Joe Biden’s America needs to learn from the world, not vice versa
- Chinese competition has exploded the ‘End of History’ myth, while Asia’s handling of coronavirus shows ‘good government’ is not an oxymoron
- If Biden is to succeed, he must recognise these facts and ignore the advice of Washington’s hubristic ‘thinking industry’
Yet, before we descend once again into doom and gloom, let us pause and ask ourselves whether it is possible for Biden to succeed.
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People on the streets of Beijing react to Biden's US presidential election victory over Trump
The first fundamental U-turn is from the “End of History” moment. With clear hindsight, we can see that this moment, flush with arrogance and hubris, generated a huge blindness to the real “hard truth” of that time: “the return of history”.
Yet, the all-powerful America could use its geopolitical muscles to restrain competition from Japan, a dependent ally. No such geopolitical muscle can restrain Chinese competition.
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But all is not lost. The American economy remains dynamic and competitive. However, instead of a laissez-faire belief that markets will naturally make American workers more competitive, major worker retraining programmes are necessary. Biden can make this his number one priority.
To achieve this, America needs to make a second fundamental U-turn from the deeply embedded Reaganesque belief that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem”.
Indeed, as America is trying to navigate its way through a difficult historical moment, where it faces the realistic historic possibility of becoming the number two economy in the world, it needs to populate its civil service ranks with thoughtful, highly motivated people, not the demoralised crew that Trump is leaving behind.
Many Americans have seen the need for this. As vice-president, Al Gore tried to launch the “Reinventing Government” campaign. Sadly, in the 1990s, America was still flush with “End of History” arrogance and the Reaganesque antipathy to government.
The second big U-turn Biden can make is to mention the unmentionables: America today needs “good government”. Just as the Meiji restoration delivered extraordinary performance to the Japanese economy by sending young Japanese to learn best practices of good governance from all over the world, America can do the same.
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In short, with humility instead of hubris, America can learn from the world.
However, to begin this learning journey America needs to make another fundamental U-turn. It has to ignore the conventional advice given by the “thinking industry” in Washington.
This huge “thinking industry” works with one overarching assumption: the rest of the world will have to make fundamental adjustments to American power and influence. The all-powerful America need not adjust or adapt. Anyone who doubts this prevailing assumption should read the writings of Professor Stephen Walt on “Liberal hegemony”.
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As he says, clearly and frankly, “today’s foreign policy elite is a dysfunctional caste of privileged insiders who are frequently disdainful of alternative perspectives …” This disdain of alternative perspectives means that the “thinking industry” of Washington will prevent the Biden administration from making sensible and pragmatic U-turns.
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In short, to put it simply, there are powerful vested interests and, more insidiously, vested thinking that will prevent the Biden Administration from making U-turns.
Yet, if we want the Biden Administration to be more than a pleasant interlude between two Trump or Trump-like terms, such U-turns are absolutely necessary.
This is where Biden’s age may be a massive advantage. He has no further ambitions to aspire to. What can he lose by making fundamental U-turns?
Kishore Mahbubani, a Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, NUS, is the author of Has China Won?
