To impose itself on China in the long term, and to counter Russia immediately in order to remain the undisputed first world power: the White House reaffirmed the strategic priorities of President Joe Biden on Wednesday.
“The post-Cold War era is over. The competition between great powers has begun to determine his successor,” the president’s top diplomatic adviser, Jake Sullivan, said while presenting the executive’s National Security Strategy at Georgetown University.
He spoke of a “decisive decade”, presenting this strategy that any new American administration must make public.
Joe Biden’s was originally supposed to be unveiled in February, but, because of the war in Ukraine, it took until Wednesday for the White House to unveil a 48-page document, sweeping through a multitude of themes and every corner of the world. the planet.
In the introduction to the document, Joe Biden signs a declaration imbued with his customary optimism: “The United States has everything to win the competition of the 21st century.e century. »
For Jake Sullivan, the whole difficulty lies in reconciling a logic of “competition” and a quest for “cooperation” in the face of the threats that weigh on all of humanity, regardless of borders: climate change which, according to him, is the “greatest of common threats”, but also hunger, disease, terrorism, inflation.
“Everything to win”
“Our priority is to preserve our competitive advantage over China while containing a still deeply dangerous Russia,” according to the document signed by the American president.
If Russia presents “an immediate threat”, China “is the only rival that has both the will to change the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological means of pursue this objective”.
But China is also, Jake Sullivan pointed out, America’s biggest trading partner. The first world power also intends to “update the current system of international trade”, under the impetus of a Joe Biden who displays an uninhibited economic patriotism.
“In summary, we cannot go back to the traditional free trade agreements of yesteryear. We have to adapt, ”said Joe Biden’s adviser.
Jake Sullivan however assured, in an interview with the press: “We will not try to divide the world into rigid blocks. We are not looking to turn competition into confrontation or a new “cold war”. »
Democracy
“I do not believe that the war in Ukraine has fundamentally changed Joe Biden’s approach to foreign policy, which dates from well before his presidency,” said the national security adviser.
And this approach not only applies outside the borders of the United States, it also applies to domestic threats to democracy.
“We have not always lived up to our ideals, and in recent years our democracy has been threatened from within,” reads the document released by the White House.
“As Americans, we must all agree that the will of the people, as expressed in elections, must be respected and protected,” writes the American executive.
The warning comes less than a month before the midterm US legislative elections.
According to a survey by washington posta majority of Republican candidates for the Senate, House of Representatives or other local offices, inspired by former President Donald Trump, openly question or contest the election of Joe Biden.