Part I of this newsletter published a week ago, before we had enough U.S. states reporting election results to call the race. Now, barring something truly odd, Joe Biden has won a more than sufficient number of states to be considered President-elect.
 
For those who follow my work, it should come as no surprise that I’m not a big fan of either sitting president Donald Trump or the new President-elect. I’m a foreign policy guy and neither man has shown the interest in or competence to build something that will outlast him.
 
This isn’t entirely their fault. The United States is the least involved economy in the global system as measured as a percent of GDP, with the single biggest chunk of that involvement wrapped up with America’s neighboring NAFTA partners. My preferences aside, there is no burning need in the United States for global engagement. No wonder that aside from issues relating to the September 11, 2001 attacks and the Iraq War, Americans haven’t considered foreign policy an above-the-fold issue for the bulk of the post-Cold War era.
 
But this new norm will not last forever. Americans will care about the world again someday. The question is what does the road from here to there look like?
 
There are two ways the Americans might reengage in the future.
 
The first is the internal route. The (always fractious) American political system is, at present, in a state of breakdown. American first-past-the post electoral laws – the winner for each seat need only gain one more vote than whoever comes in second place – forces a two-party system. That induces the parties to behave certain ways. If they focus too much on explicit policies, they tend to alienate large swathes of the electorate. Instead they throw wide nets to include as many different factions as possible: evangelicals, business owners, pro-lifers, national security enthusiasts and fiscal obsessives for the Republicans; pro-choicers, environmentalists, socialists, organized labor, the youth and a rainbow of minorities for the Democrats.
 
But there is nothing hard-and-fast or permanent about these coalitions. As culture and technology and the economy and the world evolve, so too do the factions. Today the factions are shifting furiously. Union voters have all but become Trumpist Republicans (the AFL-CIO chief was in the Oval Office endorsing Trump’s NAFTA renegotiation while the rest of the Democratic coalition was hanging with Nancy Pelosi putting the finishing touches on Trump’s impeachment). National security voters are sniffing about the Democrats (every politically active living former intelligence chief and Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense endorsed Biden rather than Trump). Businesspeople – equally appalled by Trump’s erraticism and Biden’s tax plans – are in the wind.
 
Such reshuffling is normal. Healthy even. Political coalitions reflect strategic, cultural and economic realities, and over time those realities evolve. No political coalition is forever. No party is forever. The War of 1812 did in the Federalists. Westward expansion birthed the Democrats. The Whigs withered away as America geared up for its Civil War. The trauma of the Great Depression saw Black Americans abandon the Republicans for the Democrats while business leaders went the opposite direction. Today’s reshuffling – a reaction to the Cold War’s end and the Digital Revolution – is America’s seventh.
 
The Americans cannot even begin a conversation with one another about what they want out of the world until they’ve sorted out their internal political evolution. Only then can they begin to craft a grand strategy, and only then can they begin to assemble and implement a meaningful foreign policy. But the reordering takes time. The last party restructuring in the 1930s and 1940s took twelve years. This time around the Americans are only in year five. That means the global superpower is out to lunch until a point far closer to 2030 than 2020. What engagement occurs has been reduced to little more than presidential whim.

The second route is externally driven, and far, far more dangerous: Something pops up that scares the Americans, forcing them back into the world.
 
This was the strategy of Osama Bin Laden: attack the Americans in a way they could not ignore to induce them to slam sideways into the Middle East. OBL’s thinking was the Americans would partner with the region’s secular leaders to hunt down al Qaeda, and that partnership would so enrage the ummah that the Islamic masses would rise up and overthrow their rulers, ushering in a new Muslim Empire.
 
It obviously didn’t work out the way he had hoped. Yes, the Americans became embroiled in a pair of decades-long wars, and yes, those wars contributed to the Arab Spring and Arab Winter which in turn shattered the regional order, and yes, those wars and that shattering pushed a half dozen countries – so far – into de facto collapse.
 
But a pan-Islamist empire? The region is further from that now than ever. Of more lasting significance, by 2020 the Americans have largely abandoned the region to its own devices. America now boasts a military that is not only rested, recuperated and rearmed, but battle-hardened.
 
Any new American lash-out would undoubtedly be more violent and holistic than their recently ended Middle Eastern adventures. In part it is the inexorable march of military technology: America’s stealth bombers can now strike any position on Earth from their home bases in Missouri, while American drones can dominate a battlefield without need of a single solider in theater. Americans may be gun-shy about invading and occupying other countries at present, but such weapons systems make them eminently willing and able to devastate anything, anywhere, at any time. After declaring victory, the Americans don’t even need to go home because they will have never left in the first place.
 
But the bigger piece of the picture is economic. In the two decades since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the United States has become economically divorced from the wider world. The shale revolution has severed the thickest, most strategically significant link between the American economy and global norms. Integration with Mexico has reduced American dependence upon global manufactures. The entire American political spectrum now firmly anti-China, Americans are ready and willing – even eager – to cut the remainder of the ties that bind.
 
In the 2000s the Americans were always cautious about where and how they acted in an economic sense. For example, they knew Saudi elements played leading roles in the 9/11 attacks, yet the Americans largely spared Saudi interests for fear of repercussions in the oil market. If provoked today, the Americans truly would not care about what the world would look like the morning after any retaliatory actions, because they are now largely immune to any collateral damage.
 
Consider America’s post-Cold War conflicts: Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq. Sure, none of the places turned out to quite be Wisconsin, but imagine for the moment if the Americans had treated them all like Yemen: liberally applying ammunition to strategic bombing and assassination efforts and never sparing a thought to occupation or reconstruction. Simply wreck all economic and political infrastructure and then … leave.
 
This is the new normal for American policy. Any country stupid enough to provoke the Americans now will get something far harsher than the fate which ultimately befell OBL.
 
Massive capacity. No concern for credibility. No hint of a goal. No care for the aftermath. It’s a volatile, dangerous mix. And until the Americans can find a new internal balance, it’s the world we all live in.

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Food pantries are facing declining donations from grocery stores with stretched supply chains. At the same time, they are doing what they can to quickly scale their operations to meet demand. But they need donations – they need cash – to do so now.

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So…we had an election. It has gone down to the wire. At the time of this writing mid-day November 4 the votes are still being counted. America’s politics have significantly de-matured since the contested election in 2000 between W Bush and Al Gore, so even once a winner is declared I expect significant court challenges by both sides.
 
We’ll get to some of the implications of this election’s outcomes for the United States in Part II, but first I want to close the book on the globalist era. Doing that first requires a look back to the heyday of American globalism.
 
Way back when in a 1994 debate on Iraq at the United Nations Security Council America’s then-Secretary of State Madeline Albright famously noted that Americans “will behave, with others, multilaterally when we can and unilaterally when we must.” At the time pundits, rivals and allies alike took the statement as a one-off from a politician serving an administration famous for its lack of interest in foreign affairs of any type, who simply wished to avoid a debate over what many thought was a questionable security policy. With the benefit of hindsight we recognize Albright’s statement for what it truly is.
 
A tell.
 
The early 1990s were a heady time in America. The Soviet Union had just collapsed. Americans were basking in the glow of a world in which they not only knew no equal, but no challengers. Democracy was on the march. Globalization was an unalloyed positive. History was over. America was forever triumphant. All things were possible. The free family of nations would rule a world safe eternal.
 
Albright was among the most globally-minded personalities within the Bill Clinton administration, an administration that was already by far the most multilateralist in American history. Yet even in 1994, near the height of America’s post-Cold War exceptionalism fever dream, the most globalist of globalists let slip that the Americans really have no problem going it alone.
 
For the half century before Albright’s tenure, the globalized world was an American construct. The United States found itself facing down Joe Stalin’s Red Army and quickly realized it needed allies. Not to back America up or stand shoulder-to-shoulder with it, but to willingly place themselves between the Americans and Soviet forces. Needless to say, that was a big ask. And so the Americans bribed everyone. The American Navy patrolled the oceans for all. The American financial system and consumer market were opened to all. The American nuclear umbrella was extended to all. In exchange, the Americans obtained the right to command a global alliance to confront, contain and beat back the Soviets.
 
What most in today’s ecosystem of political, economic or global affairs forget – whether they predict the rise of China or the centrality of the Middle East or the eternity of Europe – is that the Americans view these Cold War structures as a trade. Guns for butter if you will. And since the Americans no longer see a need for help with the guns, they feel the world can make its own butter. Ever since the time of Albright, American interest in the world has declined steadily, and American voters and have consistently selected presidents who care less and less about the wider world.
 
Until now, when the Americans are at best actively dismissive – and at worst actively hostile – to nearly all things international.
 
The question is not will Americans return to the world in the aftermath of the 2020 general elections. They won’t.
 
In fact, from my point of view, we really aren’t looking at any meaningful changes in America’s global position one way or another.
 
Donald Trump is the known quantity; No one – Trump included – expects constructive international engagement in a second term. But Joe Biden was hardly a better choice if one’s desire is an engaged America. What foreign policy he has discussed focused on a degree of economic nationalism that is positively French. Biden’s anti-Chinese plans are far more adversarial than the Trump administration’s. The region which would have suffered the most under President Biden would have undoubtedly be Europe. The Europeans were largely dismissive of Barack Obama’s call for economic stimulus and military assistance in Afghanistan, leaving a sour taste in the mouth of the entire Obama administration, then-Vice President Joe Biden included. And should Biden be the next president there was never even a hint of a possibility of him reversing what had become a decades-long American withdrawal of military forces from…everywhere. Biden’s talk was one of closing off trade and borders and military commitments but somehow translating that into more American involvement and leadership. Um…no. That’s not how that works.

The question isn’t even will American credibility return in a post-Trump world. Americans do not care about their credibility. If they did they would not have abused their allies (W Bush), ignored their allies (Obama), or insulted their allies (Trump). Instead, what passes for American foreign ambition has declined with each of the past four administrations. Clinton sought gravitas without action. W Bush sought loyalty without reward. Obama sought isolation in all things. Trump simply seeks disengagement. And a President Biden has made it pretty clear he plans to sacrifice foreign connections to deal with domestic issues.

No, Americans care not about their credibility. It is capacity they crave.

Even the least charitable reading of the American system credits it with a massive – and massively insulated – economy. Only about one-ninth of the U.S. economy is dependent upon trade, and nearly half of that is trade within NAFTA, America’s local trade alliance. The shale revolution has not only made the United States net oil independent, it has reduced the costs of oil production in America to levels below that of the Persian Gulf. America’s university systems remain without peer. Add in COVID-related disruptions to global supply chains, and the United States is going through the greatest re-industrialization process in its history.

The United States also has the slowest aging population of the entire developed world save New Zealand, with even “young” countries like Indonesia, Brazil and India aging at least three times as quickly. The Chinese on average became older than the Americans back in 2018. Alone of the significant states, the Americans only need engage with others economically should they choose to.

Militarily, the United States is the only country in the world that maintains a long-reach deployment-capable military force. Each of its ten (soon to be eleven) supercarrier battle groups can outsail and outshoot the rest of the world’s combined navies. Only the United States can maintain open seas access out of reach of their own coastlines. As to boots, only the United States can deploy at a moment’s notice a quarter-million troops anywhere in the world. Any other country would struggle mightily to shift one-tenth as many.

America oozes capacity. That’s not the problem. The problem is America’s goal.

The country doesn’t have one.

I could talk about shoulds. The United States should reforge its alliances to seek new, higher-minded aspirations. It should leverage what’s left of global institutions to promote cooperation among like-minded nations. It should trade access to its consumer and financial markets to promote free enterprise and human rights and democracy in order to expand the roster of those nations. It should use its global reach, economic heft and technical prowess to lead efforts to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, expand education and health, and box in countries who would use access to global markets for ill gains.

But these are shoulds, not wills. People who believe as I do – that the United States ought to play a positive role in making the world a better place – have seen their preferred candidate lose in each of the seven presidential elections leading up to 2020. In the election just concluded, we didn’t even have a horse in the race.

A different sort of thinking now dominates American thought on all things international. The “America First” of the Right is reflexively hostile to the world. The “America First” of the Left is reflexively hostile to American involvement in the world. The “America First” of the middle just finds the world exhausting. Americans have chosen – repeatedly – that they are simply done.

Or at least they are done for now.

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The economic lockdowns in the wake of COVID-19 left many without jobs and additional tens of millions of people, including children, without reliable food. Feeding America works with food manufacturers and suppliers to provide meals for those in need and provides direct support to America’s food banks.

Food pantries are facing declining donations from grocery stores with stretched supply chains. At the same time, they are doing what they can to quickly scale their operations to meet demand. But they need donations – they need cash – to do so now.

Feeding America is a great way to help in difficult times.

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Mountain living can be…challenging. In the first of a series of video dispatches this week, I make lemons from lemonade and discuss the looming international challenges facing the American presidency, no matter who wins in November (and likely, beyond).

If you enjoy our free newsletters, the team at Zeihan on Geopolitics asks you to consider donating to Feeding America.

The economic lockdowns in the wake of COVID-19 left many without jobs and additional tens of millions of people, including children, without reliable food. Feeding America works with food manufacturers and suppliers to provide meals for those in need and provides direct support to America’s food banks.

Food pantries are facing declining donations from grocery stores with stretched supply chains. At the same time, they are doing what they can to quickly scale their operations to meet demand. But they need donations – they need cash – to do so now.

Feeding America is a great way to help in difficult times.

The team at Zeihan on Geopolitics thanks you and hopes you continue to enjoy our work.

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I normally try to stay out of American politics. My work is in the wider world, the American system is remarkably stable and self-regulating, and if I’m to be completely honest, making domestic political forecasts tends to burn bridges no matter how even-handed I attempt to be. Case in point: many responses to my most recent newsletter on the American political system deepened my appreciation for creative expletives. And yet the 2020 general elections are only a few weeks away and their results are among the most hotly anticipated geopolitical events in years. It would be weird for me to not say anything.

Before proceeding, let me dispose of my personal politics. No one who espouses my particular mix of views on economic and social and global issues is on the ballot (and they weren’t last time, or the time before, or the time before that) so this newsletter isn’t so much an assessment of political positions with an endorsement or condemnation, but instead an explainer of where things stand along with a forecast for how both the elections and their aftermath will shake out.

Let’s begin with the incumbent:

In terms of international relations, perhaps Trump’s greatest presidential failing is his preference for personal deal-making as opposed to institutional diplomacy. What made Trump a successful real estate and branding magnate was his willingness and ability to shift responsibility – financial, legal or otherwise – around among different parties as part of his brokering.

In business, Trump’s method worked because the United States has a robust civil society, rule of law and multiple levels of government with investigatory and enforcement power. In essence, in his business negotiations Trump maneuvers the folks on the other side of the table into positions where state and the society do much of his work – and nearly all his enforcement – for him.

But the world is not the United States. There is no global, multi-layered, professionalized, largely-apolitical cadre of institutions to enforce agreements among countries. What few global institutions do exist share three fatal flaws:

First, such structures only have enforcement mechanisms should member countries choose to allow them enforcement mechanisms, often on a case-by-case basis. For example, the International Court of Justice’s rulings are technically binding, but any country can choose to withdraw enforcement power selectively or wholesale at any time for any reason. There aren’t many rules to rely upon. Only unenforceable norms.

Second, pretty much all global institutions were American-crafted as part of America’s anti-Soviet Cold War efforts. They only work if the US forces them to work, and between the gradual disengagement of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush, and faster disengagement of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, they simply no longer function.

Third, in global affairs, the people on the other side of the table – Russia’s Putin and China’s Xi come to mind – have a lot more experience in breaking norms to their advantage. Both to a degree built their systems around such tactics. No wonder Trump often appears outmaneuvered.

Yet even bilateral deals where such squishiness is less common tend to be weak. It too is an institutional issue, although in bilateral agreements it has more to do with tasking and executive leadership. For example, in the final decade of the Cold War, Ronald Reagan negotiated a series of “trust but verify” nuclear disarmament deals with the Soviets. After the deals were signed Reagan didn’t simply leave to watch the Sound of Music, his administration worked out the monitoring details with the Defense Department, the State Department, the CIA, and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Enforcement did not magically happen. TeamReagan had to make it happen, and that required engaging not simply the Soviets, but multiple pieces of the American executive branch as well.

Trump simply ignores such empowering minutiae. After announcing his big deals, he moves on to something else and rarely looks back. That’s a big part of why his pacts with North Korea fizzled within months or why the Phase One deal with China was dead on arrival (in China). About the only exceptions have been TeamTrump’s trade deals, but here institutional involvement not only helped make the deals happen, but helped make them stick. The same institution responsible for negotiating the successful trade deals with South Korea, Japan, Mexico and Canada – the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative – is also responsible for enforcing the deals.

From my point of view, the Trump administration has been a missed opportunity.

Nearly everything about the American strategic position – from military procurement to diplomatic positioning – is a hangover from the Cold War: The prime operating principle guiding America has been that the United States will create a safe, globalized world that empowers weak countries and fosters global trade for all, and in exchange Washington gets to direct everyone’s security policies in order to better combat Moscow. The security-policy aspect stopped working when the Soviet Union collapsed, but the Americans never changed the script on globalization and kept holding up the world’s collective ceiling. American foreign policy became ossified and rudderless.

Trump, as a geopolitical neophyte unburdened by commitments made in the previous century, had the opportunity to come up with something new. He certainly proved eager to sledgehammer previous structures and relationships, but he – like his three immediate predecessors – failed to generate a replacement.

“America First” isn’t a policy, much less a strategy. It’s a motto. It’s just like Obama’s “don’t do stupid stuff”. And so I put Trump into the same basket as Obama: leaders who left the country worse than they found it. And that’s before considering Trump’s preference for playing fast and loose with ethics or institutions.

Now, the challenger:

Biden’s first problem is that he is a black box from a policy point of view. Biden is commensurate political chameleon. His position shifts on every issue based on what he perceives the majority of power brokers within the Democrat Party currently believe. That has put him on both sides of nearly every issue of importance during his long tenure in politics. Such flexibility is particularly problematic on topics where consistency is key, such as national security and trade issues. Such an unfettered lack of convictions is part of what led former Defense Secretary Robert Gates to note that Biden has been on the wrong side of every foreign policy and strategic issue of the past four decades.

Biden’s second issue is his utter lack of leadership experience, which I realize sounds odd considering he has served in Washington since 1973. But aside from two years as a legal clerk and lawyer, he had only been a senator before becoming VP. To be blunt, senators suck at being president. They have little concept of how to manage an organization – such as the federal government with its three million employees.

Nor did Biden’s tenure as Barack Obama’s vice president provide him with many leadership opportunities. This is most definitely not Biden’s fault. Obama was famous for hermetically sealing himself in the White House and only allowing in information that supported his penchant for non-action, and his near-pathological unwillingness to have conversations with…well, anyone. But Obama refused to let policy be made without him, leaving Biden with little to do for eight long years.

(Incidentally, similar issues constrained a far more straightforward and ambitious member of the Obama administration: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Part of why Ms Clinton resigned at the end of Obama’s first term is that Obama melon-balled out of the State Department control of diplomatic relations with the world’s most important countries, transferring their management to the West Wing where…nothing happened.)

The most positive thing I have to say about Biden’s expertise is the odd combination of his lack of convictions combined with having a boss who didn’t like to interact with others meant that whenever the Obama White House needed a mediator in Congress, Biden was the obvious choice. That’s great. That’s essential. I don’t think I’d call that leadership.

But I think, for me personally at least, the issue of mental competence is Biden’s biggest looming issue. Being gaffe-prone doesn’t bother me, especially when a gaffe-prone person owns it as Biden historically did in the Senate. I find it humanizing. Even credibility-building. I’m instead talking about something more concerning: I’ve lost track of the number of times of late that Biden has stumbled over his words or looked confused, even when reading pre-prepared remarks from a teleprompter. I had the opportunity to meet Biden shortly after the Obama administration ended and my first thought was “Wow. He might…he might have dementia. It’s a good thing he didn’t run for president.”

Yet here we are. I want my president to be able to handle a crisis. And foreign leaders. And the press corps. And a phone call. Due to his disposition, Trump has repeatedly demonstrated he cannot do these things well. Biden’s recent track record suggests something potentially even worse.

Despite Biden’s lack of consistency or experience and concerns for his mental capacity, many hopeful for (or resigned to) a Biden administration believe this can still work out. They say that, sure, Biden might be a keg short of a six pack, but so long as he has a strong cabinet everything will be fine. I’ve heard this argument before. Recently. It is what old-school Republicans hoped about Trump back in 2016. It didn’t work out very well. At the end of the day, the president has the power and you need to trust the person in that position, not his unelected handlers.

So we’re left to choose between two seventy-something men who feature different flavors of incompetence. I have no idea who I am going to vote for.

But I’m still, well, me. So I will make a prediction:

President Trump’s seemingly deliberate and always callous mismanagement of the coronavirus crisis has contributed to the death of 200,000 Americans. In per capita terms that’s double the suffering of Europe or Canada. In absolute terms that’s higher than the number killed in any American military conflict save the Civil War and World War II itself. Forget vaccines. Forget ventilators and masks. Forget the CDC and the WHO. Forget the PR war with the Democrats. All Trump needed to do to mitigate the risk was say something like “wear a mask, maintain some distance, and look in on your loved ones”. Paraguay managed it. Bulgaria managed it. This isn’t hard. Most of America’s political middle finds Trump leadership lacking and his behavior disgusting.

Trump also faces danger on the Right. Trump has alienated fiscal conservatives, the military and the business community – all once bedrock Republicans. The Democrats have avoided – albeit narrowly – running an absolute whackjob and instead settled on Milquetoast Biden. To achieve reelection, Trump must capture every swing state as well as a couple decent sized blue states. That’s just not possible. Trump surprised last time because there was a large block of voters – the populists – the pollsters missed. That’s not the case this time around. And so Trump will lose and he will lose big.

Assuming, that is, Biden can prove he still has some marbles.

Biden has been the most closely managed candidate in modern American political history. He has not been without his ring of protectors for two years, giving him the feel of a badly operated marionette. Americans need to know if he can function, and we will all find out together on Sept 29.

Next Tuesday will be the first presidential debate, moderated by Chris Wallace. It will be the first time Biden will need to hold his own in a long-form open forum without his support crew. His performance will determine the election. Biden does not need to best Trump in the debate. All he needs to do is come across as marginally capable.

If Biden can do that, concerns for his mental capacity will ebb and he will win handily.

If the Biden who served in the Senate for three decades shows up – a likeable, master debater who can identify with people with a glance and laugh at his own missteps – he will win in a landslide.

But if Biden just…can’t, then Trump walks away with it all.

It really is that simple.

Now I’m sure that many of you are either cheering my wisdom or burning me in effigy (maybe both for some of you), so let me now say something certain to piss everyone off at once:

As regards global affairs, who wins November 3 really doesn’t matter.

Yes, the U.S. President is the single-most powerful person in the world, but ultimately the United States is fundamentally incapable of moving forward on the world stage.
 
Another four years of Donald Trump would grant us the clarity of a known quantity: continued degradation of the structures of the international system. But that system has been degrading since 1992 so I don’t see this as more than a few additional steps down the same road towards a sort of retrenchment / neo-isolationism. That’s ultimately where I saw the United States heading back when I wrote the Accidental Superpower back in 2014.
 
A Biden administration would be little different except in tone. Resetting American foreign policy in any meaningful way first requires a replacement for the Cold War structures which are now three decades out of date. No one on TeamBiden has so much as blinked in that direction. Nor do I believe for a moment that a President Biden would prioritize such an effort. Ultimately, such a task would require a clear, firm national goal. That would require something Biden simply lacks. Convictions.
 
A grand reset would also require the service of an American institution which no longer functions: the State Department. The past four administrations have alternatively neglected or gutted America’s diplomatic corps. It is largely incapable of being part of any solution without first undergoing a decade-long regeneration.
 
A grand reset would also require an American institution which is likely to be hostile to a Biden administration: the Senate. The Founding Fathers designed the Senate to act as a brake to prevent policy from evolving too quickly. One-third of the Senate faces election races every two years, so full turnover is sooooo sloooow. The Senate regularly reflects American politics as it exists…a decade in the past. In addition, each state gets the same two senators regardless of population – a measure designed to prevent larger states from trampling smaller states. That means more rural, lower-population states are more heavily represented. More rural, lower-population areas tend to prefer Trump over Biden.
 
For Biden to have a working majority in the Senate he needs to flip at least four seats. It is possible of course, but highly unlikely. (Recall that when the 2018 midterms delivered Trump a sound thumping at the national, state and local levels, Trump-aligned Republicans gained seats in the Senate.) The point of this constitutional detour is that the Senate is the institution that ratifies treaties, a classification that includes all the various agreements that underlay America’s Order-era structures: NATO, NAFTA, the United Nations, the WTO, the Japanese alliance, the International Monetary Fund, and so on.
 
A grand reset would also require time, which would also be in short supply. A President Biden would spend the first six months dealing with coronavirus and a series of legal reforms that address issues of accountability designed to Trump-proof future elections. Add in little things like summer breaks and in the most aggressive case scenario a President Biden couldn’t even begin any sort of new global effort until 2022. And don’t forget that the domestic issues Biden wants to prioritize also require the Senate. In the highly likely outcome that Biden’s domestic hopes are dashed on the Senate’s shoals, anything global is likely to be pushed not so much to the back seat, but to be abandoned on the side of the road.
 
For a good time, you too can play with electoral and Senatorial politics at https://www.270towin.com/.

If you enjoy our free newsletters, the team at Zeihan on Geopolitics asks you to consider donating to Feeding America.

The economic lockdowns in the wake of COVID-19 left many without jobs and additional tens of millions of people, including children, without reliable food. Feeding America works with food manufacturers and suppliers to provide meals for those in need and provides direct support to America’s food banks.

Food pantries are facing declining donations from grocery stores with stretched supply chains. At the same time, they are doing what they can to quickly scale their operations to meet demand. But they need donations – they need cash – to do so now.

Feeding America is a great way to help in difficult times.

The team at Zeihan on Geopolitics thanks you and hopes you continue to enjoy our work.

DONATE TO FEEDING AMERICA