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Ⅰ. Key Takeaways from the Biden Administration’s 2022 National Security Strategy (NSS)
Ⅱ. Assessment
Ⅰ. Key Takeaways from the Biden Administration’s 2022 National Security Strategy (NSS)
1. The Biden Administration’s Strategic Goals Outlined in the 2022 NSS
The Biden administration’s goal spelled out in the 2022 National Security Strategy (NSS) is to create a free, open, prosperous, and secure international order. With the interconnected world facing a period of uncertainty, the 2022 NSS underscores that American leadership should emerge greater than ever to tackle daunting challenges on multiple fronts. The document outlines three lines of efforts to achieve this goal. To elaborate, it pledges to: 1) “invest in the underlying resources and tools of American power and influence; 2) build the strongest possible coalition of nations to enhance the U.S.’ collective influence to shape the global strategic environment and to solve shared challenges; and 3) modernize and strengthen the military so it is equipped for the era of strategic competition with major powers.”
The 2022 NSS fleshes out six key pillars to achieve the Biden administration’s overarching strategic goals as follows: First, the Biden administration seeks to break down the dividing line between foreign policy and domestic policy. Second, the U.S.’ alliances and partnerships around the world are its most important strategic asset and an indispensable element contributing to international peace and stability. Third, this strategy recognizes that China presents America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge. Fourth, the administration will avoid the temptation to see the world solely through the prism of strategic competition and will continue to engage countries on their own terms. And it will pursue an affirmative agenda to advance peace and security and to promote prosperity in every region. Fifth, an adjustment to globalization is now required to cope with dramatic global changes such as widening inequality within and among countries, China’s emergence as both the U.S.’ most consequential competitor and one of its largest trading partners, and emerging technologies that fall outside the bounds of existing rules and regulations. Finally, to preserve and increase international cooperation in an age of competition, the administration will pursue a dual-track approach. On one track, the U.S. will cooperate with any country, including its geopolitical rivals. On the other track, the U.S. will deepen cooperation with democracies and other like-minded states.
2. Two Strategic Challenges Identified in the 2022 NSS
The 2022 NSS articulates two strategic challenges. The first challenge is a strategic competition underway with China and Russia. And the second is that the world is facing “shared challenges” including climate change, food insecurity, communicable diseases, terrorism, energy shortages, or inflation.
The 2022 NSS states that the post-Cold War era is definitively over, and that the ongoing strategic competition is a contest between democracies and autocracies. The document points to China as America’s only competitor that “harbors the intention and the capacity to reshape the international order in favor of one that tilts the global playing field to its benefit with the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power.” It is noted in the document that China and Russia “seek to remake the current international order to create a world conducive to their highly personalized and repressive type of autocracy.” And according to the document, the ongoing global strategic competition will shape the future of the international order, and the U.S. stands at an inflection point as the next ten years will be the decisive decade in its competition with China.
3. Policy Options
The Biden administration appears to value the formulation and implementation of investment strategies aimed at boosting the U.S.’ competitiveness. And the 2022 NSS points out that strategic public investment will form “the backbone of a strong industrial and innovation base in the 21st-century global economy.” For instance, the Biden administration enacted the CHIPS and Science Act, which “authorizes $280 billion for civilian investment in research and development,” and pledged to “reduce carbon emissions by roughly 40 percent by 2030.” And in terms of efforts at modernizing the U.S. military, the document states that the Biden administration will “modernize the nuclear Triad, nuclear command, control, and communications, and nuclear weapons infrastructure, as well as strengthening extended deterrence commitments to U.S. Allies” as it is forecast that the U.S. will “need to deter two major nuclear powers by the 2030s.”
The new NSS also says that “the existing institutions, norms, and standards to govern international trade and investment, economic policy, and technology have not kept pace with economic or technological changes, and today risk being irrelevant, or in certain cases, actively harmful to solving the challenges we now face - from insecure supply chains to widening inequality to the abuses of the PRC’s nonmarket economic actions.” The document underscores how the U.S. intends to “modernize and strengthen the country’s export control and investment screening mechanisms, and also pursue targeted new approaches, such as screening of outbound investment, to ensure that strategic competitors cannot exploit foundational American and allied technologies, know-how, or data.” After the release of the document, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the U.S. will launch high-tech export controls that are “carefully tailored and targeted to competitors.” He talked about a “small yard, high fence” for critical technologies, adding that “chokepoints for foundational technologies have to be inside that yard, and the fence has to be high, because strategic competitors should not be able to exploit American and allied technologies to undermine American and allied security.”
Ⅱ. Assessment
1. The Urgency of China Issues
While the NSS explicitly signals the Biden administration’s intent to reinforce its China policy and intensify its responses, the document merely calls for constraining Russia. The NSS describes China as the “only competitor with both the intent and power to reshape the international order,” and frames the ongoing U.S.-China rivalry as a “competition between democracies and autocracies” – a struggle between two systems of government. Also, the document made clear the need to act urgently to sustain and strengthen deterrence, with the PRC as its “pacing challenge,” while stating that the next ten years will be the decisive decade in the competition with the PRC. The strategy also insinuates the administration’s intention to prioritize secure access to critical technologies and relevant supply chains as an essential element of its China policy.
The NSS underscores the need to make critical domestic investments to outcompete China. Some Republicans, however, hold a different view than the administration on this matter. They contend that the government should focus primarily on increasing support to businesses with strong competitive edges, as the unprecedented pace of China’s emergence is making it increasingly difficult for the U.S. to prevail in the ongoing competition only by shoring up domestic investments. Even so, the Biden administration’s China policy continues to blur the lines between domestic and foreign policy; it is taking a whole-of-government approach as a way to meet the China challenge.
2. Adjustment of Globalization
It is worth noting how the strategy stresses the importance of adjusting globalization to respond to China’s emergence and cope with emerging technologies that fall outside the bounds of existing rules and regulations. Globalization underpinned by U.S. hegemony has been a key driver of growth around the world for decades since the 1980s, delivering immense benefits for the United States. But as this year’s NSS document implies, the Biden administration is poised to adjust the global economic order that has thrived upon the wave of globalization to curtail China’s economic gains and deliver more for the United States. COVID-19, partial decoupling of the U.S. and China, restructuring of global supply chains, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine are the latest in a series of shocks shaking the foundations of globalization. The U.S. already faces a risk of long-term stagflation along with persistently high inflation that has hit a 40-year high. Supply chain issues and growing signs of economic crisis also continue to grip the U.S. economy. If the Biden administration’s policy stand starts to run counter to globalization despite such worrying economic developments, it will become increasingly hard to predict what the future of the world order would look like.
3. Korean Peninsula: A Non-issue
The NSS articulates the administration’s will to “seek sustained diplomacy with North Korea to make tangible progress toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, while strengthening extended deterrence in the face of North Korean weapons of mass destruction and missile threats,” which is the only reference to the Korean Peninsula. Seen in this light, North Korea is less likely to draw a great deal of U.S. attention even if chooses to resume nuclear testing. North Korea is not at the top of the Biden team’s list of foreign policy priorities at the moment. And China, for its part, continues to veto a U.S.-led push for more sanctions on North Korea over its renewed missile tests. China, as a matter of fact, is tacitly approving North Korea’s provocations - Pyongyang’s drive for missile testing has continued even as Chinese President Xi Jinping is poised to secure his third term in power. North Korea will likely continue with its provocative weapons demonstrations, and the Korea-U.S. security cooperation as well as trilateral cooperation between Korea, the U.S., and Japan are expected to scale up accordingly. Nevertheless, it still remains unclear how the U.S. approach toward North Korea will change in the years ahead.
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