The U.S. strategic position is at a low ebb in the aftermath of the chaotic and damaging Trump Administration. The nation’s rivals and even its allies have had more than sufficient cause to view the United States as “tired,” weak, in decline, and incapable of asserting, much less sustaining leadership. Such perceptions are hazardous and they invite challenges. Those perceptions have likely fed Russia’s increasing activity in and around eastern Ukraine and China’s tough response in its first bilateral engagement with the United States in Anchorage.
The U.S. currently faces a real need to rebuild its economy, its military strength, its alliances, and its capacity for innovation. It also needs to rebuild its credibility. Credibility depends, in large part, on actual capacity (economy, military power, strength of alliances).
“Small ball” won’t have the high-impact payoff in shifting the geopolitical context back in the favor of the United States and its allies. The Apollo Project in the 1960s and the Reagan military buildup/economic renewal of the 1980s were examples of the kind of major initiatives that were needed to fundamentally change things. In the 1960s, the Soviet Union was still in its ascendancy, it was fighting head-to-head for space leadership, and had rapidly closed the nuclear arms difference. The Soviet Union was highly confident at the time that “the correlation of forces” were moving inevitably in its favor.
Today, Russia is weaker, but still potent. It is dangerous as it is using foreign policy and hard power to mask its internal weaknesses. China is a rising superpower. China, like rising powers of the past, is increasingly seeking to leverage its growing might in advancing its interests, some of which are at odds with those of the United States and its allies e.g., the South China Sea.
President Biden, perhaps because he has vast policy experience, understands that a sort of “Big Bang” challenge, more along the lines of the Apollo Project than incremental triangulation of small policy changes, is needed to achieve a fundamental shift in geopolitical events. He recognizes that climate change is a big global issue with high visibility. He understands that there is a gap between what technologies exist today and what will be needed to move toward full clean energy production. He also has seen how significant investments in R&D, led to a rapid explosion of new technologies that translated the Apollo vision into reality. He possesses faith that the U.S. can still innovate and improve to accomplish big things. His far-reaching infrastructure+ plan is his “moon shot.”
If the United States succeeds, its credibility will be renewed, its historic capacity to overcome even the biggest challenges will be reaffirmed, and the world will have new confidence in the vitality of democratic governance despite the autocratic models vying for dominance. Basking in the success of a great achievement, the divisions that increasingly polarize the nation could also dissolve.