Ma Feng: The Basic Content, Social Background, and Essence of the Biden Administration's "Middle Class" Foreign Policy
Upon taking office, the Biden administration proposed a foreign policy distinct from the Trump-era approach underpinned by "America First," instead taking "foreign policy for the middle class" as its guiding philosophy. The introduction of this concept is rooted in a profound domestic American background, aimed at responding to the reality of intensifying internal and external issues and a deteriorating international image and status. Facing the unfavorable situation created by the superposition of long-standing chronic maladies of capitalist society and the severe social fractures caused by Trump's governance, one could say that the America inherited by Biden "is the most riddled [1] society since Franklin Roosevelt." Against this backdrop, the Biden administration advanced the claim of a "foreign policy for the middle class" as an extension of domestic policy, using it to serve the needs of solving domestic issues. It maintains that the goal of all "American policy agendas, including foreign policy, is to solve America's current domestic problems" and "identifies the problems of the 'middle class' as the most urgent among America's current domestic issues." Through this policy orientation, the administration hopes on one hand to create an external environment conducive to rebuilding a "middle-class" society within the United States, and on the other hand to reshape American diplomacy to enhance U.S. power and break through its current domestic and foreign predicaments. However, there is no essential difference between the so-called "middle class" foreign policy and Trump's "America First" policy; both are merely means by which the American monopoly capital and upper-class elites vainly attempt self-preservation. Like Trump, Biden is a political proxy put forward by monopoly capital and will not, and cannot, fundamentally change the direction of America's development. This policy remains, in essence, a product of "U.S. interests above all"—it is an "America First" policy without the "America First" label.
I. Basic Content of the Biden Administration's "Foreign Policy for the Middle Class"
Before Biden's presidential campaign, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, headed by William J. Burns—a core figure in Biden's foreign policy team—published a research report titled Making U.S. Foreign Policy Work Better for the Middle Class. The report argued that overall global economic growth and a booming stock market do not equate to gains for the average American working class; therefore, foreign policy must be adjusted. Biden adopted this proposal and made it a vital component of his campaign platform to distinguish himself from Trump's "America First" policy. In March 2020, Biden published an article in the American journal Foreign Affairs titled "Why America Must Lead Again: Rescuing U.S. Foreign Policy After Trump," formally proposing a foreign policy that serves the "middle class" and stating that, if elected, he would implement such a policy.
After taking office, Biden formally listed "middle class" diplomacy as a major policy goal of his administration. On February 4, 2021, Biden delivered a foreign policy speech at the U.S. State Department titled "America's Place in the World," asserting: "There's no longer a bright line between foreign and domestic policy," and "Every action we take in our conduct abroad, we must take with American working families in mind. Advancing a foreign policy for the middle class requires urgent focus on our domestic economic renewal." The meaning conveyed by the speech was very clear: there is no longer a distinct boundary between U.S. foreign and domestic policy; U.S. foreign policy serves its domestic policy, with the focus on promoting domestic economic revitalization and expanding the so-called "middle class." On the same day as the speech, the U.S. government released the "Memorandum on Revitalizing America’s Foreign Policy and National Security Workforce, Institutions, and Partnerships," which specified the content of "implementing a foreign policy for the middle class" and mandated that within 60 days of the signing, discussions be held to realign foreign policy to meet the challenges and opportunities of the middle class. Within 30 days, agencies were to designate senior officials to lead initiatives aimed at benefiting the middle class, striving to better integrate foreign policy with domestic goals.
Subsequently, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, in his introductory remarks to Biden's speech, further elaborated on the "no bright line" between foreign and domestic policy: foreign policy is domestic policy, "because our strength at home determines our strength in the world... domestic policy is also foreign policy." In a speech titled "A Foreign Policy for the American People," Blinken further explained this orientation as serving American workers and their families by providing good jobs, good incomes, and lower household costs. "Foreign policy will fight for every American job and for the rights, protections, and interests of all American workers. Trade policy will need to answer very clearly how it will grow the American middle class, create new and better jobs, and benefit all Americans, not just those for whom the economy is already working." The Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, the first national security document released by the Biden administration, explicitly stated that in today's world, economic security is national security, and mentioned the importance of the existence of the "middle class" to U.S. national security. In terms of policy orientation, this includes three layers of meaning: First, the middle class is the backbone of the United States and the source of its long-term economic advantage; from this perspective, U.S. trade and international economic policies must serve Americans, not just a privileged few. Second, trade policy must increase the size of the American middle class, create new and better jobs, and raise wages. Third, modernized infrastructure must be built to ensure investment creates well-paying, union-protected jobs to expand the middle class. The formal National Security Strategy released in October 2022 reiterated the critical role of the middle class in U.S. national security, economic growth, and national cohesion. On April 27, 2023, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, in a speech at the Brookings Institution on renewing American economic leadership, explicitly pointed out that everything the Biden administration has done economically is part of a "foreign policy for the middle class."
It can be seen that U.S. "middle-class diplomacy" has moved from the initial stage of policy declarations aimed at domestic and foreign audiences to the stage of practical implementation, signifying the final maturation of this policy.
II. The Social Background of the Biden Administration's "Foreign Policy for the Middle Class"
The Biden administration focuses its policy on the so-called "middle class." However, it must be noted that the "middle class" is a non-class "class." Thomas Piketty pointed out in Capital in the Twenty-First Century that the middle class consists of those who are "hardly rich" but "far from destitute." In other words, the "middle class" is a mixture of the proletariat, the petty bourgeoisie, and parts of the bourgeoisie. From a Marxist perspective, the "middle class" in capitalist society refers to the petty bourgeoisie (i.e., small property owners who "do not exploit others, or only exploit them slightly"), such as small farmers, small business owners, and independent professionals like lawyers and doctors. This class constantly polarizes as capitalism develops—mostly falling into the proletariat due to bankruptcy, while a few manage to rise into the bourgeoisie; thus, they are called an intermediate class situated between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Consequently, a "middle class" that integrates multiple classes can only be a non-class "class." Because of this, there is no unified definition of "middle class" in the world. The "middle class" Biden refers to mainly consists of proletarians who do not live on welfare, small business owners, and medium-sized capitalists.
As the gap between rich and poor in Western society widens and inequality in income and wealth intensifies, many who were once in the "middle class" have fallen out of it to become the social underclass reliant on relief; faced with an increasingly rigid class structure, the bottom of society has also lost the opportunity to enter this "class." The "American Dream," characterized by equality of opportunity, has "become a nightmare" for many in the middle class; the result is that "in some Western countries, while social wealth continues to grow, vast disparities between rich and poor and polarization have long persisted."
The starting point of the Biden administration's "foreign policy for the middle class" is to alleviate social contradictions by stabilizing and expanding the middle-class group, particularly by constructing a path for the blue-collar working class to enter the middle class. However, research shows that the size of the American middle class continues to shrink. In 2016, the situation of the middle class in 90% of American cities tended toward deterioration, and many American families slipped out of the middle-class ranks. Middle-class identity among Americans is also declining; the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as "middle class" or "upper-middle class" dropped from an average of 61% between 2000 and 2008 to 51% in 2016. Furthermore, in nearly 25% of metropolitan areas, the middle class no longer constitutes the majority. Meanwhile, a 2017 study showed that the wealth of the richest 0.1% of American families is equivalent to the total wealth held by the bottom 90%. Another 2018 study indicated that 43.5% of the U.S. population (about 140 million people) live in financial hardship or on low incomes. In May 2019, the U.S. Gini coefficient was 0.482, far exceeding the international "warning line" of 0.4.
The polarization of American society has caused a situation where political, economic, and social crises are superimposed. The social middle class and the lower classes are in an extremely fragile state. Faced with serious internal social problems, Western elites and the ruling class are incompetent, powerless, and unwilling to solve the problems fundamentally. Instead, they hope to resolve the crisis by engaging in economic nationalism and state egoism—"treating internal illnesses with external medicine" [2] and diverting contradictions. For Western powers represented by the United States, "in order to protect domestic jobs and trade interests, the pattern of great power competition is gradually shifting toward trade and other fields involving internal social employment." This is actually a case of "harming others without benefiting oneself."
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the speed and degree of polarization in the United States have intensified daily, with resources related to people's livelihoods and well-being being heavily crowded out by big capital. The Biden administration's proposal of a "foreign policy for the middle class" is an inevitable result of the intensification of domestic social contradictions. In reality, it is a reset of previous neoliberal policies that were stretched too thin, hoping to shift the focus of American policy and the distribution of social wealth and resources more toward the domestic sphere. However, severe inequality has permeated every aspect of American society, and the spillover effects of U.S. domestic problems have already affected the international level. Since the Biden administration took office, the survival crisis of the middle class and the lower classes has not improved; instead, the social crisis has further deepened. In addition to the long-standing malady of polarization and the impact of the pandemic, high inflation since it took power has further exacerbated the survival crisis for ordinary Americans. On the surface, high inflation is the result of the "loose" [3] domestic economic policies since Biden took office. But in essence, it is the inevitable result of the internal contradictions of capitalism between the private ownership of the means of production and socialized large-scale production. This is also a continuation of the 2008 international financial crisis; the U.S. government used massive funds to bail out large enterprises while social welfare programs were cut on a large scale, and workers' wages did not keep pace with inflation. This widened the gap between the trend of capitalist production toward infinite expansion and the relatively shrinking effective demand of the working people. No matter who holds office in the U.S. government, it is impossible to fundamentally solve this problem. There is no essential difference in the social background that produced "America First" and "foreign policy for the middle class"; they are both merely tricks by which American monopoly groups vainly attempt self-rescue. If Trump doesn't work, they swap in a proxy like Biden and roll out a new slogan, but the inequality in American society remains unchanged.
Research indicates that "Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States has implemented a 'flood irrigation' [4] policy, which, while boosting the stock market, has further widened the gap between rich and poor. The total assets held by American billionaires increased by $1.763 trillion—a staggering surge of 59.8%. The top 10% of wealthy Americans hold 89% of U.S. stocks, hitting a record high." Meanwhile, the American working class and the "middle class," whom Biden and his senior officials constantly reference, have not become the beneficiaries of his policies; they have merely received "rhetorical care" designed to embellish his agenda.
In fact, the so-called "'middle-class' foreign policy" has evolved into a policy that exacerbates the suffering of the American people. According to a report by the New York Post on October 19, 2022, "A new poll released that day shows that over 90% of respondents expressed concern about inflation in the U.S., with 60% believing that inflation—which has soared to its highest level in 40 years—is worsening... 75% of American respondents believe corporate price-gouging is the primary cause of inflation, and 64% believe the federal government bears some responsibility." Even after continuous interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve in 2023, while inflation seems to have moderated, this does not mean the suffering and existential crisis of ordinary Americans have eased. According to a poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in October 2023, about three-quarters of respondents viewed the economic situation as poor. Two-thirds reported an increase in their expenses. "Even as inflation cooled steadily over the past year, prices for many goods and services remain much higher than they were three years ago." According to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report cited by NPR on October 26, 2023, 44.2 million people lived in food-insecure households in the U.S. in 2022—an increase of more than 10 million compared to 2021 (which saw 33.8 million). These households included over 13 million food-insecure children, an annual increase of nearly 45%. On June 4, 2022, the Boston Globe website published an article titled "People Wonder if He’s Up to the Job: As Crises Mount, Biden Struggles to Prove He Can Solve Problems." It is evident that since taking office, Biden has not delivered on the bright vision he painted for the American public during his campaign; for many Americans, the outlook remains bleak.
III. The Substance of the Biden Administration’s "Middle-Class" Foreign Policy
First, the "'middle-class' foreign policy" advocates for rebuilding a "middle-class society" in America and proposes the "return of manufacturing to the United States" to drive the repatriation of so-called "middle-class" jobs. It attempts to redraw the global economic landscape, the substance of which is an expression of American economic nationalism and national egoism.
The American "inward-looking trend" has brought headwinds to economic globalization. The U.S. "'middle-class' foreign policy" serves the needs of a shift in domestic policy, insisting on an America-centered approach where the world economic and political systems must serve a global layout of productive forces and political structures centered on the United States. The goal is to maintain America’s unipolar hegemony. This is evident whether in "Build Back Better World" (B3W)—the policy proposal to reshape the global distribution of productive forces that Biden incited among core Western allies during his first overseas trip to the G7 summit, packaged as a "positive initiative to meet the enormous infrastructure needs of low- and middle-income countries"—or in the so-called Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) proposed during his first trip to Asia. The substance is to form a core layer of global productive forces centered on the U.S., with Western nations as the outer core, extending outward to the vast developing world targeted by B3W. The policy entry point is the "middle-class" foreign policy, which exports domestic plans for infrastructure and strengthening innovation to the international economic level to build comprehensive American economic power and reshape the global economic pattern. In this way, American manufacturing, supply chains, jobs, incomes, and infrastructure can all return to a "Golden Age"; the American "middle class" can expand, a "middle-class society" can be rebuilt, and the "good life" will reappear. America's allies can also return to the political and economic vassalage to the U.S. seen during the Marshall Plan era. It is clear that "restoring the good life" and "building back a better world" come from the same lineage and exert a substantive impact on international economics and politics. "In essence, a foreign policy serving the 'middle class' can largely be described as the Democratic establishment's repackaging of populism—a re-emergence of 'America First' principles in a different guise."
Second, the "'middle-class' foreign policy" focuses on the American "middle class" as a means to transfer domestic contradictions [5] outward, functioning as a policy of "treating internal illnesses with external medicine."
In fact, as early as 2013, Richard N. Haass—who served as President of the Council on Foreign Relations for many years and exerts significant influence in both U.S. foreign policy and academic circles—profoundly analyzed the relationship between U.S. domestic and foreign policy in his book Foreign Policy Begins at Home. He argued that the U.S. must prioritize solving its own domestic problems for its foreign policy to possess true strength. He contended that while climate change, terrorism, Iranian nuclear activities, Middle East instability, and the North Korea issue pose serious challenges to U.S. national security, the key to addressing them lies not elsewhere but in whether the U.S. can more rapidly resolve its own burgeoning deficits, debt, crumbling infrastructure, second-rate schools, and outdated immigration system. Although no powerful competitor currently threatens the U.S. directly, how long this "strategic breathing space" lasts will largely depend on whether the U.S. solves its internal problems. He hoped the U.S. would limit its involvement in wars of choice overseas and humanitarian interventions. Haass’s views represent the profound reflections of the American elite on domestic realities and the changes in the world the U.S. faces.
In reality, the Biden administration's hurried withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, which created the world-shaking "Kabul Moment," was a reaction to this shift in U.S. foreign policy. The original intent of Biden’s "'middle-class' foreign policy" is closely linked to the reflections of U.S. policy elites nearly a decade ago. The "America First" policy pursued during the Trump era was actually a hybrid of neoliberalism and economic nationalism. He implemented a series of measures—deregulation, tax cuts, weakening unions, restricting illegal immigration, and wielding the weapon of tariffs—and brought this policy to the international stage by "withdrawing from groups" and "breaking treaties." It was essentially the product of populist, racist, and protectionist trends. The "'middle-class' foreign policy" is a continuation of this; there is no fundamental difference between the two. Both utilize America’s existing international status and power to prioritize domestic interests and extract international gains. They not only artificially create national and social divisions within the U.S. to secure their own base of support but also sow chaos internationally to "catch fish in troubled waters" [6]. Faced with the current American crisis, it is impossible for Biden to fundamentally reverse the trend of polarization in American society or implement meaningful structural reforms. For the American ruling class, shifting domestic politics outward is the easiest way to alleviate domestic contradictions. Given the reality of America’s relative decline and the need to break domestic gridlock and divert internal contradictions, the U.S. needs to establish a competitor. First, this serves to heal the actual divisions among the American elite and push forward domestic and foreign policies that would otherwise be unsupported by conservatives represented by the Republican Party. Second, it accelerates the American "return," revitalizing U.S. dominance over allies and world affairs, while speeding up the contraction of U.S. overextension. This pulls U.S. national strategy back into the realm of "great power competition" and returns it to a bloc-based "multilateralism" in foreign policy that is Western-led—and in reality, U.S.-led.
As a nation still in a state of internal division, America’s foreign policy inevitably carries the colors of domestic political struggle and national fracture. The Biden administration’s return to multilateral mechanisms and agreements appears very different from Trump's approach on the surface. However, this "multilateralism" is not true multilateralism centered on the United Nations; it is a narrow multilateralism of small circles and cliques centered on "house rules" and "gang laws." In fact, against the backdrop where "America First" has already become a form of "political correctness" in the U.S., the Biden administration not only cannot escape it but must implement it with even greater intensity than Trump to prove it can better "protect America and American interests." Within just days of taking office, Biden implemented "America First" policies, such as signing executive orders to strengthen American manufacturing and "Buy American." It is clear that the America and the world after Trump are no longer what they were before. While the so-called "middle-class" diplomacy cannot fundamentally solve America's structural problems, it fails to truly serve ordinary people or rebuild a middle-class society. Instead, it creates divisions in the international community, making U.S. foreign policy even more uncertain.
Third, the "'middle-class' foreign policy" is of the same lineage as the American diplomatic tradition of "interests above all else."
"Despite Trump's electoral defeat, American politics has not returned to a 'normal' state." The Biden administration has continued the "America First" strategy of the Trump era and gone even further. Radical plans for expanded public fiscal spending, superimposed on the "sequelae" of Trump’s "America First" approach, have caused serious hidden concerns for the global economy. Regarding China, the U.S. is also on the wrong path. Former German Vice-Chancellor and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer argued that the idea of the West isolating China is absurd; comparing the relationship between the West and China to the U.S.-Soviet relationship during the Cold War is misleading and dangerous. He is highly skeptical that the U.S. effort to unite Western allies to reverse the historical trend of "the East rising and the West declining" [7] can succeed. He believes that in the 21st century—against the backdrop of global crises in pandemics, climate, and ecology—international dominance is no longer determined by traditional great-power political games, but by which countries can step up to provide the leadership and professional capacity required to manage these crises. Clearly, the Biden administration is still immersed in a Cold War mentality, constantly forming cliques [8], artificially creating divisions in the international community, and stubbornly clinging to an international order of global hegemony created by the United States. While the Biden administration appears to propose many plans to help other countries, "it is less about truly helping the rest of the world and more about dealing with China." "As long as this continues, there is little hope for the urgently needed international cooperation essential to meeting human needs." Creating confrontation and manufacturing new "economic risks" are the true portrayals of Biden’s policies on the international stage.
On one hand, the Biden administration is busy repairing relations with allies and forming "cliques and gangs" [9]; on the other, it seeks to defend the international rules and order established by the West over several decades to "win the 21st century" against other countries. The relationship between China and the U.S. also seems to have entered an era of "comprehensive competition" as defined by the United States. This setting of the relationship is undoubtedly harmful to both international politics and China-U.S. relations. "The current deadlock and serious difficulties in China-U.S. relations are fundamentally due to some people in the U.S. treating China as an 'imagined enemy,' attempting to demonize China to divert the American public's dissatisfaction with domestic politics, economy, and society, while scapegoating China for deep-seated structural contradictions within the U.S." Making an issue of China seems to have become the primary method for the Biden administration to promote "unity" at home and "unity" with allies. China has perhaps unwittingly become a tool for mending U.S. domestic political fractures and repairing alliance relations. China has become the central topic at everything from the G7 and the U.S.-EU Summit to the NATO Summit. Secretary of State Blinken was unabashed about this when discussing China in Rome: "I think in recent weeks, particularly at the G7, NATO, and the U.S.-EU Summit, there has been an increasing convergence in how the U.S. and our European partners and allies view China." He believes the U.S. relationship with China is complex, as reflected in his summary of its adversarial, competitive, and cooperative aspects. Today, the common denominator is the U.S. working together with allies to meet these challenges, whether they are adversarial, competitive, or cooperative.
US policy toward China suffers from severe misjudgment, dislocation, and cognitive fallacies. The United States believes that China poses the most serious long-term challenge to the international order and is actively undermining it; the US claims it will defend international law, agreements, principles, and institutions to maintain world peace and security and protect the rights of individuals and nations. The reality, however, is that the international order the United States constantly invokes is actually an order that serves its own interests and maintains US hegemony. The United States is the greatest source of chaos in the world order.
If the United States wishes to enhance its competitiveness, it should focus on resolving its domestic problems and undertaking major reforms of its internal affairs, rather than focusing every day—from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party—on externalizing domestic contradictions and shifting them onto other countries. Newt Gingrich, the Republican former Speaker of the US House of Representatives, pointed out clearly in his article "The Giant Panda and the Infrastructure Act": "If the United States did not have partisan politics, appropriations infighting, and the narrow-mindedness of the current system, how many airports do you think we could build by 2035? How many high-speed rails? Anyone who thinks we can compete with China without major domestic reforms is living in a fantasy. US politicians, interest groups, lobbyists, unions, and bureaucrats should all take a ride on China's high-speed rail." Competition will exist between any countries, but competition should be healthy. There is nothing wrong with each country pursuing a better life for its own people, but this must be built on the basis of mutual respect, equality, and mutual benefit, rather than unilateral gain.
Fourth, the "Foreign Policy for the Middle Class" is the inevitable product of long-term adjustments in US foreign policy to maintain world hegemony.
In fact, this policy is a necessary outcome of sustaining American global hegemony. After the Cold War, the United States stood as the sole superpower; it seemed the world had become unipolar and dominated by the US, and that the most perfect system for human society—the American capitalist institutional system—had appeared in the "End of History." At that time, the US economy was enjoying the steady stream of profits brought by the capitalist globalization it promoted. Consequently, beginning with the Gulf War, the center of US foreign policy was no longer traditional diplomacy, but the military. For the United States, the thirty years following the Cold War saw, on the one hand, a widening gap between rich and poor that triggered serious social issues and systemic, institutional crises; on the other hand, defense spending increased daily. Diplomacy centered on the military and national defense, while promoting American or Western-style democracy and value models, brought about severe humanitarian disasters and sowed the seeds for US fiscal bankruptcy and the depletion of social wealth. The Biden administration's "Foreign Policy for the Middle Class" is not only an adjustment of US domestic policy but also an adjustment to the long-term dominance of military diplomacy; the two are closely linked.
This trend of adjustment began as early as the Obama administration. The result of the George W. Bush administration fighting two local wars simultaneously was a massive drain on US national power. While the military-industrial complex profited, the majority of the American public faced a more severe and arduous burden of living against the backdrop of expanded military spending and tax cuts for the wealthy. However, the Obama administration's adjustments were not completed, and by the time Trump took office, these changes manifested in a more extreme fashion. Trump used a more extreme method to make US foreign policy serve domestic needs entirely—or rather, there was no diplomacy at all, only "America First" interest deals and exchanges. Trump's approach was destructive to the interests of the United States and the American people. After Biden took office, the rapid withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan essentially completed a strategic task that neither the Obama nor Trump eras had finished, accelerating the return of the US strategic focus to domestic affairs.
In reality, there is nothing objectionable about a US policy directed at enhancing its own strength and solving domestic problems. Furthermore, if the United States were to resolve its severe inequality and political polarization, it would have a certain positive significance for promoting global economic balance. After all, the United States bears a more important responsibility and obligation for the stability of the global order and strategic balance. However, the developments and changes in this world have made the United States feel increasingly unfamiliar; a "world that is no longer familiar" will be an international reality that the US must face long-term. In fact, in an "era of disorder," even the United States cannot force an order by doing its utmost. This reflects a fundamental structural reality of the world: no single country can independently face global challenges of differing natures. If the US persists in a Cold-War mentality, adopting a method of partitioning the international community and breaking the "large circle" of economic globalization into "small circles" of its own and its allies, it is attempting to form a US-led political and economic "Great Circulation" [10] system—with US-UK relations as the core, the Anglo-Saxon civilization as the inner layer, transatlantic relations as the outer layer, and other allied relations as the shell. Such an approach will undoubtedly only create greater confrontation and division in the international community, and global strategic stability will be eroded.
Fifth, the "Foreign Policy for the Middle Class" actually creates new confrontations in the international community. The emergence and evolution of the Ukraine crisis prove this; it is precisely the US and the West that are "fanning the flames and adding oil to the fire," [11] using coercive diplomacy to force countries around the world to take sides.
Upon taking office, the Biden administration assumed a diplomatic posture quite different from the "withdrawal from groups" style of the Trump era. In international settings, it links its alliances in the name of "unity," loudly proclaiming "America is back, America is back." In essence, this is a "multilateral diplomacy" of small circles and blocs. It seeks to repair the rift created during the Trump era and rebuild transatlantic relations, using the maintenance of so-called democratic systems and shared values as a starting point to jointly address external challenges and threats. Secretary of State Antony Blinken believes that "we" democratic nations are facing serious threats from external adversaries who seek to undermine the free and open rules-based order that has long provided the foundation for "our" collective security and prosperity.
The Biden administration uses the repair of allied relations as a lever to push US "values diplomacy," aiming to defend so-called freedom and universal rights and to meet the so-called "new authoritarian moment" advancing globally. These policy proclamations are the best interpretation of "Foreign Policy for the Middle Class" at the practical level, using the creation of confrontation and small circles as a means. In the final analysis, "Foreign Policy for the Middle Class" is merely a trick by the American monopoly bourgeoisie to change its mode of rule.
Conclusion
American elites, represented by Richard Haass, believe that only when people see "American success" will they respect the US as a country and its political, social, and economic models more, and their desire to emulate it will increase. As long as the US unipolar global hegemony can be maintained, as long as the order by which the US controls the world can be preserved, and as long as the existing domestic ruling order of the American upper class can be sustained, it does not matter what form or policy "cloak" is changed. They are all merely tools used to deceive the world. Secretary of State Blinken publicly declared that the free and open rules-based international order is something "we" spent decades building, investing in, and establishing together, and "if that order is challenged by anyone, anywhere, we will stand up and defend it." The vigorous "fanning of flames" in the Ukraine crisis is a case of their direct manipulation. A country cannot squander national wealth through wars abroad while simultaneously implementing large-scale tax cuts—especially for the wealthy; this inevitably leads to overall national fiscal bankruptcy and the loss of social wealth. There is a certain limit to the ratio of wealth creation to wealth holding in a nation; investing massive social wealth and resources into "hard power" like military force inevitably squeezes resources for people's livelihoods, making the intensification of social inequality a certainty. Today, US diplomacy is, in a sense, in a state of having no "appeal." The United States has excessive blind faith in its own strength, pushes hegemonism, and repeatedly interferes in the internal affairs of other countries. Failing to solve its domestic problems, it is fundamentally unable to project the image of a beneficial participant to the international community. The United States no longer occupies a "beautified" position of international morality; the "painted skin" [12] of the US and the West has been punctured before the eyes of the world.
(Author: Ma Feng, Associate Researcher at the Institute of Social Development Strategic Research, CASS; Associate Professor at the School of Sociology and Ethnology, University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)
Online Editor: Tong Xin Source: World Socialism Studies, No. 11, 2023.