Biden and the spectre of polycrisis

Adam Tooze — the Columbia scholar and FT contributor — coined the term polycrisis in late 2022. His idea was that the world is faced with so many crises that there is a genuine risk they could spill into each other and merge. His analogy was to the firestorms that enveloped Hamburg and Dresden during the second world war from the sheer volume of bombs dropped by the allies. It is a horrific vista but I think intentionally effective in shaking us out of our siloed complacencies. The link between climate change and war is well understood — think of Syria and the battle between different ethnic groups for scarce water resources.

Likewise, consider the rising number of migrants coming to Europe and the US from the global south, partly driven by climate change, which in turn fans populism in their host countries. The political knock-on effect of rising immigration on western democracy at a time of relative fiscal austerity makes it far harder for us to implement the kinds of measures that would reduce those migratory pressures: debt relief to developing countries, investment for clean energy transition, infrastructure to kick-start economic growth and so on. You get the picture. I fear that 2024 will supply a test of Tooze’s thesis.

Now, would you want to be Joe Biden? The US president has the following items in his in-tray: an attritional stalemate in Ukraine, which could tip in Russia’s favour if the US Congress continues to withhold new funding from Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government; an Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip that is bleeding Biden’s ability to rally international support for Ukraine, and eating away at enthusiasm levels among Democrats at home; the possibility of a wider conflict in the Middle East that would hit global commerce and create supply chain-driven inflation, as the Houthis are clearly aiming to bring about in the Strait of Hormuz; the long-term but ever-present challenge of simultaneously accommodating and confronting a slowing yet still rising China, in which Biden’s “de-risking” strategy has zero-sum implications; and of course, the biggest spectre of all — the risk that Donald Trump could return to office next January. My view is that the latter event would once and for all lay the fond notion of a US-led liberal international order to rest. Like a dog returning to its vomit, were America to go back to Trump for a second time, this time it would really mean it (forgive my vivid simile).

As it happens, I still think Biden will win in November. The volume of independents turning out to vote for Nikki Haley in New Hampshire on Tuesday night reinforced my hunch. My colleagues James Politi and Lauren Fedor have a good report on what New Hampshire might portend for the general election. But my Biden victory hunch is marginal; any one of those global challenges that I listed could develop to Biden’s electoral disadvantage. Moreover, a narrow Biden victory over Trump could be almost as bad as a Trump re-election. Trump would undoubtedly declare it a stolen election, and it is hard to believe a Republican-controlled Senate — the likeliest outcome regardless of the presidential result — would permit an ageing Biden in his second term to accomplish anything on the domestic front. We should have learned from 2020 that a Biden win would not spell the end of America’s democratic crisis.

Can the US-led liberal order survive? I am increasingly sceptical. For all its faults and double standards, I continue to think the US-led order is the worst global arrangement possible, except for all the others. For those interested in a deeper exploration of this theme, I moderated a fascinating panel this week at the Stimson Center that you can watch here (my session starts at around the 20th minute). It includes Mathew Burrows, the former chief author of the US National Intelligence Council’s seminal Global Trends reports.

I should also mention that Rana and I are moving to a slightly different model of Swamp Notes, starting today. Instead of replying to each other for each of our weekly notes, we are inviting colleagues and outsiders to reply. In this case my guest respondent is Adam Tooze. Adam, am I overstating the Biden risk assessment?

Recommended reading

• My column this week begins with a quote from an admiring 1933 FT supplement on Benito Mussolini’s fascist Italy. Bearing in mind JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon’s recent positive noises about Trump, my point is that business can never be relied on to act as a bulwark against autocracy.

• Sticking to this subject, Rick Perlstein has a brilliant essay in The American Prospect on the historic nature of fascism and the often obscure and messy warning signs to which we should now be attuned. I have generally tended to dismiss comparisons between today’s right-wing populism and fascism. This excellent essay made me think twice.

• Do also read my colleague — and regular Swampian — Peter Spiegel on the New Hampshire primary: “Joe Biden is getting the opponent that he wanted; Is he wrong?”

Adam Tooze responds

Hi Ed: You are right. The Biden team takes the challenges of the polycrisis seriously. On several fronts, they are earnestly committed to constructive action. But what is characteristic of the Biden administration is that this forward-looking outlook is paired with a broader worldview that is deeply conservative. Far more earnestly than Donald Trump, Biden and his team believe that making America great again and cementing US global pre-eminence is the answer to the world’s problems.

The problem is that — as Martin Wolf recently pointed out — one of the few things we know for certain is that in the future the balance of population and economic activity will tilt away from the American-led west towards Asia and Africa. Faced with these trends, the Biden administration’s defence of the status quo risks making the world a more dangerous place. Its much-hyped industrial policy promises to take America back to the future. And whilst the Inflation Reduction Act may help to decarbonise the US energy sector, the administration can’t help itself from cheerleading booming oil and gas exports as a new sector of American industrial strength.

Of course, a Trump administration would be worse in every respect and I fear you may be underestimating the likelihood of a Trump victory. In the rest of the world, anxiety and puzzlement over American politics will overshadow most other foreign policy concerns in 2024. One might despair at the prospects for American democracy, were it not for the signs suggesting that America is on the cusp of a generational transition. Whereas Biden, Trump and many of their most fervent supporters are stuck in the worldview of the mid-20th century, opinion polling shows younger Americans are abandoning vainglorious aspirations to global leadership and are properly focused on America’s domestic ills. One can only hope that a new generation of politicians, new political formations and new ideas emerge to lead this long overdue reckoning with 21st-century realities.