But for a dramatic twist of happenstance, Americans would from January 20, 2021, have a new shepherd. The White House looks set to, once again, welcome Sen. Joe Biden into the oval office; albeit with a completely different status from his previous experience as a vice to Barack Obama.
When Biden took to the stage for a customary victory speech to millions of Americans on Saturday night, the appreciation of the magnitude of the tasks ahead seemed not lost on the 76-year-old former Delaware Senator. His announcement of a team of experts and scientists to formulate a blueprint against Coronavirus was a clear indication of an awareness of, unarguably, the biggest challenge the United States is grappling with at this time.
When accounts of this historic moment are written, it shall be mentioned that unseating President Donald Trump was made possible, in part, by covid-19. His perceived (mis) management of the pandemic may have sealed his fate long before the first vote was cast. Trump’s denial of science and decision to fight the pandemic with rhetoric was a fatal gamble that did, obviously, not pay off in the end. It is for that reason that the promise to “listen to science” by Biden would gladden the hearts of American scientists as they struggle to combat the spread of Covid-19.
The 2020 presidential election was simply a referendum on Trump’s slapdash handling of the virus. In the 72hours of waiting for the declaration of a victor after the bitterly contested election, America broke daily records for new cases of Coronavirus twice, with thousands dying in the process. In peacetime, America has never known such a crisis. Claiming more than 120,000 lives in a year, surely the pandemic has to top the ‘to-do’ list of Biden.
When he steps in as the 46th President of the United States next January, Mr Biden would have his work cut out from the onset. Asides Covid, he must strive to heal America of its striking racial discrimination which became pronounced when George Floyd was murdered by policemen in May 2020. Theodore R. Johnson, an expert in voting behaviour amongst African-Americans at the Brennan Center for Justice, contends that having a woman of colour in Kamala Harris on Biden’s ticket “is 1,000 percent a demographic selection” which helped in no small degree to clinch victory for the Democrats in the 2020 elections.
And in addition to what Americans expect from the President-elect is a resuscitation of the economy. For three years, Mr Trump appeared to possess the magic wand to breathe life into a comatose economy inherited from the Obama era. He fought vigorously to arrest job losses, expand health insurance, and widen the social safety nets amongst others. However, the advent of the pandemic and the speed at which the economy spiralled out of hands exposed the continued fragilities inherent in the American economy.
On the international scene, the Biden presidency would, of course, have critical challenges to deal with. His years of experience on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations at the Capitol Hill would be put to task. In four years, President Trump promotes chronic nationalism at the expense of globalization. While his analysis of globalization as anti-people gained tractions in a few places, there is a growing sentiment that such disposition has pushed the international community into further turmoil and uncertainties.
Trump was bad news for multilateralism ideologists as exemplified by the brokenness of the much-cherished Trans-Atlantic relations with the European Union (EU) on the one hand, and the unending trade ‘war’ with China on the other. His sharp criticisms of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) left the military alliance in dire straits as a rudderless entity. The unilateral withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord and the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) could be summed as a major affront on globalization and the culture of joint efforts to achieve common aspirations.
However, the contestation between Washington and Beijing is seen by some observers as unavoidable and necessary if the United States would retain its hegemony of the system and would therefore require Biden to be extremely strategic in his dealings with the Chinese.
Another theatre of action that cannot escape the radar of the United States is the Middle East. The Jewish/Arab fraught relationship viz-a-viz the management of Iran remains potentially combustible, thus putting more pressure on the White House at every given time, regardless of the political leanings of its occupant. Trump’s bold approach in withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, the killing of General Qaseem Soleimani in a drone strike, alongside his clear indulgence of Israel further exacerbated the eternal animosity in the region.
Furthermore, the Korean Peninsula also remains a diplomatic burdensome for the U.S. The solo attempt by Trump to manage North Korea failed to translate into a de-nuclearized Pyongyang which he had hoped for while engaging in a photoshoot with Kim Jong-Un back in June 2019. Trump referenced that moment as a “great honour” after becoming the first sitting U.S. President to step foot in the Communist side of the peninsula. How to tactfully manoeuvre these is going to be, perhaps, the most prominent foreign policy nightmare for President Biden.
While the enduring global camaraderie of the ‘new world order’ may have suffered greatly as a result of Donald Trump’s disruptive ‘America first’ mantra, the incoming political guard appears ready to restore the valued tradition of building consensus through networking and negotiations between Washington and its allies. As reckoned by Biden, the notion of America first pursuance by Trump nearly turned the country into a pariah sovereign as “America alone”. That naked reality could not have been captured more succinctly by anyone than Brian Mckeon, the President-Elect’s advisor on foreign policy, who submits thus: “Biden would have a lot of repair work to do (as President).”
