The New Yorker:
In a recent conversation, Sir John Scarlett, the elegant former spymaster of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, or M.I.6, pondered the foreign-policy challenges facing Joe Biden when he enters the White House—and the jarring differences since he left it four years ago. The bottom line, Scarlett told me, is that America’s adversaries are now “more assertive, aggressive, and self-confident.” Many of the threats were building in 2017, but they have escalated exponentially. As Biden returns to power, the variety and depth of hazards facing the United States—from nations and non-state militias, jihadi terrorists, drug lords, criminal syndicates, and hackers—are greater than at any time since the U.S. became a superpower after the Second World War.
Biden has one advantage. He’s widely viewed as an internationalist, having travelled extensively to crisis and war zones and conferred with more than a hundred foreign leaders during his decades in the Senate and White House. But, on the eve of his own Inauguration, spymasters and generals long experienced with global crises are anxious about America’s ability to lead a world in disarray and deathly ill. They also wonder whether other nations will be as eager to collaborate with the United States as they were when Biden was last in office. “We will reclaim our credibility to lead the free world,” Biden told reporters last month. “And we will, once again, lead not just by the example of our power, but by the power of our example.” A lot has changed, however, because of the erratic and egocentric policies of Biden’s predecessor. Adversaries have also found more imaginative ways to exploit America’s internal turmoil and withdrawal from the international stage. Both allies and adversaries feel fewer constraints. The rules and institutions of the international order have weakened.
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