Joe Biden’s support for Ukraine is no guarantee America’s allies will stick to the script

President Joe Biden took office determined to restore US global leadership, rebuild America’s closest partnerships, and protect the world’s democracies from their own steady decline, from a global trend towards authoritarianism, and especially, from China. The president’s first summer then looked primed to do the opposite. A chaotic US-led withdrawal from Afghanistan saw the Taliban restored to power with devastating effects on the Afghan people while the reaction in the UK and Europe appeared set to usher in an identity crisis for the transatlantic partnership.

But fast forward one year. When Biden addressed the 77th session of the UN general assembly last month his speech appeared to confirm American primacy on the world stage.

Biden has used the war in Ukraine to revive the West. Ukraine has proved stronger than anyone guessed it would. Russia has proved far weaker. And Biden can claim at least some of this as his success. The president has been at the helm of a response that has already seen 17 billion dollars of military assistance delivered to Ukraine by a US government than many regularly dismiss as dysfunctional. And Biden’s adept and early move to telegraph the onset of the war and rally western support behind a series of measures designed to punish Russia and weaken its war effort have been impressive. Nato’s star is high as is US leadership of the alliance, so much that it is just about possible to forget that for four years, the western military alliance was the target of President Donald Trump’s ire. Public support for Nato has grown as has demand for membership. Notwithstanding Turkey’s disruptions, Finland and Sweden are on the path to membership.

Now though, things look set to get far harder.

As the White House prepares to release its long-delayed national security strategy, the context for US foreign policy has grown worse. The prospect for an end to war in Ukraine is remote and uncertain. As Biden’s remarks about the revived prospect of “Armageddon” last week showed, Russia’s threat to escalate by using nuclear weapons is putting pressure on the US. Washington must find a response that will deter Russia and also assuage the fears, and so maintain the solidarity, not only of Poland and the Baltic states, but also of Germany, France and the rest of America’s European partners. The Russian military has revealed its weakness, but its economy will decline by less than 5 per cent this year and President Vladimir Putin’s incentives to back down are not yet obvious to him. Ukraine’s economy has declined by almost 35 per cent and the cost of rebuilding the country is estimated by the World Bank to be around $350 billion (£316 billion).

Western unity is essential to this, but this depends on Europe’s continued prosperity. And Europe faces at least one bleak winter marked by rising energy prices. Some energy experts anticipate as many as four bleak European winters, with a delayed energy transition away from dependence on Russian fossil fuels, especially if Europe fractures. Already Germany’s announcement of a €200 billion (£176 billion) fiscal stimulus package is antagonising its European partners who claim that this will put German industry at a competitive advantage if the money is used to support domestic industry. But steps by Europe to work together may marginalise America. Last week, European leaders, including the UK, met in Prague and energy security was a top priority. The US was not invited, a fact that did not go unnoticed, even as the US continues to foot most of the bill for military assistance to Ukraine. Europe is America’s essential partner and sustaining western unity through the winter, and beyond, is vital.

Biden’s foreign policy bets suffered a further blow last week when the Opec+ cartel led by Saudi Arabia and Russia announced that it would release 2 million fewer barrels of oil per day in a clear sign that Riyadh has sided with Moscow, though the Saudis deny this. This has led to renewed demands that Biden withdraw US support for Saudi Arabia and reignited the ire of those who protested the president’s trip to Saudi Arabia over the summer in the light of the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi which the CIA concluded was ordered by the Saudi crown prince.

The Opec+ decision has also put pressure on Biden to take quick and decisive measures to replace oil supplies and manage gas prices. The November midterm elections are usually a referendum on the party in power, but the Democrats have also worked to cast these as a referendum on Trump and a radical conservative agenda that threatens among other things to undermine abortion rights. Rising prices at the gas pumps could change the game and drive Americans to vote as a protest against inflation and the price of gas. Foreign policy may not be as directly affected as domestic policy, but European wariness of the US will grow markedly if Republicans upset current expectations and win a majority in both the House and the Senate.

Saudi Arabia’s choice is also a sign that Biden’s foreign policy has struggled to resonate beyond the West.

When rime minister Narendra Modi of India told Putin at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation last month that now is “not a time for war” the US was briefly optimistic that India might finally be about to choose a side. These hopes were soon dashed as India abstained during a vote at the UN security council to condemn Russia’s illegal referendum of Russian-occupied areas in Ukraine.

More problematic still are China’s leaders, who may not approve of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, but who understand that their real geopolitical competitor is America, and so continue to buy Russian oil and refrain from publicly condemning the Kremlin. The recent announcement of restrictive tech export controls designed to inhibit China’s development of its own semiconductor strategy suggests that the Biden administration remains sharply focused on the long-term threat to the US posed by Beijing, with more such measures to come.

Biden’s foreign policy ambition of safeguarding democracy against China and a global resurgence of authoritarianism is also running up against a dead end in the developing world where the intense need for affordable food, fuel and debt financing overshadows any more rounded assessment of the ideal geopolitical partner. The division between the West and much of the rest of the world seems to come down to whether the invasion of Ukraine, or alternatively the sanctions designed to punish it, are seen as the source of the problem.

In short, pressure on Biden to tackle a range of urgent global priorities is mounting rapidly. After months of bad news at the polls, with his approval rating bottoming out in July at 36 per cent, the president has now seen three months of steady improvement. It is far from clear that this boost had anything to do with his foreign policy successes of the past year. That is no guarantee that the worsening geopolitical outlook will not cost him votes in the future though.