Joe Biden wants an Aatmanirbhar America

US President Joe Biden (left) shakes hands with Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy before Biden delivered his State of the Union address on February 07, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

February is a funny month. It’s short but brutally cold if you’re in the Northeast corner of the Americas. The month isn’t even consistent, with a slight addendum in the Gregorian calendar every four years. But let me Leap to the point then.

Washington and New Delhi don’t have identical Februarys, certainly not in the weather, Washington is colder. But both capitals presented key speeches this month. For India, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the last full Union Budget before the General Elections of 2024. President Biden presented his State of the Union Address, as the new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy sat stoic, unimpressed with a look as cold as a Washington winter that was juxtaposed with Biden’s deputy, Vice President Kamala Harris, warm, ebullient applauses with every major announcement.

February also marks the one-year anniversary, since Russian Vladimir President marched into Ukraine like it was 1939. The month also saw a Chinese spy balloon shot down from American skies. The State Department didn’t mince its words when it said Beijing had sent the balloon as part of a Chinese military-directed surveillance effort to gather key intel over sensitive sites over continental United States. Beijing was quick to retaliate with its unique brand of wolf warrior-style diplomacy. The foreign ministry spokesperson sent the riposte in saying that Washington had spied on China at least on ten such previous occasions.

Tensions between Beijing and Washington have hit a nadir, so much so that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has postponed (not yet cancelled) his first official diplomatic visit to Beijing.

Apropos of spy craft, this is redolent of US-USSR relations during the Cold War era. American pilot, Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane was shot down on May 1, 1960, over the Soviet Union. This incident had severe ramifications in what was then seen as a thawing of Russo-American ties, as this led to the cancellation of a Khrushchev-Eisenhower summit. Previously, in September 1959, President Eisenhower and Premier Khrushchev met at Camp David and this follow-up summit undid the ‘Spirit of Camp David’.

Domestic Focus

Yet, with Russian and Chinese aggressions, one would argue that President Biden's State of the Union was as domestic-focused as Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget speech. As I have written before for Moneycontrol, the priorities of President Biden from the campaign trail to his agenda will be primarily domestic-focused. His speech oscillated from the war on drugs to fighting the climate fight, bringing jobs back to American shores, fixing ailing infrastructure and the even weaker edifice that America’s healthcare system rests on to curbing gun violence with a hopeful assault rifle ban, to then acknowledging victims and survivors and their families who were at the Capitol that evening, the political soothsayers would have you believe he was laying out his election agenda for 2024 and assuaging the naysayers and critics for a fillip in his approval. As a Washingtonian colleague at a leading think tank said, it was like watching “Aatmanirbhar America”.

Similar to Biden’s SOTU speech from 2022, there was a moment of acknowledgement to the Ukrainian ambassador in the galleries, and yet as Putin continues to pummel Ukraine, barely any airtime towards foreign policy goals or Russia, as he described a “new unity of NATO in response to Moscow’s aggression”, as the octogenarian called “a test for the ages.”

Cautious Approach

Both Republicans and Democrats, while varying their hawkish and dovish stances, unequivocally see China and Russia as adversaries. At the start of this term in 2021, I wrote President Biden unlike his predecessor Donald Trump would adopt a “small yard, high-fence approach” in dealing with China. That is unlike Trump’s bellicosity, and vitriol directed toward the communist party leadership, Biden wouldn’t meander down the treacherous path of trade wars. Instead, there would be a cautious approach, especially in dealing with technology. Towards the 60^th minute of his 72-minuted scripted homily, Biden did bring up China saying America seeks “competition, not conflict” and referencing the balloon when he echoed “we made clear last week, if China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country.”

But the elephant in the room is always the dragon, as even while speaking on semiconductors and bringing back vital manufacturing to American shores, touting the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, that Trump would simply call “America First”. This domestic agenda has significant geopolitical ripples.

Plane Talk

Biden’s wish to bring back manufacturing jobs to America may just be about to take off (pun firmly intended). Air India, the erstwhile national carrier for India has announced one of the largest commercial deals in aviation history, with a record 470 jets, 250 from Airbus and 220 from Boeing.

This whopping deal prompted President Biden and the White House to issue a statement, where Biden dubbed this as a historic agreement between the two companies. This also augurs well with Biden’s SOTU clarion call as he acknowledged that this would give an impetus to the American manufacturing industry, "supporting a million American jobs across 44 states”, many of which won’t require a college degree. President Biden and Prime Minister Modi had a brief telephone call and spoke “business” when they said this would strengthen the US-India commercial partnership.

War clouds continue to hover over Ukraine, and what’s more nebulous is if there is an immediate end in sight to the cessation of hostilities. The nebulousness can shift over Beijing as well if there will be diplomatic rapprochement with Washington. Don’t ask this in the White House or State Department briefing room, the anodyne homily is always the same, “any improvement in relations is “going to be up to China”.

Akshobh Giridharadas is a Washington DC-based former journalist. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.