 Welcome to the first show of 2021 for the Global Report. I'm your host Loli. We have back with us today Mr. Steve O'Koon, a former official in the Clinton administration and current advisor at McClarty. Welcome back Steve. Thank you for having me back. Now Steve, the last time we chatted we were still discussing the prospects of the U.S. presidential election and now we have Biden poised to step into the presidency next week. Yes, I mean it is certainly in circumstances no one ever foresaw this attack on the capital led and fueled by Donald Trump is going to change everything. It's going to change not only domestic politics in the U.S. it's going to have a large impact on U.S. foreign policy what Biden had wanted to do and now what Biden can do going forward. Well you know that's exactly what I want to get your take on today is American policy under Biden. We know that after four years of Trump, Biden is inheriting a presidency like you just said like no other. So for one thing the image the values the influence of U.S. leadership abroad have been severely corroded and I know Washington's focus is probably not going to be on Europe but let's start with Europe. During Trump time he's left a bunch of tariffs on the continent. Do you see Biden reversing some of those tariffs. Yeah, I look I mean Biden is going to take a fundamentally different approach in two ways. First, he's not going to attack our allies. So there are trade tensions when it comes to subsidies between the U.S. in the EU between the U.S. and and Canada India, other allies but but how Trump has gone about addressing those is completely wrong. It was counterproductive and certainly they're going to be addressed very differently under a Biden administration when it comes to working with our allies globally. He is also going to take a fundamentally different approach when it comes to a multilateral approach to foreign policy as opposed to the unilateral approach so it is going to be a sea change and that change will occur faster. In Europe then it will occur in Asia because of the long standing relationship and because generally speaking the countries are and should be aligned on foreign policy and trade policy although with some significant differences. Now just to hold you to my first question because I'm really curious how he's going to address this is kind of delicate because on one hand he has to keep in mind that it's the Roosevelt states like Michigan like Pennsylvania that help to secure his election win. And on the other hand I don't think this escalation of tariffs with Europe is going to go very far. So how do you think he's going to resolve this tariff issues with Europe is he going to reverse some of those tariffs. Well I for sure he's going to reverse some of them but the question is it's a negotiation. And I think we need to keep in mind that while Donald Trump was a disaster as a president from a foreign policy perspective it doesn't mean that every action he took didn't have some basis or justification under under US law there are subsidies that take place in Europe that need to be addressed there is some market opening in Europe that needs to be addressed but the way to do that is not through unilateral tariffs it is it is to negotiate an agreement and I think you're going to see that negotiation. Well the issue is the bandwidth of of the US government is is limited by the amount of resources it has internally and you have so many pressing matters across the entire world it's hard to say well are we going to start negotiating with Europe first or is it going to be China. Is it going to be back to the WTO all of these things need to be addressed so I I think hard to say what's going to come first but the approach is going to be different the ultimate outcome. You can see generally where we're headed with Europe. OK fair enough. Now let's let's move on to the defense and security. I know that European allies have been debating an independent security path. So on one hand we have France who's advocating for strategic autonomy while defrosting relations with Moscow. In the middle we've got Germany who's saying no no no don't push the United States away and then we've got the Baltic States. We got Poland who's seen no alternative to US military presence. What can Biden administration expect from NATO and vice versa. Well I think this ties into a bit of more. What are the Europeans expectations of the United States. Does Europe believe and this is a global question. Is the US back to its its pre Trump approach to foreign policy or is the US going to have a chance for years from now to return to Donald Trump's version of America first which is unilateral and its isolationist. And if the European allies do not believe that after that after one term of Biden we could come back to to President Trump or a Trump like foreign policy. They are going to have to pursue some more of an independent course. And so you're going to see what happens in in Washington when it comes to handling the insurrection on January 6 have a large impact on how allies and competitors view the United States not just for the Biden administration but beyond the Biden administration. All right. Well let's move on to Middle East. The messy can of worms. Maybe we can start with Iran. I know that the incoming Secretary of State Blinken said that Biden's going to be doing less not more in the Middle East. But we have heard this kind of vocal pledges many times in the past about pulling back from Middle East. So looking at Iran do you think Biden's going to go back to the nuclear deal. Well I mean you have to presume he's going to to take a multilateral approach unlike the Trump administration. It was the Obama Biden administration that negotiated the nuclear deal. The presumption is that that approach isn't going to change. You have to ask yourself what is Iran going to do because that is going to dictate a lot of it. But you should see a multilateral approach to bringing Iran into constraints is opposed to trying to use sanctions against Iran and sanctions against your own allies to force Iranian behavior to change which has never worked. So I think it's safe to say you're going to see that same multilateral approach from the Obama administration into the Biden administration. It's the multilateral approach of Republicans and Democrats before before the Trump administration. So sure that that should revert back to that form. But will there be a deal. When would there be a deal. What would be in the deal. What is Iran going to do. All of that is going to take a lot of time. Do you think America is going to come up with new terms for Iran to suck up before they are willing to go back to the table. Well it's certainly possible depending on what Iran has done since the agreement has been broken. So I mean I think that's the type of thing you have to say that this administration this incoming administration is going to go back to a fact based negotiation and the facts take you where you need to go on on any agreement with sufficient constraints. So that's what we're going to have to watch over the next coming year or so when it comes to the Iran deal. You know just to tackle your earlier question about what you think Iran is going to do. You know I think Rouhani is a reformist. I see him interacting and engaging US diplomatically. The group of people I'm watching is those religious conservatives because they are in an internal struggle with Rouhani. So I think that is the group of people that has the potential to prevent the next deal from happening. And that's the point. I think all the questions are what's Biden going to do on Iran. What's Biden going to do on China. What's Biden going to do on Europe. The question is as much if not more. What is she going to do in China. What's going to happen politically in Iran. What's going to happen politically in Germany in France and the others. So that is the question that you have to ask in addition to what is the Biden approach going to be. And until you can understand that's part of the equation. You really can't predict what's going to happen. You would hope that a Biden administration and a willingness to come back to a traditional multilateral foreign policy is going to give room to the reform reformers. So if you can say that the reformers in Iran to have more authority. But Iranian politics is going to play out very differently in it beyond what's going to happen in DC. Okay. What about Saudi Arabia because this is a region that you know Biden can actually do more to last off. I want to call attention to the Saudi led war in Yemen. I mean despite the horrendous humanitarian cost of the Saudi led war in Yemen. The US has continued to be the main supplier of bombs to Saudi Arabia. So I know under Trump ties were very cozy with Saudi. But do you see Biden resetting this relations with Saudi taking a second look at their defense ties. And you know maybe instead of turning a blind eye and keep up with the lucrative arms sales do something with Saudi. It is also will Saudi see this as a as a reason to change as well. Is there going to be an opening for them to take the steps that they need to stake internally and in terms of of the you know the wars that are occurring the battles if not outright wars that are occurring across you know the Middle East. It's only when when when the you know the Trump administration is on the way out the door that they start taking actions different actions in Yemen. And yet is that going to lead to even more of a humanitarian crisis. The Biden administration has so much on its plate to deal with. And you can't ignore what's happening in the US domestically right now as to how much they can do all at once and what priorities they are going to take. Yeah. Well we're going to touch on the domestic issues just a little bit later. Well let's do a pivot to Asia because I know this is going to be a consequential part of the world for decades to come. But unlike Obama time. And I think if Biden would choose to focus his efforts here in Asia like you said you know US is more constrained financially that would mean that he has to scale back US in other theaters like Europe and Middle East. So is he prepared to do that. Well again there's there's what are you going to do in terms of a multilateral approach and what are you going to do in terms of of a trade approach. I mean I think if you look at where the US is today is to where it was before Donald Trump came into office. And from a trade and economic perspective what has occurred. Right. You've got the TPP goes forward without the US. The regional comprehensive economic partnership agreement of 15 countries including China Japan ASEAN and Australia comes together without the US. You have the EU and China now negotiating a trade deal without the US. The US is out in the cold. It is much worse off today economically than it was four years ago. It's no better if not worse when it comes to China because what has occurred there. All of the unfair trade practices that China had been engaging in that led up to the tariffs that Donald Trump has opposed are still in play and China's economy continues to grow. So we've gotten nowhere with China and then if you want to throw in national security. No progress or we've gone backwards on North Korea we've gone backwards in the South China Sea. So what is it that the Biden administration can do to try and undo all of the damage that the Trump administration has done. It has to come back to a multilateral approach working with allies to try and figure out how do you address all of these issues you have from an economic perspective and a security perspective that the Trump administration has only made worse over the past four years. Now Steve I keep hearing you say I mentioned this multilateral approach and I concur with you on that. I'm just I can't help but wonder is that enough because you know Steve when I look at Biden's foreign policy team I see a lot of Obama alumni. And so on one hand yes they have the experience but on the other hand like you said the world has changed China has changed U.S. has changed since 2016. So with this quasi Obama team are they simply going to dust off the old playbook or can we expect them to come on with a stronger stomach for competition because that is the reality of international relations. OK well if you look at what happened let's go back to the towards the end of the Obama administration. The long standing U.S. approach to China had been changing right you you had a approach of you know let's accommodate and engage with China and that started you know in the 70s and certainly went through Republican and Democratic administrations through the China through the midpoint of the Obama administration but then the realization came clear that the approach of accommodating and engaging with China was not going to produce any change in terms of China's unfair and anti competitive behavior against foreign businesses U.S. and others alike. And so that approach started to change under Obama changed most significantly with the TPP where it said let's take a multilateral approach and we're going to either force China if they want to be part of the regional trade architecture to meet the the rules that we all agree upon or they can go and be outside of it. And that is the approach that was starting to work and then it is the one that Donald Trump utterly destroyed with his withdrawal from the TPP and then everything he did for the four years thereafter. So yes a multilateral approach can work but it's going to be something that is going to take time. The second thing I think that has changed significantly in the past four years that the Biden administration is going to recognize is that the countries here are not waiting for U.S. leadership. They are moving forward. They are not going to be dictated to by the U.S. and they're certainly not going to be dictated to by China. It's why the TPP went forward without the U.S. and without China. And you're going to see a continued agency within the members of ASEAN and Japan and Australia and hopefully India in moving forward. They want the U.S. to be part of that approach. But if the U.S. isn't going to be part of that approach they'll move forward on their own. But with the Biden administration the U.S. will be part of that approach. And it's why I think a multilateral framework in 2021 is going to be more impactful than the one that we had that really kind of started in 2015-2016. Yeah so when I look at U.S. and China I see that they are squabbling more than ever over many issues. They fight over trade, technology, espionage, COVID-19, China's policy on Xinjiang, Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the South China Sea. But I'm just thinking some of these issues seem to be more bilateral than multilateral. Do you see Biden having the capability to bring China to the table and to seek some common ground because he's someone I see who is very capable of giving and taking and seeing things beyond zero sum? Well I am going to disagree with the premise of the question in saying these are U.S.-China issues. These are not U.S.-China issues. These are issues for Japan, they're issues for Australia, they're issues for India, they're issues for most of the countries and should be but for all of them but certainly most of them in Asia. This is not a U.S.-China issue. This is where Trump failed miserably and that people call this a U.S.-China trade war. It's Trump's trade war. It isn't. These are actions that China has taken against many different actors and so it's going to take many different actors to come together who are willing to do so to make those changes. Now you also have to keep in mind China is critical. It is the most critical market for most businesses in Asia. It's probably the second most critical market for many businesses of the United States and of the EU and otherwise and so you have to engage with China. You have to find a way to engage with them in a way that leads to a, you know, use a Chinese phrase, you know, a win-win and that is possible. China does need to make changes for its own domestic economy when it comes to IPR protection. It needs to make changes in terms of how it is going to handle technology. It doesn't want to be cut off. It doesn't want to have its technology cut off from the world. So there's incentives for both sides to cooperate. But there's also times where China needs to be confronted and that's the balance that the Biden administration is going to have to find and it's going to be better to find that not on its own but working with its partners. Well, I will say this as an ASEAN national. I think we appreciate when Trump pushed back against China in the South China Sea. But looking at, looking at ASEAN, I mean speaking again from ASEAN national, you know, I think we support U.S. military presence in the region. But we want, we're deserters of a lower temperature between U.S. and China because the last we want is to be the gross upon which the great power elephants trample on. So listening to you though, Steve, I have to raise this because, because until U.S. resources get on par with its rhetoric, I think we are going to remain skeptical in Southeast Asia because while China is doing more with more, U.S. cannot be doing more with less. Well, and I mean with a one, it's just not ASEAN that's skeptical about the United States. It's the whole world that's skeptical about the United States, especially after what happened with the insurrection on the Capitol and Trump's continuation so far in power in so far having support amongst the majority of the Republican Party. So you have, that's a global issue. The other issue you have, though, is that I think ASEAN recognizes that it needs to chart its own course. It needs to move forward. It's why when the U.S. left the TPP, everyone thought it was over, but it wasn't over and it wasn't over because of leaders like, you know, Prime Minister Abe in Tokyo, but also leaders like Prime Minister Lee here in Singapore. And so you're going to continue to see where it can ASEAN lead as much as possible. And that's, you saw that again with the RCEP, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. It is a mistake to call that a China-led agreement. It is at least as much led by ASEAN and by Japan as it was by China. So ASEAN recognizes it needs to chart its own course and whether, or as much as it can, ideally with the United States as a partner, but if not, it's going to go forward as best it can on its own. I think ASEAN is charting its own course. I mean, we're hedging our bets whether U.S. like it or not. So on one hand, we are staying the good grace of the United States. On the other hand, we're keeping our options open for China and other U.S. rivals. So I think we're doing just that. But do you think the U.S. is going to come back to the TPP? It is a very difficult for the U.S. to come back to the TPP in part for two reasons. One, under U.S. law, the authority to negotiate new trade agreements expires this summer, and it's doubtful that Congress is going to renew that. So that would mean that the U.S. would have to come back more or less to the existing TPP, which it won't, because it doesn't have the change. It doesn't have the provisions in there, especially when it comes to labor, when it comes to the environment, when it comes to tax. And now the question is, are the countries here just going to accept all of those changes from the U.S. without any negotiation? That will be very difficult to do. So I don't see the U.S. coming back to the TPP in year one or two of the Biden administration. You can see some sector-specific deals. Maybe you can see a digital trade agreement that the U.S. could join. So there are ways to come back to ASEAN, to come back to trade agreements without the TPP. And I think that's the more likely first step for the Biden administration, at least for its first two years. I think it's right for us to temple our expectations, because U.S. has got its plate full domestically. You and I know that he has to hit the ground running to deal with the pandemic, to deal with the economy, to deal with the polarization, and I guess the side effects of impeachment of Trump, right? Well, I think that's actually the most important thing that isn't getting enough attention right now. There is going to be two issues coming forward. One is, can you trust the United States after Biden leaves office as to whom the next president is going to be? Because the U.S. has a bad track record of living up to agreements. It wasn't in Kyoto. It was in Paris, and then it was out of Paris. It was in the Iran deal. It was out of the Iran deal. It was in TPP. It was out of TPP. And so why would you, if you're a foreign country, say, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to make all of these accommodations. I'm going to do what needs to be done on trade agreements like labor rights, like more environmental protections. But then to see the U.S. leave it, and then my domestic constituency is opposed to me, so I've paid a political price and gained nothing for it. So the U.S. is going to need to show that it is back on track from a bipartisan approach when it comes to trade and foreign policy. The only way it is going to do that is if Donald Trump is held liable for what happened when it came to his insurrection, that the Republican Party joins the Democratic Party in impeaching, convicting, and disqualifying him from office, and that you can then trust that even if Joe Biden's a one-term president, whoever replaces him on the Republican side is going to continue along the same lines as Joe Biden did on a bipartisan foreign policy. Because if you don't, and if there is the threat that Donald Trump can run for office and win in 2024, why would you make any deal with the United States within the next four years? Well, Steve, I think you are making that statement on the assumption that once Trump is gone, Trumpism is gone. Well, Trumpism is going to be diminished if you have a Republican Party come together and say Trumpism is not welcome here, and if you say we are going to punish the people in the Party who have been supporting him or at least disown them, and so splinter off the Trump part of the Republican Party, which right now is a large part of it, and then try and build back up that center-right conservative Republican Party, which the country needs, then you can go forward. Now, if Donald Trump has nothing happening to him, and he starts running for president literally January 21, the day after the inauguration, it is going to be much worse. So the question is, where do countries, competitors and allies alike see the United States going over the next four years, because that is going to determine how much they're willing to trust a Biden administration? You know, Steve, it's been part and parcel of every American policy to spread its ideas of Western democracy far and wide. But after last week's riot, do you see America exercising a little bit more restraint and pulling back and saying, you know, maybe our way is not the best way after all, and definitely not for everybody? Well, I think what you're going to see is that there's a significant wake-up call in the United States that we have to address our issues. We have to address social media. We have to address hyper-partisanship. We have to address voting rights. We have to address gerrymandering. And so I do think that there is a wake-up call for enough people in the United States that there is going to be that we need to, you know, walk the walk in addition to talking the talk. Will the Biden administration had talked about having a summit for democracy? Is that still going to occur? I don't know if it did. What does that mean? But, and I think this is the most important thing that I hope comes out of January 6th, is that you saw a president of the United States bring together and incite a mob to overthrow the government, and it failed and the institutions held. And I hope that is the narrative that comes forward, is that as flawed as the United States is, our system held, our system held, and that type of system is the one that works well at least for the United States. Yeah, I'm definitely not dismissing the tragedy that I think one good that came out of the riot is that it did open up the eyes of many of Trump's followers. Well, our time is up, Steve. Thank you so much for the generosity of your time and for contributing your highly-valued expert input to the conversation. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me again, Lily. And next time, hopefully I'll be in Hawaii for our next interview. Yeah, I hope so too. Well, that's Steve O'Koon's near-visit of McClarty. Thank you.