How will the world respond to the strategic contraction of the United States?Biden has been in office for more than a month, and the United States does not seem to be as strong as it used to be. In addition to the personality differences between Biden and Trump, the more important reason is that the United States is facing a strategic shift between offense and defense. In my previous article "Three Changes Are Emerging in the Surrounding Situation, for this Purpose, Be Vigilant Against the Restart of the American War Machine", I analyzed the strategic orientation of the two leaders, Trump advocates America first, Biden advocates the dollar first, and the interests of the United States and the dollar are mostly the same, but the part that has conflicts is the key.
Biden wants to restore the dollar first and protect the core interests of the dollar, so what the United States needs to do strategically is to fight populism, continue to be politically correct, and maintain confidence in the United States, and second, to abandon America first and continue to uphold the current international rules and order. In this way, the central position of the dollar can be guaranteed.
Why is the United States facing a strategic shift between offense and defense?This is related to the US strategy in the past few years, and after implementing the US-first strategy for four years, the United States has discovered a fundamental problem, that is, the current strength of the United States is not enough to simultaneously engage in US-first and contain its opponents.
So now the United States has chosen to abandon America First and choose to unite its allies, but in this way, the problem arises.
The United States and the World, Changing Forms Offensively and Defensively Over the past four years, the United States has shown two characteristics in its America-first strategy: On the one hand, politically, it has persisted in putting America first and has constantly reduced its international obligations. On the other hand, economically, it is constantly exerting pressure on foreign countries, not only with us, but also with Europe, and with its neighbors Canada and MexicoKissinger, the national teacher of the United States, also said that if the United States fails, no one in the world should think about it. In this way, everyone can only prepare for the worst and deal with this outcome.
We, in particular, made a lot of preparations. We are almost acting in the east and west directions at the same time, to the east is to sign the RCEP, the East Asian "Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership", to the west is to sign the "China-EU Investment Agreement", and the timing is very coincidental, they are all signed after the United States, when the country is busy with infighting, this is actually a tacit understanding in all aspects.
After four years of constant pressure from the United States, we are prepared for the worst anyway, and many of those who signed agreements with us are traditional allies of the United States. As a result, I didn't expect that the United States itself could not bear such a result and replaced Trump.
In this way, the whole world has clearly seen the hole card of the United States, that is, the United States cannot do without the current system of world rules, and in the past, it wanted to put America first and engage in great power competition at the same time, but its own strength could not do so. Therefore, the United States has repeatedly emphasized that it will not give priority to the United States, but will give priority to great power competition, which will require the cooperation of its allies.
Then in 2021, the problem comes, in the past few years, you tossed the big guys enough, and now you say that you will come back, and you can come back, but everything has a price, and when it comes to you in the United States, the reason is the same, what price are you prepared to pay to make up for the loss of wanting to leave in the past four years?After all, everyone is ready to break up, and the agreement has been signed, and now you say that you want to come back, which is equivalent to reoccupying the position that has been assigned, so you have to show some sincerity.
The current situation is that Biden has been in power for more than a month, and he has never expressed his position, just saying that the United States is back, in our old words, this is lip service but not to the truth, in fact, everyone is muttering in their hearts, this is not a matter of one sentence, of course the United States understands, but the landlord's family does not have much surplus food, and there is really not much benefit to share with everyone.
It is in this context that the world that the United States is facing will shift from the crazy offensive of the United States in the past to the strategic defense of the United States, and his allies may have to watch the excitement and wait for him to come up with actual benefits, while traditional competitors may take advantage of the situation to start exerting pressure to test the bottom line of the United States under Biden's dollar-first strategy
How so?
Pressure from Three Sides The United States has a broad framework for world geopolitical security, and whether this framework is stable or not determines whether the global security order dominated by the United States in the past can be maintained. Specifically, this framework is divided into three points, the core point in the east is Japan under the "US-Japan Security Treaty", the west is the European and American military alliance under the leadership of NATO, and in the middle is Israel and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East.
It is clear that the east is against us, the west is against Russia, and the Middle East is against Iran. When the United States attacks, this is its front line, but when the offense and defense are switched, it is the other way around, and these places will become the main focus of everyone's pressure on the United States.
In the east is against Japan, last year.