Would Biden's foreign policy wins have long-term political effects?

IT IS a political axiom of sorts that US presidents tend to gain public support during foreign policy crises, as the American people rally behind the commander-in-chief when he confronts a foreign adversary that is seen to threaten the security of the nation.

That may explain why conspiracy theorists have occasionally accused this or that White House occupant of drawing the country into an international crisis in order to distract the public's attention from domestic problems; this is sometimes referred to as "wagging the dog", after a 1977 film Wag the Dog in which a president's political fixers orchestrate the invasion of a country in order to divert the media's focus from a presidential sex scandal.

But if anything, President Joe Biden has run for office pledging to focus on domestic problems, the lethal pandemic and the struggling economy. His main foreign policy preoccupation seemed to be the geostrategic and geoeconomic challenge from China, insisting that he would shift the centre of US foreign policy from the Atlantic and the Middle East to East Asia and refrain from drawing the country into new military entanglements.