The “catastrophe” that it would mean that the United States cannot meet the promised payments of its debt can perhaps be avoided, and the president, Joe Biden, It has been shown this Wednesday “trusted” in which a agreement to raise the debt ceiling and avoid default. The tense and difficult talks with the Republicans to achieve it, however, they are already passing bill to the democrat, who has been seen forced to cut short an asian tour that was vital to his international agenda and to the duel with china and leave her reduced only to his participation in the G-7 this weekend. And the volatile, turbulent and increasingly dysfunctional domestic politics it continues to weigh down the US and its president.
One has fallen from Biden’s agenda historic visit to Papua New Guinea, which would have been the first by an American president to visit the island nation, and more than just a symbol. With a return to Washington now scheduled for Sunday, Biden has also left postponed a trip to Australiawhere in addition to addressing Parliament, he was going to participate in a meeting now canceled for his absence from Quadthe security dialogue that make up the US, Japan, India and Australia which has recently been strengthened to try to counter China’s growing aggressiveness in the region.
Although the four leaders of the Quad will take the opportunity to hold a meeting on the margins of the G-7 in Hiroshima, the suspension gives, like all the reduced agenda in the region, a blow to Biden’s diplomatic agenda, already his global image. And the dominant consensus among analysts is that this latest episode deepens problems for Washington in the international sphere, while at the same time it opens strategic and messaging opportunities to China.
“Unreliable Partner”
Biden, what initially flatly refused to negotiate with the Republicans to raise the debt ceiling but has ended up on the table to avoid what is taken for granted would be a calamity not only for the US but for world economic stability, it remains portrayed as a struggling leader. The battered image of the US as a punpredictable aísshaken by crisis and even for political riots which reached its peak in the storming the capitol it continues to degrade. And Gregory Poling, of the Center for International and Strategic Studies, has said in a statement in ‘The Washington Post’ that what happened “without a doubt adds weight to the arguments that the internal turmoil convert to usa on the global stage in a unreliable partner”.
It is an idea that many other analysts and experts have repeated. Daniel Russel, a former State Department official now at the Asia Society Policy Institute, has spoken in a statement to ‘The Guardian’ of “a self inflicted wound caused by the Polarization of washington that does not give a good image of the US as a reliable partner”. And the ‘Times’ has written that “volatility has become the new norm in Washington& rdquor; and “more and more allies expect a level of dysfunctionality”.
Opportunity for China
Biden’s reduced trip raises questions about the US’s commitment to the Asia-Pacific region, a Void that China may try to exploit. And this is how Han Blands, a professor of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University, sees it, who in a statement to ‘The New York Times’ has said that “one can bet that China will take advantage: its message to countries in the region will be that You can’t count on a country that can’t even carry out the basic functions of government.”
When asked in a brief appearance before the media before embarking on the trip to Japan about whether, with the cancellation of the trips to Australia and Papua New Guinea, he is not giving a victory to china Biden has replied with a blunt “No” and has ensured that the Quad countries remain “formidable allies“.
Biden’s efforts are now focused on the meeting in hiroshimaa summit of G-7 what will combine financial and geopolitical aspects. You will need to combine the search for a unified message of support for Ukraine in the face of the invasion war launched by Russia, to address the global inflation concerns also clear up doubts about the debt ceiling and achieve a complicated unitary message against China. And it is expected that after the meeting a joint statement, separate from the official communiqué, where they are reported practices of economic coercion, although this text possibly avoids expressly citing Beijing.
Negotiations on the debt ceiling, in addition, may have an effect on Biden’s foreign policy. Although the president has shown confidence in reaching a budget agreement, to reach it the Republicans demand spending cuts. And if they end up asking for and imposing limits, for example, in Defendingit could affect your effort to continue supporting Ukraine or trying to counter advances of China. “Our biggest threat is us,” Jane Harman, a former congresswoman and later president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center, told the Times.
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