America's rivals testing Biden - and more important, the US

THERE were several bad days for US President Joe Biden of late at home, where, according to opinion polls, his public approval ratings had fallen into the 40s.

His "Build Back Better" spending bills are stuck on Capitol Hill with no chance of being passed anytime soon; his hopes for getting a historic voting rights bill approved in Congress have been dashed. And last week, the US Supreme Court stopped his administration's vaccination requirement for America's largest employers, a major blow to his efforts to combat the coronavirus. And no doubt when a US president projects political weakness at home, America's global adversaries assume that the leader is constrained in his ability to respond to challenges abroad - which explains in part why some of America's geopolitical rivals may now feel that they can defy the United States without paying costs in the form of US retaliation. The political fragility of the Biden administration at home, they assume, translates into military vulnerability abroad.

In a way, the bungling, if not humiliating, US withdrawal from Afghanistan has become a symbol of that supposedly American weakness worldwide, encouraging Russia, China and Iran to give the Biden administration the runaround, at the same time raising concerns among US allies about the endurance of its military commitment around the world.