Biden’s presidency will not be transitional

Already during the electoral campaign, a possible election of Joe Biden had been classified as a transitional mandate, both for the age of the candidate and for the figure, considered to be a compromise between the various currents of the Democratic party, inserted in the electoral competition with the aim to take Trump out of the White House. This interpretation revealed an underestimation of the Democratic candidate, who, after the election and the first hundred days in the presidential office, highlighted an action that wants to be incisive and leave its mark on American politics, that is, anything but a transitional mandate. The desire to launch a very ambitious plan to reform the United States and implement a very strong policy on welfare, highlight the intention to take action aimed at achieving an epochal change. The reform of the American country, however, is not the only characterizing tool that Biden intends to use to connote his presidency; in parallel with his attention to domestic politics, the US president has also placed an emphasis on foreign policy, bringing Cold War speeches back to the center of attention, this time not directed against the Soviet Union but against China. Words have been directed against Beijing that none of Biden’s predecessors have ever used and the attacks have been carried out directly against the Chinese president and leading Chinese leaders. The central point is that the Chinese ruling class supports the failure of democracy and carries forward, in subtle ways, ranging from the use of large financial resources abroad and the use of soft power, a sort of belief in the goodness of Chinese system abroad. One of the reasons that Biden highlighted is the need for too much time to reach power through democratic means, an obstacle to achieving the too ambitious goals of Chinese projects. From a political point of view, the criticism appears correct, even if it must be pointed out that for China the question of a democratic development of its political system has never been on the agenda, precisely because of a natural aversion to the hegemonic political force. : the Chinese Communist Party, which has chosen the authoritarian path precisely as a central system, through which to pursue the objectives of national growth, favored by a system without rules to protect rights and work. This modality has favored economic growth in an unbalanced competition system in favor of Beijing, but which has pleased many Western entrepreneurs, and therefore also Americans. Biden’s criticism, therefore, is indirectly aimed at those industrialists, who, for their profit, have allowed the growth of China even to the detriment of the USA and represents the desire to bring back large slices of production to the Western field and this is certainly the worst threat. for Beijing, because it attacks it from an economic point of view; precisely for this reason we must expect the continuation of the commercial dispute on ever greater levels. The desire to prevent China from becoming the most important nation in the world, precisely to the detriment of the USA, but also by imposing its own political system, thus becomes an important part of Biden’s political program and functional for this purpose is also the maintenance of a strong presence in the Pacific Ocean, as well as in Europe, precisely to oversee Chinese objectives such as Taiwan, and to protect maritime trade routes, in a part of the world that China considers its exclusive area of ​​influence. Biden implements an overall strategy, which runs counter to Trump’s policy: large development plans on American soil, an extremism of the dialectic with China, identified as the number one opponent in the geopolitical and economic field, a functional tactic to aggregate the American population in nationalistic sense and to contain the main competitor and, finally, to put the center of foreign policy back on the alliance with Europe and the other Western powers in a framework of union based on common interests, where general objectives prevail, but also functional to single ones. This is an ambitious project, far from a transitional one, which if completed, even partially, could provide Biden with many possibilities for a new election, presumably in a renewed duel with Trump.