Joe Biden is a vengeful loser, making it difficult for Trump

Joe Biden, who spent most of his public life in diplomacy, is leaving office after paving Donald Trump’s path with thorns at best, landmines at worst

As India gets bogged down in issues like minority protection in Bangladesh, and is consequently perceived once again as an overly regional power, global diplomacy is drifting towards a challenging new world. United States President Joe Biden is doing his utmost to start new conflicts before vacating the White House on January 20. 

Biden may have lost his re-election bid, but the vengeful loser is determined to make it difficult for the victorious Donald Trump to have his own foreign policy. Clearly, Biden has the support of the amorphous US ‘deep state’ in this nefarious project. 

Trump will have to be nimble-footed, tactful, imaginative, and at his diplomatic best — none of the qualities he is credited with — to gain strategic autonomy from the foreign policy pursued by the Democrats for the last four years. On December 4, the US state department announced a “comprehensive review of bilateral cooperation” with Georgia and warned that “the US is now preparing to use the tools at our disposal, including additional sanctions” to bend Tbilisi to its will.

It was the second threat to Georgia’s elected government by the Biden administration issued in a week. The administration has suspended the US-Georgia Strategic Partnership. Although the state department admitted on October 27 that “international and local observers agreed that Election Day was generally well administered,” it condemned Georgia’s democracy as flawed, using flimsy excuses and without offering any credible evidence.

The outgoing Biden team hopes to abet a colour revolution in Georgia by the time Trump is inaugurated, making it difficult for the incoming president to reset relations with Moscow or to launch any peace initiative in Ukraine. By using blatant double standards in treating elections in Georgia and Moldova differently, Biden’s diplomats hope to wean away Moldova from the Kremlin’s sphere of influence, creating yet another source of potential friction between the Republicans and President Vladimir Putin’s Russia. 

Politicians dabbling in foreign policy develop a sense of timelessness about their work, and refuse to see the end of the road even after the people have voted them out. Brajesh Mishra was permanent representative to the United Nations in New York when Soviet troops took control of Afghanistan in 1979. Charan Singh was caretaker prime minister while Indira Gandhi’s Congress won the Lok Sabha elections. Yet, the caretaker government, without consulting the transition team, sent Mishra a speech that was critical of the Kremlin’s action. The late T N Kaul, who was advising the incoming prime minister, came to know of it. He forcefully intervened and changed Mishra’s draft into one that was broadly supportive of the Soviet Union.

Biden’s administration is now a lame-duck one. But it is redoubling efforts to undermine the re-election on January 26 of Alexander Lukashenko, the pro-Russia President of Belarus. Strange as it is, the Biden administration has a strategic dialogue with the ‘Belarusian democratic movement’, which is a non-state actor. This week, the state department admitted that the US had provided $142.6 million in the last one year for these non-state actors. Washington would have designated them as subversives or terrorists if they had been opposing a pro-US regime.

After the August 2020 presidential election in Belarus, an effort was mounted to foist a colour revolution to unseat Lukashenko. Biden will try it again before he leaves the White House, and not leave it to his elected successor to decide what should be done in Minsk about an election scheduled for just six days after Trump is inaugurated.

If at all there were any faint hopes that a fragile peace could come to West Asia, new complications have been added to the vexations with the surprise flare-up in Syria. The anti-Assad government rebels could not have mounted hostile action on the scale they did in Aleppo and Hama without encouragement by the Biden administration. It is not a secret that rebel forces in Syria are armed and trained by the US. This is not new. But the timing of the rebel assault is aimed as much at Trump as it is against President Bashar al Assad in Damascus. It is also meant to undercut Putin, who had stabilised Syria in recent years.

Only last week, India hosted Ayman Raad, Syria’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, putting its faith in Syria’s stability. The Ministry of External Affairs promised “a renewed commitment to energise the institutional mechanisms between the two countries” after bilateral foreign office consultations co-led by Raad. The new initiative now faces a stalemate. 

It is an understatement, almost a cliche, to say that the world is in crisis. Biden, who spent most of his public life in diplomacy, is leaving office after paving his successor’s path with thorns at best, landmines at worst.

(K P Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.