Rumors of restoration: Joe Biden’s foreign policy and what it means for Canada

ABSTRACT

The election of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential elections suggests a return to “normal” foreign relations after the dramatic four years of Donald Trump’s presidency. This paper asks two questions: what will Biden’s foreign policy look like? And what are its implications for Canada. Fundamentally, Biden aims to restore the status quo ante Trump in US foreign policy while also adjusting to a world has irreversibly changed. This paper outlines the parameters of Biden’s nascent foreign policy using a seven-point framework focusing on worldview, (2) problem definition, (3) approach to international order; (4) security; (5) economics; (6) values; and (7) personality and decision-making process. For Canada, Biden’s election relieves the immediate upheavals of Donald Trump’s presidency, but it does not necessarily clarify Canada’s foreign policy outlook. Canada still must establish its relative priorities between the continent that is the foundation of its prosperity and security, and the internationalism that is the vehicle of Canada’s international identity and influence.

RÉSUMÉ

L'élection de Joe Biden aux élections présidentielles de 2020 suggère un retour à des relations étrangères « normales » après les quatre années dramatiques de la présidence de Donald Trump. Cet article pose deux questions : à quoi ressemblera la politique étrangère de Biden ? Et quelles sont ses implications pour le Canada ? Fondamentalement, Biden vise à rétablir le statu quo antérieur à Trump dans la politique étrangère américaine, tout en s'adaptant à un monde qui a irréversiblement changé. Cet article décrit les paramètres de la politique étrangère naissante de Biden en utilisant un cadre en sept points axé sur la vision du monde, (2) la définition du problème ; (3) l'approche de l'ordre international ; (4) la sécurité ; (5) l'économie ; (6) les valeurs ; et (7) la personnalité et le processus de prise de décision. Pour le Canada, l'élection de Biden soulage les bouleversements immédiats de la présidence de Donald Trump, mais ne clarifie pas nécessairement les perspectives de politique étrangère du Canada. Le Canada doit encore établir ses priorités relatives entre le continent qui est le fondement de sa prospérité et de sa sécurité, et l'internationalisme qui est le véhicule de l'identité et de l'influence internationales du Canada.

KEYWORDS:

• Joe Biden
• US foreign policy
• Canadian foreign policy
• liberal internationalism

When Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, much of the world breathed a sigh of relief. Dyspeptic revisionism was out; normal was in. For four years, and with some success, Trump tried to subvert the multilateral architecture of world politics. Like many of its allies, Canada was forced to re-evaluate the fundamentals of its commitments to both the US and the liberal international order. Though the new Biden administration promises to restore traditional US foreign policy, Canada’s foreign policymakers cannot assume that the relationship will return to normal. Therefore, this paper asks two questions: What will the Biden administration’s foreign policy look like, and what does it mean for Canada? To the first question, Biden’s foreign policy program will attempt to restore the status quo ante Trump and the revival of the septuagenarian liberal international order and US leadership therein. However, the kind of world Biden seeks to lead – one in which US leadership is desirable, opposition is minimal, and global cooperation follows the West’s lead – is much attenuated in 2021 (Cooley & Nexon, 2020). Hence, Biden’s language of the “free world” – a rhetorical retrofitting of the US-led liberal international order that is no longer as expansive as it once was. To the second question, the Biden presidency better suits Canada’s need for cooperative North American relations and its liberal internationalist proclivities. But it does not necessarily clarify Canada’s foreign policy outlook. The restoration of normalcy Biden’s presidency represents does not resolve the underlying tensions in Canada’s foreign policy between core interests that are inextricably tied to the US, and its internationalist dispositions. Canada must still confront old problems of prioritization among national interests, continentalism, and internationalism.

Conceptualizing a foreign policy in emergence

How can we anticipate Joe Biden’s foreign policy and its implications for the world? This section establishes a seven-point framework for anticipating and evaluating his foreign policy in its emergent state. This framework eschews common ways of conceptualizing and comparing foreign policy, namely the “doctrines” and “-isms of best fit” approach (Siracusa & Warren, 2016; Mead, 2002). While vivid in their interpretive framing, these approaches are vulnerable to confirmation bias and presentism, thereby limiting their comparative utility. A more productive approach establishes common categories of analysis that avoids these pitfalls and can be applied retrospectively to past presidents.

To evaluate and compare the foreign policies of US presidents, it is useful to begin with the preamble to the Constitution, which is established inter alia to “ … provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity … ” In contemporary terms, these three concepts translate to security, economics, and values. They serve as three common categories for comparing presidential foreign polices across time. In the twenty-five decades since these words were written, the debate has been over the means to those ends (Brown, 2015, p. 1). But security, economics, and values are not the end of the story. After the two World Wars, a concern for the coordinating role that the US plays in world politics emerged as a fourth pillar of US foreign policy and has remained that way ever since (Ikenberry, 2020; Kupchan, 2020). Thus, leadership of an international order must be added to the comparative analytical framework. A comparative framework should also permit analysis of more idiosyncratic aspects of foreign policymaking like the ideational commitments of individual presidents and the decision-making processes. Specifically, analysts should account for a president’s worldview, intellectual dispositions and diagnoses of foreign policy problems, personal temperament and decision-making style. Research shows that the president’s personality and experience, as well as the people around him, shape the way decision-making processes unfold, and are highly durable (Saunders, 2017; Mintz & Wayne, 2016). Thus, this paper evaluates Biden’s foreign policy and their implications for Canada according to the seven considerations outlined here: (1) worldview, (2) problem definition, (3) approach to international order; (4) security; (5) economics; (6) values; (7) personality and decision-making process.

Biden’ foreign policy

Biden enters the presidency with extensive foreign policy experience – eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president and decades spent on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, including two terms as committee chair. In this time, he embraced the broad principles of liberal internationalism which, as he assumes the presidency, puts him in a strange position. He is an old guard, centrist Democrat leading a country that his highly polarized, facing a world less hospitable to US influence. His politics and style are decidedly unfashionable within his party that is much younger and more progressive, and his centrism seems out of place with the strident politics of contemporary American politics. But his appeal is as a “normal” figure in an age of extremes. Biden’s presidential campaign evinced a mix of progressive impulses drawn from the left and progressive wings of the party, mainstream Democratic ideas, and a nostalgia for the redemptive promise of the Obama presidency (Ettinger, 2020). The verbs seeded throughout these documents come with the “re-” prefix attached: restore, revitalize, rebuild, reinvent, renovate, rejoin, reform, and reset. There is a clear preference for a return to multilateralism and coordination as the means to solving global problems, leading observers label his a “restorationist” foreign policy aimed at “reinvention,” not transformation (Wright, 2020; Burns, 2020). Indeed, if Obama’s 2008 “Yes We Can” campaign promised to restore the US’s reputation after the Bush years, Biden’s, 2020 campaign aimed, as much as possible, to return to the status quo ante Trump. In his first two major foreign policy speeches as president, Biden stuck to the them (and mirroring his predecessor’s cadence) by declaring “America is back, America is back” (Biden, 2021a, 2021b). Critics left and right call this wishful thinking (Ashford, 2020; Friedman & Wertheim, 2020). Whether or not this restorationist ambition is possible in the post-post Cold War era remains to be seen.

Worldview

Biden’s worldview is rooted in mid-twentieth century liberal internationalism, American exceptionalism, and pragmatism. It is internationalist because it aims to create order through multilateral cooperation, partnerships, institutions, and rules among a community of states and non-state actors. It is liberal because it is premised upon consent, cooperation, and a desire to shape the international environment in favor of liberal democracies. It is exceptionalist because it adheres to the normative belief that the US has special role to play in the sweep of world history (Restad, 2012, p. 54). This is an intellectual current as old as the country itself, and in the post-Cold War era, found expression in the consensus view that the US plays an indispensable role as chief executive of the liberal international order (Walt, 2018). Biden’s entire foreign policy rests on the assumption that America “must lead again” (Biden, 2020) which places him squarely within the mainstream of internationalist foreign policy practitioners in the post-Cold War era.

Importantly, Biden’s liberal internationalism and exceptionalism are moderated by a pragmatism that puts a brake on many of their idealist excesses. By no means is Biden a realist, but neither does he subscribe to overtly idealist notions, such as Barack Obama’s faith in the power of moral persuasion, or George W. Bush grand ambitions to end tyranny around the world. In this sense, Biden aims to practice a US-centric liberal internationalism that relies more on the consensual aspects of American leadership, and less on the coercive aspects. Those coercive aspects, however, will be part of the program but in pragmatic ways. Biden’s record on major US military deployments suggests that he is neither a hawk nor a dove. As a Senator, he opposed the 1991 Gulf War, approved US interventions in the Balkans, supported the Afghanistan War in 2001, and voted in favor of the 2003 Iraq invasion. As Vice President, he opposed Obama’s troop surge to Afghanistan in 2009, opposed the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, was the “in-house killjoy” during the Arab Spring and argued against overthrowing Muammar Qaddafi in 2011 (Traub, 2020a; Schake, 2020). All of this evinces a “through-line of skepticism that connects Biden’s views on Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Libya” (Traub, 2020a). According to Obama, Biden’s focus is on US goals and means to those ends, rather than “broader ideological debates that all too often end up leading to overreach or a lack of precision in our mission” (quoted in Hurlburt, 2021). Biden’s pragmatism is the result of experience and view of politics as a game of bargaining and means-ends calculations. It is a non-ideological style was honed in the Senate through decades of legislative compromise, damage-limitation, and appeals to his adversaries’ interests (Traub, 2020a). Indeed, some of his public writings deploy idealistic language about the “electric idea of liberty” (Biden, 2020, p. 76) but this is more rhetorical flourish than policy proposition.

Problem definition

Biden’s definition of the many problems facing the US were refined throughout 2020 during the Democratic nomination race, the crafting of the Democratic Platform, and finally during the presidential campaign. In the short term, the inescapable imperative is the need to get the Covid-19 pandemic under control. More broadly, Biden’s problem definition boils down to three interrelated issues: Donald Trump, complex transnational forces, and the three-headed monster of authoritarianism, nationalism, and illiberalism (Traub, 2020b). Beginning in at least 2019, Biden identified Trump as the first and foremost national security threat to the US (Biden, 2019). He argued that Trump’s performance has set back US foreign policy and undercut its credibility around the world. The challenge is to reverse the damage and enact a foreign policy to contend with the complexities of the twenty-first century. The second problem is a broader identification of complex transnational threats in the twenty-first century related to climate change, mass migration, disease transmission, technological disruption, cyber-conflict and other issues that do not emanate from great power competition. These are the evergreen issues in US national security discourse but have only grown more complex. The third, and related problem, is that effective solutions are undermined by political paralysis within, and among, liberal democracies. Around the world, the forces of authoritarianism, nationalism and illiberalism undermine the ability of liberal democracy to respond to problems like corruption, inequality, and public mistrust. Challenges from China and Russia and other illiberal authoritarian states present geopolitical pressures, as does the advance of illiberal nationalism within democratic polities, especially the US. The resulting political disunity undercuts the ability of liberal democracies to develop solutions to global challenges.

International order

Like Obama before him, Biden’s program signals a commitment to restoring the US to a leadership position in the liberal international order (Biden, n.d.). In a phrase that is emblematic of his liberal internationalist worldview, “the world” he says “doesn’t organize itself” (Biden, 2020). Therefore, it is necessary for the US to play a leadership role. Substantively, Biden’s attitude closely resembles Obama’s whose National Security Strategies elevated international order to a foreign policy end in its own right (Ettinger, 2017). In 2021, Biden’s objective is the same but the reasoning has shifted to something more urgent. The US must lead, he argues, or else one of two outcomes will prevail: “either someone else will take the United States’ place, but not in a way that advances our interests and values, or no one will, and chaos will ensue” (Biden, 2020, p. 71).

Biden’s campaign materials point to immediate actions he will take to help reconsolidate the liberal international order. He would convene a Summit of Democracies as a way to mobilize the core membership of the liberal order towards common goals, especially climate change mitigation, anti-corruption, and global health measures. Biden would reinvigorate US membership in international organizations and rejoin international treaties and organizations abandoned by Trump. The list is extensive and includes new commitments to NATO, the World Health Organization, ASEAN, the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Population Fund, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, a renewal of arms control agreements, in particular, he would rejoin multilateral weapons pacts with Iran, Russia, and North Korea. All of this sits on top of a pile of other regional institutions (DNC, 2020). On the climate change cooperation, Biden’s platform has grand ambitions to create a global climate order. The DNC platform would integrate climate leadership into foreign policy as a first-order security concern. The US would convene a Climate World Summit with a particular aim at penalizing China for subsidizing coal production and would leverage existing organizations like the G20 to end subsidies for climate-intensive projects, provide green debt relief to developing countries, and offer cleaner development alternatives to China’s Belt and Road partners.

Clearly, Biden’s preference is to recommit the US to leadership of the liberal international order. However, he recognizes that the world is more contested and requires a different kind of international engagement. What that “reinvention” entails remains underspecified in Biden’s campaign materials. For now, it resembles an updated form of liberal internationalism rather than something categorically new. There are, of course, significant shortcomings to a restoration and reinvention. Critics rightly point out that the international environment is not the same as in 2008 and that even Biden’s attenuated vison exceeds what is plausible (Mead, 2021). Different countries within the community of democracies will not be so easy to rally against authoritarianism. Individual country relationships with Russia and China will be run on calculations of national interest and it is not plausible to expect them to subordinate their interests to a collective ideal. Others suggest that Biden cannot simply assume that trust in the US has been restored simply because Trump is gone or that the world wants the old America back (Goldgeier & Jenteleson, 2020; Ayres & Macdonald, 2020). Ultimately, Biden’s restoration project must carefully retrofit the mechanism of liberal internationalism to work in a markedly different world.

Security

During the 2020 election campaign, Biden and Donald Trump were in lockstep on some major defence and global security issues. Both upheld US military primacy as a must, both wanted to maintain force projection capabilities around the world and both recognize China as the prime geopolitical competitor to the US. Both also recognized that US military overreach must be curtailed. Like Trump (and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren), Biden embraces the slogan “end the endless wars.” The precise meaning however, differed between the two candidates. For Biden, this means ending US involvement in the post-September 11 wars across the Greater Middle East and promising restraint in future troop deployments. It also means narrowing the scope of counterterrorism to defeating al Qaeda and ISIS (Biden, 2020). Importantly, for Biden but not Trump, “ending the endless wars” also means ending US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

Ending the endless wars, however, does not mean defunding the Pentagon. To the contrary, Biden repeats one of the shibboleths of American primacy: that the US military must be the most effective fighting force in the world, that the US must retain its nuclear deterrent, and maintain its counterterrorism programs (DNC, 2020, p. 75). There are no specific references to reductions in the military budget in the 2020 Democratic Party platform, although there are allusions to “rationalizing” defence spending. There is, however, a small but significant feature of Biden’s platform regarding the use of military force. The DNC platform promises to repeal and replace the 2001 and 2003 Congressional Authorizations for Use of Military Force (AUMF) and replace them with specific frameworks (DNC, 2020, p. 76). Long criticized by the US left, revocation of these AUMFs would remove the legal foundations for the War on Terror and the Iraq War.

The great security question regards new geopolitical competition. Biden takes explicit aim at China and has shown a willingness to be confrontational on a suite of policy issues. However, he has done so with the caveat that confrontation must be undertaken alongside other democratic countries. In this regard, Biden sees China correctly as the primary geopolitical adversary and as a common reference point for a community of democracies. He also sees confronting China as an economic challenge which he links to domestic economic revival and climate change. Biden’s confrontation with China is interwoven with other major policy areas and will require exquisite diplomacy to work (Traub, 2020c). Similarly, on nuclear non-proliferation Biden speaks repeatedly about arms control undertaken through multilateral negotiations. Most notably, Biden would likely rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran, and renegotiate START Treaty with Russia which expires in February 2021. Regarding North Korea, he would dispense with Trump’s style of personal diplomacy and reengage more systematically with Northeast Asian partners, including China, in talks with the Kim regime (DNC, 2020).

A close reading of Biden’s security policies hints at an uneasy compromise between mainstream liberal, progressive, and leftist factions within the Democratic Party. Biden continues to uphold the majority view on US defence policy, spending, and the need to withdraw from lingering Middle East conflicts. On some subtle issues, there is evidence of the left’s influence on his policy program. The DNC platform, released in August 2020, contains proposals that were not a part of Biden’s earlier ideas, like the call to repeal and replace the AUMFs and the suggestive language about “rationalizing” defence spending. For the most part, the limited pressure coming from the Democratic left enables him to cleave fairly close to majority views of US foreign policy that its post-Cold War excesses need to be remedied.

Economics

Between the 2008 financial crisis and 2016 populist wave, economic policy became the most politicized aspect of US foreign policy, putting the interlocking free trade agreements and international organizations that shape global economy in the crosshairs. Within the Democratic coalition, it became the site of its greatest philosophical and policy differences between free market Democrats and the progressive and left-wing of the party. It is also where Biden’s leftward tack has been most pronounced. On the foreign economic policy file, the essence of his economic platform is a “foreign policy for the middle class” (Biden, 2020, p. 68) a program heavily influenced by the party’s Sanders and Warren factions. The new Democratic consensus is to reconfigure international economic policy to see direct benefits flow first to the American middle class, rather than to the transnational capitalist class. This is a marked change from the neoliberal free trade paradigms of the early post-Cold War era. It is ironic that both Biden and Trump shared a rejection of neoliberal trade and embraced interventionism to create favorable outcomes for the US middle class. But while Trump preferred tariff wars and protectionism, Biden opted for a technocratic form of economic statecraft, influenced heavily by progressive and left-wing Democrats (Warren, 2019).

There are three major planks to Biden’s foreign policy for the middle class (Biden, 2020, p. 68). The first is a major domestic reinvestment program. The second is a full reorientation of international trade policy toward the interests of the American middle class. Here, the US uses its market power to induce change in other countries’ behaviors to match progressive US policies, and in the process shape the conditions of international trade (Kalyanpur & Newman, 2019). Biden has adopted a pragmatic approach of open trade regimes but with stronger regulations to serve US interests. This includes enforcing existing trade laws and agreements, such as those written into the US Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA). In any future arrangements, Biden advocates including enforceable standards for labor, human rights, and the environment. He would also use the tax code to penalize companies for offshoring and reward those that manufacture in the US. Third, Biden’s targets specific problems in the global political economy that contribute to growing illiberal authoritarianism. He would enact aggressive anti-corruption and anti-tax haven programs with the aim of undercutting the influence of money in the US political system (Traub, 2020d). Anti-tax haven programs would make it difficult for the wealthy to evade taxes legally, in the hopes that billions of dollars can be repatriated to the US treasury. Similarly, Biden aims to move aggressively on China to end technology and intellectual property theft that have become a feature of international business in China. On this last point, Biden’s pro-middle class aspirations face their greatest challenge. The US and China are inextricably linked in the global economy, and there is widespread recognition that the US needs to limit its vulnerability to China. So, while Biden has no illusions of “decoupling” from China, he does advocate shortening global supply chains in sensitive or strategic areas like pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, and computer components (Traub, 2020d).

Economic statecraft – the deliberate use of US market power to alter the behaviors of other states – has been a regular feature of US foreign policy for over two centuries and is not unfamiliar to Americans (Drezner, 2019). What is different is that Biden’s proposal is to use deploy it in the service of a progressive domestic economic agenda. There are two tensions in such a policy. One is the paradox between his progressive neo-mercantilism and international re-engagement, in which the imperatives of one contradict the objectives of the other (Hurlburt, 2021). Liberal internationalism means cooperative and constructive engagement with partner countries; neo-progressive mercantilism entails trade and regulatory barriers that could harm their economic interests. Indeed, it is possible that the US and its trade partners could find common ground on a progressive trade agenda. But it would take enormous diplomatic effort to achieve and sustain.

Another tension is between the centrist dispositions of Biden and his core advisors, and the progressive and socialist wings of the party. To enact his “foreign policy for the middle class” Biden would have to stray from his centrist dispositions and embrace ideas to his left. Reconciling the centrist and left-progressive Democrats will be a significant difficulty (Lynch, 2020). And with the 2020 elections leaving the Senate split 50–50 (leaving the Vice President with tie-breaker vote), it is unlikely that his economic program and supporting regulations would be passed into law. The Senate’s filibuster practice requires sixty votes to pass legislation and the reconciliation process, which turns on a simple majority, can only be used twice per year (Wessel, 2021). In all likelihood, Biden’s regulatory reform, especially those with international implications, will be implemented via executive order. In the first month of his presidency, Biden signed thirty-four executive orders, some of which revoke those of his predecessor, some of which address climate change, immigration and refugee policy (US National Archives, 2021). While speedy and responsive, executive orders are not as durable as legislation. They have the force of law but can easily be rescinded by subsequent presidents, resulting in short-term planning horizons and cycles of regulatory uncertainty.

Values

On the “blessings of liberty,” Biden has fully embraced an expansive vision of American values projection. He aims to put democracy and democratic values at the core of US foreign policy while restoring “the soul of the nation” after Trump’s debasement of it. Biden’s retrieval of democratic values begins from a critique of Trump who “hollowed out American diplomacy, shredded international commitments, weakened our alliances, and tarnished our credibility” (DNC, 2020, p. 72). From that critique, Biden embraces the exceptionalist line that “it is our adherence to our values and our commitment to tolerance that sets us apart from other great powers” (Biden, 2016). In practical terms, Biden wants to return to democracy and human rights promotion which was a prominent, if inconsistently followed, feature of US foreign policy in the post-Cold War era until the Trump presidency.

Globally, Biden’s approach is twofold. First, he aims to reverse all of Trump’s illiberal and undemocratic foreign policy practices. These include ending the child separation policy at the border with Mexico, reversing asylum policies that limited refugee intake while raising refugee admissions, ending the anti-Muslim travel ban enacted in early 2017, reaffirming the ban on torture, enacting progressive aid policies towards women and girls, respecting freedom of the press, and more. Second, Biden’s seeks to restore the US as the “bulwark for global democracy” (Biden, 2017). In this vein, Biden’s foreign policy would bring democracy promotion and consolidation back to the fore of US diplomacy. Biden recognizes that the global environment is more hostile to democracy than at anytime since the end of the Cold War. Thus, the centerpiece of his democracy agenda is renewed leadership of the free world. His choice of wording – free world – is no accident. There is at least an implicit recognition that the global spread of democracy envisioned in the 1990s and 2000s is no longer plausible. Now the chief concern is consolidating existing liberal democracies and ending “democracy’s global recession” (DNC, 2020, p. 74). The most concrete item on the democracy agenda is Biden’s promise to convene a Summit of Democracies to combat corruption, defend against authoritarianism, and advance human rights (Biden, 2020; DNC, 2020, p. 66). The Summit for Democracy would also include non-state actors, especially technology and social media companies who have only recently come to accept their responsibilities as information platforms (DNC, 2020, p. 67). Convening and rallying the free world – the community of democratic states and pro-democracy non-state actors – is a compelling, if ambiguous, idea.

The terminology of “free world” and Summit of Democracies is telling. It is an act of consolidation and recognition of the limited remit of international liberalism in the post-Cold War era. By referring to the free world, there is an implicit recognition that the post-Cold War spread of liberal democracy has ebbed. Democratic backsliding around the world, including in Europe and North America, reveals that liberalism at home cannot be taken for granted either. By visibly recommitting the community of democracies to the common cause of interdependence and domestic liberalism, the constitutional instruction to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” takes on a new meaning. Gone are ambitions objectives like ending tyranny or spreading democracy. Now the challenge is defensive: “‘making safe’ liberal democracy in a world that is riven by tyranny, brutality, and intolerance” (Ikenberry, 2020, p. xiii).

Personality & decision making

Much has been made of Joe Biden’s capacity for interpersonal empathy and the political style it enables. Within government, Biden has mobilized this trait in two significant ways. First, as an empathetic person, he has the ability to connect with people and engage them on a personal level. As former Obama official Ben Rhodes wrote, Biden embraces “a more old-fashioned brand of politics – he’d walk through the hallways of the West Wing, stopping to talk to people, gripping your forearm and holding on to it while he spoke” (Rhodes, 2018, p. 65). Whether welcomed or otherwise, this physical style generates a bond that more aloof styles would not. Second, he is inherently pragmatic and non-ideological – an example of “classic moderate American pragmatism” (Traub, 2009; Flegenheimer & Glueck, 2020). As a career politician, he spent his adult life operating in a world of compromise and favor-trading, knowing full-well that relationships with friends and adversaries unfold over the long term (Traub, 2020a). The practical merits of his disposition are evident in the reporting on his role as vice president under Barack Obama where he acted as a trusted mediator of conflicting personalities (Traub, 2009). Biden is often quoted as saying that foreign policy is a matter of human relations “only people know less about each other” (Traub, 2009). “As one foreign policy aid put it: That kind of emotional intelligence runs very deep, and it’s what makes him a very effective strategizer and implementer of American foreign policy” (Traub, 2020a). This approach to foreign policy can work well when personalities align. It is soft power par excellence.

Biden’s personalist, pragmatic, and non-ideological style suggest that his foreign policy will eschew transformative programs. But what about the people around him? Biden’s selections for major cabinet and advisor positions drew from a deep roster of establishment Democrats, many of whom he had worked with in his decades in Washington (Crowley, 2020). This eventuality was evident long before the election In May 2020, after emerging as the Democratic frontrunner, Biden established six working groups with Bernie Sanders to bring together progressive, leftist, and centrist Democrats. All the topics related to domestic politics; there was no foreign policy working group. One former Obama White House official noted that “there is nothing to suggest a fundamental rethinking of the policy” (Lynch, 2020). During the general election, his foreign policy advisory team sprawled to as many as 2000 people, spread across 20 working groups and sub-groups, modeled on the National Security Council interagency process (Lynch, Gramer, & Palder, 2020). Personnel were drawn from government, think tanks consulting, defense industry, and former Obama officials. Foreign policy traditionalists served as working group directors who filtered ideas up to Biden’s inner circle of advisers, most of whom were former Obama administration confidants.

During the post-election transition period, Biden’s close campaign advisers and Obama administration veterans would be nominated for key foreign policy and national security positions. Notable nominations include Antony Blinken as Secretary of State, Avril Haines as Director of National Intelligence, William Burns as CIA director, Jake Sullivan as National Security Advisor, John Kerry as special envoy for climate, Samantha Power as USAID administrator (Moore & Carlsen, 2021). Vice President Kamala Harris is not expected to play an outsized foreign policy role but she shares Biden’s liberal internationalist worldview and a particular interest in cybersecurity, human rights and rule of law issues (Ward, 2020). In general, the return of mainstream figures to the foreign policy apparatus is surely welcome in capitals in the democratic world, including Ottawa.

What Joe Biden’s presidency means for Canada

Regardless of who won the 2020 presidential election, the outcome would have had a focusing effect on Canada’s foreign policy priorities, but in different ways. A second Trump term would have required Canadian diplomats and bureaucrats to work much harder to stand still vis-à-vis the US. Biden’s victory portends a return to something more amenable to conventional Canadian foreign policy interests. How the Canadian government would spend its foreign policy energy after 2020 turned on the election outcome. Biden’s victory was fortuitous for Canada, but fundamentally, the pillars of Canada’s foreign policy, and their relative significance, are unchanged. In order of importance, they are the North American relationship, the transatlantic alliance, and the international system. Despite the Biden victory, Canada will need to expend diplomatic energy repairing the North American relationship and the institutions of international order that enable Canada to exert influence.

The problem for Canadian foreign policy is the relative priorities among continental and international relations. Canada has long sought influence among transatlantic allies and a voice in international forums while maintaining a productive and prosperous relationship with the US. The two are not mutually exclusive but they are not of equal importance. The Canada–US relationship is the basic element of Canada’s security and prosperity, and the relationship runs extraordinarily deep (Hale, 2012). Regardless of who holds power in Ottawa and Washington, the two countries are so deeply integrated that poor relations between leaders will not fundamentally change the relationship. However, the “complex latticework” of North American relations requires perpetual care (Bow, 2009, p. 5). As the foundation of Canada’s security and prosperity, it must be the foremost issue in Canadian foreign policy.

Canada’s internationalism is a different story. In the second half of the twentieth century, Canada’s international engagements became a major part of the country’s international self-identity. Despite being partial and inconsistent, the image of the “helpful fixer” has endured into the post-Cold War era (Nossal, 2004). It is sustained, among other things, by Canada’s self-appointed middle power status, its founding membership in the institutions of international order, NATO participation, and adventures in peacekeeping. However, Canada’s internationalism is asymmetrical and leans heavily on core allies (von Hlatky & Massie, 2019; Ettinger & Rice, 2016). In this narrower internationalism, the transatlantic relationship outweighs global engagements beyond the West. The constant thread running through Canada’s post-World War II foreign policy, however, is US system leadership which provided the broader context for Canada’s international engagement. Trump’s “America First” destabilized those assumptions and its passing is certainly the superior outcome for Canada. Biden’s election promises a return to traditional patterns of diplomatic relations in US foreign policy. However, it does not necessarily mean a return to a pre-Trump status quo on key foreign policy files. As has long been the case for Canada, adapting to shifting US priorities is necessary for its security and prosperity.

Worldview and problem definition

Four years of Trump’s America First foreign policy had a disorienting effect on foreign policy in Canada and around the world. The prospect of retrenchment forced western countries in particular to confront the assumptions that long undergirded their foreign policies. Canada’s foreign policy worldview has been internationalist for decades but more transatlantic and continentalist in practice (Massie, 2009). Biden’s worldview is much more amenable to Canadian interests and his commitments to reinvigorate and reform international organizations fits with Canada’s preference for formal multilateralism. For Canada, the chief problem in world politics is a unilateral, inward-looking US. For four years, that problem was personified by Trump whose erratic and nationalistic posture unmoored Canada from its modern foreign policy reference points and threatened Canada’s vital access to the US market. It is likely that the North American relationship will ease mightily with Trump gone and a more conventional administration in place. A Biden presidency may also furnish Canadian foreign policy with an agreeable international agenda oriented in opposition to authoritarianism, illiberalism and nationalism. This would have the virtue of anchoring Canada’s foreign policy to a macro-concept in world politics while remaining consistent with post-war commitments to transatlanticism and internationalism.

International order

Internationalism, along with its corresponding responsibilities and obligations to the international system have has been an article of faith in Canada’s foreign policy since at least World War II (Nossal, Roussel, & Paquin, 2015, p. 151). Though the parameters of internationalism shift with each government in Ottawa, the commitment to international order remains the same (Nossal, 2013). Trump’s open hostility to both formal and informal multilateralism ran contrary to Canada’s preferences. Undeterred, in 2017, then-Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland rose in the House of Commons to affirm Canada’s commitment to “a rules-based international order for the twenty-first century” (Canada, 2017a). In 2019, Canada linked itself to the Alliance for Multilateralism, a loose network of states, not including the US, committed to multilateral cooperation within that rules-based order (Payne, 2019, p. 132). Such a network illustrates the persistent demand for multilateral collaboration that is consistent with Biden’s liberal internationalism. But the nature of a liberal or rules-based international order has changed considerably. It is no longer as widely accepted (or acquiesced to) as it was at the peak of post-Cold War US influence. Biden’s appeal to leadership of a free world implies a narrower but deeper international order of democratic states. Smaller clubs with deeper ties among members may be a model of cooperation that could work to Canada’s benefit. Like the Alliance for Multilateralism, Biden’s proposed Summit of Democracies could present Canada with an opportunity to play a formative role in the restoration of a narrower but deeper community of democratic countries.

Security

Had Trump been re-elected, Canada’s security interests would not have changed. Canada’s core national interest – defence of the homeland – remains unchanged. So too is Canada’s need to reassure the US that it is not a security threat (Barry & Bratt, 2008). Continental defence remains a deeply integrated component of US–Canada relations, it works well, and is politically “out of sight and out of mind” (Charron & Fergusson, 2020). With the exception of any flare-up over ballistic missile defence, the cooperative North American security relationship will continue uninterrupted under Biden. On defence, Canada is scheduled to increase its spending to 1.4% of GDP by 2024–25 (Canada, 2017b). This falls short of the 2% target established by NATO and would likely rankle any US president. However, the budgetary turmoil brought about by emergency pandemic spending may upend these plans. Moreover, Canada’s interest in preserving European security through NATO are unlikely to change anytime soon. Thus, we can expect Canada to continue participating in NATO operations on its eastern frontier.

The chief geopolitical challenges to Canada’s national security will continue to be China and Russia. The 2017 Strong, Secure, Engaged defence policy acknowledges that “a degree of major power competition has returned to the international system” (Canada, 2017b, p. 50). Despite the mildness of this statement, the new geopolitical security environment has far reaching consequences. China’s rise represents a first-order geopolitical challenge to US leadership with cascading implications throughout the liberal international order. Geographically, Russia’s challenge is limited to the eastern edge of Europe which rightfully draws Canada’s attention as part of the NATO alliance. However, Russia poses a greater threat in sub-conventional or gray zone conflict involving covert strategies, proxy, and misinformation campaigns that do no trigger conventional Alliance responses (Rapp-Hooper, 2020; Belo, 2020). In these regards, Canada finds itself on the same side as the US in general and closely aligned with Biden’s policy proposals in particular. Fundamentally, the through line in Canada’s security interests remain unchanged – continental defence and the defence of Europe.

Economics

Despite fourteen free trade agreements in force involving fifty-one countries, and thirty-one more agreements in different stages of negotiation (Canada, 2019), three-quarters of Canada’s exports are still bound for the US, making access to the American market the sine qua non of Canadian prosperity. The US market is irreplaceable and, as Laura Dawson (2019, p. 160) argues, diversification away, however well-intentioned, is impractical. That is why Trump’s hostility to continental free trade relations was so dreaded in Canada. From the outset of his presidency, Trump made doing business with the US difficult by deliberately sowing instability in the economic relationship. For Canada, the signal economic event was the renegotiation of NAFTA in 2017 and 2018, which turned out a slightly modified version of the original agreement. More than just a bargaining game between economic interests, the negotiations pitted personalities and ideological worldviews against each other (Macdonald, 2019). For Canada, it was an all-hands-on-deck moment. The resulting USMCA preserved Canada’s access to the American market but the bruising negotiation and subsequent tariff battles chilled relations between the Trump administration and Trudeau government. A Biden presidency would not radically change the institutional parameters of the Canada–US economic relationship which, in any case, is regarded favorably on both sides of the border (Wolfe & Acquaviva, 2018). The Canada–US economic relationship would still be governed by the USMCA and maintained by the countless cross-border political and business ties.

Biden has indicated that he will introduce the progressive economic platform into the regulatory framework of North American trade. In doing so, he would address objections long raised by civil society groups to the elite-driven free market regimes in North America, and only recently acknowledged as a priority by mainstream politicians (Macdonald, 2020). Indeed, introducing considerations for climate change, labor and Indigenous rights, inequality and other social issues would result in a more complex regulatory environment. But it may also serve to address the negative externalities of free markets that have sparked backlashes within right- and left-wing constituencies across North America. In the short term, Biden’s pro-market progressive regulatory agenda would likely be consistent with the Trudeau government’s economic agenda, though it is not clear how it would be received by a possible Conservative government. More problematic for Canada is the above-mentioned tension between Biden’s progressive neo-mercantilism and his liberal internationalism. This is especially the case in the manufacturing and extractive sectors. On his first day as president, Biden issued an executive order revoking the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline which will have deleterious effects on Alberta’s struggling oil and gas industry (Jackson, 2021). His plans for infrastructure spending will include Buy America provisions which could freeze out Canadian suppliers. However, exemptions for Canada were made by the Obama administration in its post-2008 stimulus bills that had their own Buy American requirements. Ensuring that Canada is exempt from protectionist measures would be a first-order priority for Canadian diplomats early in the Biden administration.

Values

Donald Trump’s presidency poured cold water on values promotion in US foreign policy. Formally, conventional values promotion did not disappear from planning documents like the National Security Strategy, they fell far down the list of priorities (US, 2017). This sat uneasy with Canada’s traditional preferences to speak loudly in favor of liberal values like respect for democracy, rule of law, sustainable development, human rights, and cultural diversity “for their own sake” and as “ends in themselves” (Canada, 1995, p. 32). During the Conservative governments led by Stephen Harper, values-based foreign policy did not diverge much from Liberal foreign policy practices of the recent past (Bloomfield & Nossal, 2013). The government of Justin Trudeau has declared that it would uphold “progressive Canadian values” (Canada, 2017a). These include the old small-l liberal standards, but also women’s rights, economic equality, and Indigenous reconciliation.

Though different governments pursue their own pet issues, Canadian government have maintained a consistent line regarding values projection in the post-Cold War era. What are the prospects of this continuing during the Biden presidency? There is an obvious convergence between Canada’s post-Cold War values agenda and the Biden program. Biden’s enthusiastic embrace of democracy and human rights promotion are consistent with Canada’s values promotion agenda since the 1990s. His proposals to combat corruption are rooted in the dual impulses of democratic renewal and fighting wealth inequality, both of which converge with progressive foreign policy values of the Trudeau government. Moreover, Canada has long sought to project its values through the institutional mechanisms of the international order. Biden’s project to restore that order and to lead the free world would provide the broader political context in which Canada could pursue an ambitious values policy.

Personality and decision making

At the top, relations between Trump and Trudeau deteriorated considerably after an initially hopeful start. The prime culprit in the degeneration of relations was Trump himself whose personal hostility towards allies marked his time as president. Canadians responded with historically low favourability and confidence ratings (Wike, Fetterolf, & Mordecai, 2020). During the Covid-19 pandemic, border closures, which were met with dread by Canadians after 9/11, came to be almost uniformly accepted (Harris, 2020). For two countries as interdependent as Canada and the US, the degeneration of the relationship is no small matter and it is in need of repair. Presidents and Prime Ministers have alternately loved and hated each other for decades (Doran, 2019). Good relations can help the North American relationship, especially when political intervention is needed to resolve disputes. However, bad interpersonal relations or disputes over serious issues do not grind the relationship to a halt. The Canada–US relationship is distributed across countless formal and informal cross-border connection: intergovernmental organizations, businesses and interest groups, social connections and so on. This is the deep interdependence that characterizes the North American relationship far more than merely the relationship between a President and Prime Minister.

Biden as a conventional politician, will seek a return to normal relations, not only as a matter of improved North American intercourse, but as a part of a broader reconciliation with US allies. To be sure, some of Biden’s policy positions will clash with Canadian interests. However, it is unlikely that Biden himself would be the source of discord. Biden has evinced an affinity for Canada with his characteristic warmth. In December 2016 Trudeau invited Vice President Biden to Ottawa one month after Trump was elected. At the dinner Biden affirmed the depth of the US–Canada relationship likening it to a family. While this is a thin basis for harmonious relations, in relative terms it is a vast improvement. Biden’s foreign policy cabinet nominations and advisors, mentioned above, are all liberal internationalists who take good relations with Canada as an uncontroversial good. For Canada, mobilizing the public and private sectors across the breadth and depth of the Canada–US relationship will be necessary to repair the relationship after four years of Trump and the dislocations of the Covid-19 pandemic. At the very least, Biden’s victory, with the promise of restoration, comes with the prospect of a return to stable, constructive, and non-antagonising relations.

Conclusion

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was disorienting for US allies. Chrystia Freeland articulated the implications in an address to Parliament in June 2017, warning that “the fact that our friend and ally has come to question the leadership puts in sharp focus for the rest of us to set our own clear and sovereign course (Canada, 2017a).” Canada chose to champion the liberal international order and ride out the Trumpian storm. But Biden’s, 2020 victory is less clarifying that it may seem. His promise of a return to normalcy is a tall order given the challenges to US freedom of action in the current international system and a domestic political environment that precludes the full revival of a status quo ante Trump. Canada must recognize the attenuated nature of internationalism after Trump and not be lulled into assumptions about internationalism’s efficacy or desirability beyond the western democratic world. This forces Canada, in Freeland’s words, to set a “clear and sovereign course” in a new global environment based not on the rumor of restoration, but on a clear and plausible assessment of its core priorities.

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Aaron Ettinger

Aaron Ettinger is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Carleton University. He specializes in International relations and US foreign policy.