This podcast has kind of fallen into series on evaluating some of the initial components of the Biden administration, using them as a jumping off point to discuss larger themes in American government with respect to the Presidency. In this episode, I’m going to provide an overview of the INSSG as being the first major articulation of the Biden foreign policy.
From the Office of the Secretary of Defense:
“The National Security Strategy (NSS) is a report mandated by Section 603 of the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 (Public Law 99-433). The NSS has been transmitted annually since 1987, but frequently reports come in late or not at all. The NSS is to be sent from the President to Congress in order to communicate the executive branch’s national security vision to the legislative branch. The NSS provides discussion on proposed uses of all facets of U.S. power needed to achieve the nation’s security goals. The report is obligated to include a discussion of the United States’ international interests, commitments, objectives, and policies, along with defense capabilities necessary to deter threats and implement U.S. security plans.”
President Biden, however, has not written an NSS yet. However, he has written an Interim National Security Strategy Guidance document (INSSG), and that’s what we’ll be going over today.
Main topic: The Interim National Security Strategy Guidance
Background
The last NSS was produced by the Trump administration in late 2017 and emphasized the return of great power competition. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea were all listed as threats at various levels.
The Biden administration campaigned on a return to diplomacy and restoring America’s damaged ties with alliance partners, and less brinksmanship with adversaries. However, this defining document, the 2017 NSS, was still out there as the most recent executive statement on foreign policy. So, there’s not just a legal requirement for the Biden team to develop an NSS, there was a political and diplomatic requirement that changes in foreign policy be articulated and communicated ASAP, hence the INSSG.
Caveat 1: It’s a shorter document, conceptual in nature. High level, few details.
Caveat 2: It was produced in 6 weeks by a team of former Obama officials who have worked together in the past and have a pretty similar worldview, which I’ll get to later.
Quote 1
“The simple truth is, America cannot afford to be absent any longer on the world stage. And under the Biden-Harris Administration, America is back. Diplomacy is back. Alliances are back. But we are not looking back. We are looking irrevocably toward the future and all that we can achieve for the American people — together.”
White House, Interim National Security Strategy Guidance
- Good: The sense of urgency – we’re still in great power competition
- Bad: Blurred lines between domestic and foreign policy
- Ugly: Mischaracterizes the Trump years
Quote 2
“Recent events show all too clearly that many of the biggest threats we face respect no borders or walls, and must be met with collective action. Pandemics and other biological risks, the escalating climate crisis, cyber and digital threats, international economic disruptions, protracted humanitarian crises, violent extremism and terrorism, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction all pose profound and, in some cases, existential dangers. None can be effectively addressed by one nation acting alone. And none can be effectively addressed with the United States on the sidelines. At a time when the need for American engagement and international cooperation is greater than ever, however, democracies across the globe, including our own, are increasingly under siege.”
White House, Interim National Security Strategy Guidance
- Good: Two governing assumptions of the Biden administration: collective action and democracy
- Bad: No sense of prioritizing problems, and mischaracterizes some
- Ugly: Siege mentality – the dark threat, the “now more than ever”
Quote 3
“We must also contend with the reality that the distribution of power across the world is changing, creating new threats. China, in particular, has rapidly become more assertive. It is the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system. Russia remains determined to enhance its global influence and play a disruptive role on the world stage. Both Beijing and Moscow have invested heavily in efforts meant to check U.S. strengths and prevent us from defending our interests and allies around the world. Regional actors like Iran and North Korea continue to pursue game-changing capabilities and technologies, while threatening U.S. allies and partners and challenging regional stability.”
White House, Interim National Security Strategy Guidance
- Good: Continuity on who the major international threats are
- Bad: Misrepresenting the threats as new
- Ugly: Open-ended commitment to global security (last sentence)
Quote 4
“At its root, ensuring our national security requires us to: Defend and nurture the underlying sources of American strength, including our people, our economy, our national defense, and our democracy at home; Promote a favorable distribution of power to deter and prevent adversaries from directly threatening the United States and our allies, inhibiting access to the global commons, or dominating key regions; and Lead and sustain a stable and open international system, underwritten by strong democratic alliances, partnerships, multilateral institutions, and rules.”
White House, Interim National Security Strategy Guidance
- Good: Nice words, BUT…
- Bad: Presuming the world wants American leadership
- Ugly: How’re the other guys going to read this?
Quote 5
“Our democratic alliances enable us to present a common front, produce a unified vision, and pool our strength to promote high standards, establish effective international rules, and hold countries like China to account. That is why we will reaffirm, invest in, and modernize the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and our alliances with Australia, Japan, and the Republic of Korea – which, along with our other global alliances and partnerships, are America’s greatest strategic asset.”
White House, Interim National Security Strategy Guidance
- Good: Articulates priority alliances
- Bad: But one’s not like the other…. NATO vs. The Quad
- Ugly: Where’s India?
Lightning round: By region
- Indo-Pacific: Net Assessment notes the leaving out of the Philippines when discussing partners; India gets barely a mention (see above)
- Western Hemisphere: “irregular migration”? That didn’t age well, or ingratiate us to Mexico.
- Middle East: “War is not the answer, but we’re still focusing on security.”
- Africa: We’re going to do all the things…. No major changes?
Democracy at home
A third of the document is about domestic policy and the importance of having a healthy democracy and strong economy to make America strong and attractive on the world stage. Biden is not wrong about that, but is that necessarily strategy?
Bottom line
The Biden administration’s “corrective” guidance on foreign policy is long on promises and vision, scant on details and the early signs from its initial outings with foreign leaders point to a high probability of the Biden team biting off way more than they can chew. So, it’ll be interesting to see the full NSS (whenever that comes out) and compare it’s hopefully more specific content with this document.
In the meantime, this reads more like some hipster startup’s business manifesto. It’s aim is to get buy-in externally and cast a vision internally. Sounds like it’s done it’s job for the Biden team, but the jury is out on whether it’s helped with the much larger and diverse audience of American citizens and global leaders.
Conversation starters
Should foreign policy and domestic policy we so intertwined as the Biden administration appears to portray it? What do we gain/lose by blurring the distinction between the two domains of policy?
The spoken and written word (podcasts and reading)
Articles
- The INSSG
- TTP, “6 Theses for Analyzing Diplomacy”
- TTP, “What is War Good for? A Plethora of International Relations Theories”
Podcasts
- TTP Podcast, Episode 7: On “America’s Place in the World”
- TTP Podcast, Episode 9: Who Makes American Foreign Policy?
- TTP Podcast, Episode 13: Deciding on a Drone Strike
- TTP Podcast, Episode 14: Defining the National Interest
- Net Assessment: A Podcast for the Middle Class
The last word
“In the twentieth century, no country has influenced international relations as decisively and at the same time as ambivalently as the United States. No society has more firmly insisted on the inadmissibility of intervention in the domestic affairs of other states, or more passionately asserted that its own values were universally applicable. No nation has been more pragmatic in the day-to-day conduct of its diplomacy, or more ideological in the pursuit of its historical moral conviction. No country has been more reluctant to engage itself abroad even while undertaking alliances and commitments of unprecedented reach and scope.
Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy
It’s easy to pick on the Biden administration’s clashing, paradoxical desires here, but Kissinger suggests this may be a feature, not a bug, of how a messy democracy like America works out its strategic vision.