“The world has changed,” Vice President Biden said October 2 at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in Boston. “The sheer rapidity and magnitude, the interconnectedness of the major global challenges demand a response ― a different response, a global response involving more players, more diverse players than ever before.”
Citing “immediate crises … from ISIL to Ebola to Ukraine,” Biden said that the “international order that we painstakingly built after World War II and defended over the past several decades is literally fraying at the seams right now.”
In response, the United States is strengthening its core alliances, building relationships with emerging powers, defending and extending the most vital international rules of the road, and confronting the causes of violent extremism.
The United States continues to cooperate closely with its European allies on regional security, but also on “everything from trade to counterterrorism to climate change,” including pursuing a final agreement on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.
The vice president highlighted the U.S. approach to specific policy challenges.
• Ukraine: “Each of the 28 NATO allies has now committed to providing security assistance to Ukraine, including over $115 million from the United States. And as we respond to the crisis in Ukraine, we are determined that NATO itself emerge stronger from the crisis thrust on us by Russia.”
• East Asia: “America today has more peacetime military engagements in the Asia-Pacific than ever before” with 60 percent of its naval assets and air power stationed in the Pacific by 2020. It is strengthening its ability to deter North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, expanding the U.S.-Vietnam partnership, and pursing “an historic opportunity” to build a new relationship with Burma.
• Middle East: “Alliances are also crucial … and we’re working alongside a coalition of Arab partners and countries from around the world to confront ISIL.”
• Africa: The United States is organizing the international response to the largest Ebola outbreak in history and deploying more than “3,000 American soldiers to West Africa to support regional civilian responses.”
• Western Hemisphere: With North America “the energy epicenter of the word today,” the continent is on track to be energy independent by 2020. Trade relationships remain critically important with 40 percent of U.S. export remaining in the hemisphere. On regional security, the United States will maintain and expand cooperation with key partners like Colombia, Mexico and Central American nations.
To more effectively manage its relationships with the emerging powers of the 21st century, the United States will strive “to realize the potential of America’s friendship with emerging democratic partners like Brazil and President Dilma, President Peña Nieto in Mexico, Prime Minister Modi in India, who just made a historic visit to the United States this week,” Biden said.
“The world in which emerging powers and responsible stakeholders [promote] common security and prosperity has yet to arrive, but it’s within our grasp to see that happen. That’s why we’ve embraced the G20 as a model for economic cooperation. That’s why it’s also important that we fully support international institutions like the IMF, fund them and reform and modernize them to better serve all nations.”
CHINA
Biden singled out the U.S.-China relationship as “the single most essential part” of improving U.S. relations with emerging powers. “Even as we acknowledge that we will often be in competition, we seek deeper cooperation with China, not conflict.”
The vice president reminded his audience that President Obama plans to visit China later this year, and that Obama’s recent meeting with President Xi in California resulted in a historic agreement on curtailing hydrofluorocarbons.
Biden also reiterated the United States’ commitment to maintaining freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. “We’ll also never stop standing up for the principles we believe in that are universal: democratic freedoms and human rights.”
The U.S. rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region also depends on completing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Biden said.
Once completed, the trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific trade pacts “will encompass nearly two-thirds of the global trade in the world, and can shape the character of the entire … global economy.”
On international peace and security, the United States and its partners must “defend and extend the international rules of the road and deal with asymmetrical threats that are emerging.” That means upholding “longstanding, important international norms like nonproliferation and territorial integrity” through actions like removing Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile and defending Ukraine’s sovereignty.
COUNTERING VIOLENT EXTREMISM
ISIL is the latest example of the rise of violent extremism that pre-dated the Obama administration and likely will last beyond it, Biden said. “Our comprehensive strategy to degrade and eventually defeat ISIL reflects the lessons we have learned [in the] post-9/11 age about how to use our power wisely. … It’s focused on building a coalition with concrete contributions from the countries in the region.”
“Ultimately, societies have to solve their own problems, which is why we’re pouring so much time and effort into supporting a Syrian opposition and Iraqi efforts to re-establish their democracy and defend their territory.”
The United States recognizes that it cannot solve problems like ISIL alone, Biden said, and knows that military force alone will not resolve the situation.
But the United States can and does “seek to empower the forces of moderation and pluralism and inclusive economic growth. We can work with our partners to delegitimize ISIL in the Islamic world and their perverse ideology.”