2023-05-17 18:19:00
CHow to embody a conquering America when you risk bankruptcy? Joe Biden, encumbered by a political debt crisis, left for Japan on Thursday, with the aim of consolidating his international alliances against Beijing.
“It’s hard to + compete with China + when you’re so busy sinking your own ship. How do we look to the rest of the world?” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank and former senior State Department official.
Complicated to speak of economic unity against Russia and China when “the biggest problem facing the rest of the G7 in the immediate future is (the risk of) a default in payment in the United States”, abounds Josh Lipsky of the Atlantic Council research center.
The American president made his way to the G7 summit in Hiroshima on Wednesday (Germany, Canada, United States, France, Italy, Japan and United Kingdom).
But he had to give up on going to Papua New Guinea, a visit intended to counter the growing influence of Beijing in the area, then in Australia.
Isn’t this already a victory for China, a journalist asked him on Friday? “No”, replied Joe Biden, wanting to be firm, after having repeated that he was “confident” in an upcoming outcome to the political-budgetary crisis.
“At the same time”
“The nature of the presidency is to manage a million important issues at the same time,” he said on Tuesday.
Here he is deprived of the opportunity, when he has just launched his campaign for 2024, to make a triumphant diplomatic tour.
Instead, the 80-year-old Democrat will return to Washington on Sunday to negotiate with the parliamentary opposition on a subject as crucial as it is difficult to understand from abroad: getting Congress to vote on raising the debt ceiling.
Without this, the United States could, from June 1, default. That is to say, being unable to pay wages, pensions and social benefits, and to pay what they owe to their creditors. Never seen.
Canceled therefore a historic visit to Papua New Guinea, an island state in Oceania whose strategic importance is growing at the same time as the relationship between the United States and China is strained over Taiwan. Too bad for the preparations already underway and for the many other heads of state in the area who were to join Joe Biden there.
Also forgotten is the visit to Australia, to an ally which has just invested in a very ambitious submarine program with the United States.
Finally missed the meeting, planned in the spectacular setting of the Sydney Opera House, with the leaders of the Quad, this diplomatic format which particularly bristles Beijing (United States, Australia, Japan, India).
The White House assures that Joe Biden will meet with all these interlocutors on the sidelines of the G7.
Democracy
He will also receive Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on June 22 for a state visit, and on Tuesday offered the same thing to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
A spokesman for the White House, John Kirby, assured that the other heads of state and government “understand” that Joe Biden is dedicated to this serious national problem.
But this truncated trip is messy for a president who constantly repeats that democracies, to prevail against autocracies, must be efficient, responsive and pragmatic.
How to unfold this argument, when the Democrats and the Republicans are torn apart by a parliamentary procedure which obliges the American Congress to regularly raise the maximum public debt ceiling?
All the G7 states have heavy public debts – starting with the host country, Japan, world record of debt compared to Gross Domestic Product – but none is facing this kind of political imbroglio.
This truncated trip to Asia offers an unflattering contrast to the conquering economic strategy outlined recently by Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, on the “new Washington consensus”.
Arguing for a closer articulation between strategic and economic interests, he for example assured that America should “redouble” investments. And “to be at the heart of a vibrant international financial system”.
17/05/2023 18:18:16 –
Washington (AFP) –
© 2023 AFP
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