kong’s special status and its economic expansionism have made it an undoubtedly hostile adversary.
The Trump administration responded by launching bitter trade wars with the Middle Kingdom and moving aggressively to block the operation of its technology firms. For his part, Mr. Biden – hardly a hawkish Democrat – used to have a soft spot for China, but appears to have changed. He has described Chinese President Xi Jinping as a “thug.” His campaign labelled China’s actions against Uyghur Muslims as a “genocide.”
Mr. Biden will surely upend the easy ride that the Trump administration had provided the Kremlin. True to his toadying form when it comes to Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump said it was unclear Russia was to blame for the cyberattack. He even questioned the seriousness of the data breach, which exposed the networks of several government departments and private companies.
In his election campaign, Mr. Biden vowed to prioritize democracy and human rights and called Russia the “biggest threat to America.” He recalled that, as Barack Obama’s vice-president, he had confronted the then-prime-minister and said, “I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul.” Former U.S. president George W. Bush said famously after his first meeting with Mr. Putin in 2001: “I looked the man in the eye … I was able to get a sense of his soul.”
The old-school Mr. Biden will abandon Trump-style unilateralism. He will endeavour to rebuild alliances, reinvigorate internationalism and collective security and restore the accountability of oppressors. He prides himself on his broad knowledge of the ways of the world and of its players. Though he is not one to look for a fight, he is unlikely to be as circumspect as Mr. Obama.
He can’t be. He faces stronger challenges. While Mr. Trump was inclined to see the enemy as existing within – that is, any American who disagreed with him – it was growing from without. With his mild take on dictators, he relinquished the purpose of turning the U.S. into the arsenal of democracy, as Franklin Roosevelt called it.
The Biden approach will be to seek alliances not only abroad to confront the arch rivals, but at home as well. Differences in approach will abound between Democrats and Republicans, as they did when the U.S. confronted the Soviet Union. But consensus on the broad purpose of containment of both rivals will be more easily found. Therein lies an opportunity for a restoration of a sense of unity in the ruptured republic.
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