Two and half cheers for Biden’s Asia forays

IT’S safe to say that President Joe Biden entered office with as much experience in foreign policy as three famous White House occupants who were recognised for their expertise in world affairs: Dwight Eisenhower (the supreme commander of Allied forces in Western Europe during World War II who led the massive invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe); Richard Nixon (President Eisenhower’s vice president with a reputation for foreign policy expertise, having travelled to dozens of countries before becoming president); and George H W Bush, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and first head of the US liaison office to the People’s Republic of China). 

After four decades of serving in Congress, including as a member and chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and later two terms as vice president, travelling to almost every corner of the world and negotiating with, among others, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian leader Vladimir Putin, President Biden’s knowledge of world affairs probably rivals that of a Harvard PhD in international relations.

So on some level, it may not be surprising that President Biden’s masterly response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and in particular, the mobilisation of a powerful coalition of diplomatic and military partners to confront President Putin’s aggression, recalls former President Bush I’s winning strategy to force Iraq’s Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in 1991.