Truman Redux? Biden’s National Security Strategy

Abstract

Abstract US President Joe Biden’s foreign policy, as expressed in the 2022 National Security Strategy, represents a contemporary variation of the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and the post-Second World War programme of US global leadership. It frames great-power politics in the international arena and democratic revitalisation at home as part of a broad ideological confrontation between liberal-democratic capitalism and illiberal, authoritarian nationalism. It directs an economic-recovery plan inward to rebuild the US economy after the distortions it has been experiencing since 2008. And it promotes US leadership of the liberal-international order, albeit in a different geopolitical environment than prevailed in the post-war years. This strategy has been refined in the face of near disaster and revived by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.