The Antidote To Chaos

A forceful argument for President Biden and American global leadership.

President Biden at the United Nations

by Ben Cohen

“Our world is marked by geopolitical turbulence, unpredictability and uncertainty. The tectonic plates of the world order are shifting beneath our feet. And, the structures that are built upon them are fracturing.”

- Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister, Melanie Joly, October 23, 2023

In May of 2020 during the peak of the Covid pandemic, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations Robert D. Blackwill, and Thomas Wright, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution published a special report titled The End of World Order and American Foreign Policy.

The authors argued that the world order (more commonly referred to as “the global liberal order”) was “weakened after 9/11 and ended over the past decade, driven by a combination of great power ambition, American withdrawal, and transformational changes that left many nations unmoored from old certainties.”

After the outbreak of Covid-19 that plunged the world into a deep sense of insecurity, the authors argued that:

“The fundamental strategic problem the United States faces with respect to world order is how it should respond to the breakdown in agreed arrangements between the major powers.” The United States, they argued, should “preserve its national interests and its own notion of international order” in the face of “radical international uncertainty”. Key to this was to “create a persuasive model of competent U.S. governance, which will in turn reinforce America’s international leadership,” and “fundamentally reform the way the United States deals with its treaty allies and partners.”

Three years later, we are watching the Biden Administration attempting to do just this, but in the face of even greater instability.

The world, upended

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was an explicit acknowledgment that the post Soviet unipolar international order was over. Hamas’s recent brazen assault on Israel was another seismic shift in the balance of global power.

Liberal democratic nations are on high alert as new, undemocratic alliances emerge with serious geopolitical ambition. China, Russia, and Iran are in a deepening conflict with the West and are moving aggressively to expand their regional power. They sense the fracturing of the global liberal order and are taking advantage of the uncertainty.

Domestic troubles

The Biden Administration has behaved admirably in the face of these escalating conflicts. Biden has visited both war zones and forcefully backed America’s democratic allies — and not just with words. Biden is attempting to reassert US power as a force for stability as the world careens towards more and more insecurity.

Unfortunately for the world, America faces its own reckoning as we head into 2024. A fascist is, again, threatening to upend American democracy, and her fate rests in the hands of an 80 year old President.

What happens if Donald Trump wins next year?

If Americans decide to elect the 45th president for the second time, we will be entering a period of grave insecurity that could have terrifying consequences for the world. Does the US pulls funding for Ukraine’s war efforts and leave them at the mercy of a vengeful Putin? How would a Trump White House manage the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians? What happens to NATO, Europe and the global liberal order? What if there is another pandemic with a deadlier variant of coronavirus, or an entirely new disease?

Right now we are seeing the dividends of stable US leadership. While there is profound uncertainty, there are adults in charge and they are doing their best to create stability. Under Biden NATO has regained a sense of purpose, US allies feel supported and able to push back against aggressive neighbors. The undemocratic forces spreading instability are less powerful than their opponents, and they know it. This should give us hope going forward, that our collective desires for more freedom and more democracy are more powerful than the alternative. If Ukraine can propel Russian troops from its borders, if Hamas can be routed from power in Gaza, and China dissuaded from invading Taiwan, brighter days may lie ahead.

But it matters how this is done. Does Ukraine go it alone? Is Israel given free rein over the Palestinians, and do threats against China backfire and create an even more precarious situation? We know that a Trump White House would make these variable all the more uncertain. The chances for catastrophe are far, far higher with a man who revels in praise from Vladimir Putin does not know where Hungary is on a map. Trump is an agent of chaos, and the conditions are right for him to do more damage than ever before.

The right man for the job

There are legitimate concerns over President Biden’s age, particularly given the grueling nature of American presidential campaigning. At 80 years of age, most people are well into their retirement years. Is Biden still up to the arduous task of running the world’s most powerful nation?

Given the President’s actions over the past few weeks this matter really should be closed. Biden’s visit to an active war zone and rousing speeches in Israel proved he is more than up for the job. The President behaved like a statesman and worked diligently behind the scenes to prevent further escalation and get crucial aid to civilians. Biden has also negotiated complicated deals with an increasingly extreme Congress with a great deal of success, proving again that underestimating him is a fool’s errand.

It is unclear why people think the President won’t be able to fend off a shockingly disorganized, once defeated foe facing multiple criminal cases that could end him in prison. The smart money is on Biden, as it was in 2020.

A time to rebuild

The the global liberal order is not perfect, but it is better than any alternative we have created in history. As the philosopher Yuval Noah Harari writes, this order based system has created enormous benefits for humanity:

Though the global liberal order has many faults and problems, it has proved superior to all alternatives. The liberal world of the early 21st century is more prosperous, healthy and peaceful than ever before. For the first time in human history, starvation kills fewer people than obesity; plagues kill fewer people than old age; and violence kills fewer people than accidents. When I was six months old I didn’t die in an epidemic, thanks to medicines discovered by foreign scientists in distant lands. When I was three I didn’t starve to death, thanks to wheat grown by foreign farmers thousands of kilometers away. And when I was eleven I wasn’t obliterated in a nuclear war, thanks to agreements signed by foreign leaders on the other side of the planet.

A Biden victory in 2024 is a pathway towards more global stability. With an engaged US helmed by smart, pragmatic people, there is a chance to rebuild the structures we put in place after World War II. The United Nations, Europe, NATO, the World Health Organization and other international organizations will be crucial as we navigate a more complex world, and they can only function properly if America engages with them.

In these uncertain times, it is more crucial than ever to hold steadfast to the values of democracy, collaboration, and unity, ensuring the global liberal order emerges stronger and more resilient than before. The world might be shifting, but it doesn’t need to collapse.

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