One of the lasting legacies of U.S. President Joe Biden will be that he reinvigorated the American empire despite the risk of an increasingly authoritarian Donald Trump returning to lead it.
Over the past four years, President Biden has continually ignored criticisms of U.S. empire and the dangers it poses to the world to direct the empire’s expansion. He has overseen the enlargement of NATO, the exploitation of Ukraine to weaken Russia, a military buildup in the Indo-Pacific to encircle China, and the backing of Israel’s military assaults across the Middle East.
The Biden administration spent the past four years rebooting the American empire, bolstering U.S. imperial power while making some its most brazen moves in Europe, the Indo-Pacific, and the Middle East.
To this day, the Biden administration boasts about its imperial maneuvers, even with the knowledge that a far more dangerous Trump administration will soon be in a position to exploit U.S. imperial power for its own purposes.
“I think we’ve done remarkable things,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin marveled on November 7, two days after the election. “We were able to manage challenges and resources—and I think that put us in a pretty good place.”
Rebooting the Empire
When President Biden first entered office in January 2021, one of his top priorities was to restore the global American empire from the chaos of the first Trump administration. Seizing upon the imperial trope of the United States as an organizer of the international system, Biden spoke about the need for the United States to restore order to a chaotic world.
“We are the organizing principle for the rest of the world,” Biden said in 2022.
Despite some initial failures, including the collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan, the Biden administration achieved many of its imperial goals, such as the revitalization of U.S. alliances, a major strategic advantage of the United States over its rivals.
Trump has repeatedly asserted that the United States is a nation in decline, seizing upon President Biden’s cognitive decline and some of his imperial failures to insist that the United States is no longer respected. Soon, however, he will find himself in a position to lead a resurgent empire.
After all, the Biden administration spent the past four years rebooting the American empire, bolstering U.S. imperial power while making some its most brazen moves in Europe, the Indo-Pacific, and the Middle East.
The Transatlantic System
The Biden administration has significantly reinforced U.S. power in Europe. Although Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has posed a major challenge to the U.S.-led transatlantic system, the Biden administration has turned the situation to its advantage.
Since the start of the Russian invasion, the Biden administration has worked to enlarge and empower NATO, bringing more countries into the alliance while increasing its spending on military operations. There are now more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers stationed across Europe, the largest number since the mid-2000s.
The Biden administration has also taken advantage of the war to weaken Russia. By arming the Ukrainian resistance and imposing powerful sanctions on the Russian economy, the United States has led a concerted effort to entangle Russia in a quagmire. The administration’s basic approach has been to provide Ukraine with enough military assistance to hold its positions against Russia but not enough to push Russia out of the country. According to Austin, the primary reason why Ukrainian soldiers have been able to keep fighting is “because we have provided them the security assistance to be able to do it.”
Despite the approximately 1 million casualties on both sides, administration officials have insisted upon maintaining their approach, prioritizing their goal of making the war into a strategic failure for Russia over the ideal of safeguarding the security and sovereignty of Ukraine.
“What we’ve witnessed and I think what the world has witnessed is a declining superpower in Russia making one of its last-ditch unlawful efforts to go in and seize territory,” State Department official Richard Verma said in September. “This is really a declining power in so many ways and frankly not a very effective military power.”
The Transpacific System
While the Biden administration has strengthened the U.S. position in Europe, it has also reinforced the U.S. position in the Indo-Pacific. Even as China has pushed back against the U.S.-led transpacific system, especially in the South China Sea, the United States has strengthened many of its advantages over China.
One of the Biden administration’s major moves has been to build out the U.S. hub-and-spoke model, the U.S.-led imperial structure that keeps the United States positioned as the dominant hub of the Pacific. Not only has the administration fortified the spokes, or the U.S. allies and partners that encircle China, but it has facilitated multilateral cooperation among the spokes, mainly by working through the Quad and other regional groupings.
In a related move, the Biden administration has intensified U.S. military operations across the region. An estimated 375,000 U.S. soldiers and civilian personnel now operate across the Indo-Pacific, forming the highest concentration of U.S. military service members in a region that extends beyond the United States.
President Biden’s legacy will be the handover of a resurgent American empire to “the most dangerous person” in America.
“In the Indo-Pacific, I think we are seeing a resurgent United States,” Defense Department official Ely Ratner commented last year.
Complementing its military moves, the Biden administration has bolstered U.S. economic power. As it has worked to decouple China from multiple sectors of the U.S. economy, it has spearheaded the formation of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which reinforces the U.S. position as the center of economic power in the Pacific.
“Contrary to the predictions that the PRC would overtake the United States in GDP either in this decade or the next, since President Biden took office, the United States has more than doubled our lead,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan boasted in October.
The Middle East
Of all the signs of a resurgent American empire, however, perhaps none is more telling than U.S. action in the Middle East. Over the past year, the Biden administration has made it clear that the United States is more capable than ever to spread havoc and destruction across the region.
Since Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attack against Israel, the Biden administration has openly backed Israel’s military assaults across the Middle East, all with little consequence for the United States. The Arab states in the region may have once countered Israel by going to war or organizing oil embargoes against the United States, but they have done little to deter the United States from backing Israel’s military operations. In fact, the Arab states are now more likely to come to Israel’s defense, just as they did when they helped Israel counter Iran’s missile attacks in April and October.
The Biden administration may sometimes criticize Israel for how it has conducted its military operations, especially given the fact that Israel has laid waste to Gaza, but through it all, administration officials have been quietly satisfied with how they have enabled Israel to conduct military operations without facing any major retaliation. The Biden administration’s imperial management of the region demonstrates that the United States is now so powerful that it can unleash its strategic asset on the Middle East without having to engage in a wider war.
“I think we’ve done a magnificent job there,” Austin mused earlier this month, taking pride in U.S. imperial achievements while displaying little concern for the people of Gaza or the Israeli hostages who are still being held by Hamas.
The Future Under Trump
As the Biden administration has recharged the American empire, it has never stopped to question its actions. Not even internal dissent within the State Department and other federal agencies over the administration’s complicity in the destruction of Gaza has led to any kind of reckoning over the manner in which it has employed imperial violence around the world.
Perhaps most telling has been the Biden administration’s response to charges that Trump is a fascist. Top administration officials have agreed with the assessments, some made by leading scholars of fascism and others issued by former high-level officials in the first Trump administration. But leaders in the Biden administration have never questioned their belief that they must do everything they can to strengthen the U.S. empire.
Rather than considering what it would mean for a fascist to take control of the most powerful empire in the world, the Biden administration has spent more time considering how to ensure the empire’s survival. In recent months, one of its top priorities has been to “Trump-proof” the empire, meaning that administration officials are searching for ways to ensure that U.S. imperial structures survive the chaos of a second Trump presidency.
Now that Trump’s reelection is here, however, the Biden administration is facing a far more disturbing reality. President Biden’s legacy will be the handover of a resurgent American empire to “the most dangerous person” in America, all with dire implications not just for the people who are targets of Trump’s wrath but for the many people around the world who are victims of U.S. imperial practices.
