The president faces his second twelve months in office with a very complicated local and international agenda, whose management will influence the sign of the next elections
After a 2021 marked by the return to a certain political normality and a mixed balance of ups and downs, US President Joe Biden begins his second year in office with a horizon full of challenges. The fatigue of the pandemic, the rise in inflation and the uncertainty about the supply chain have had an impact on the electorate, reflected in a decrease in the approval rating of the president, which this fall fell below 50%. With the Senate evenly divided and a famished majority in the House, Democrats could also lose control of Congress in next November’s congressional elections.
The position is therefore precarious to start a pivotal year in which Biden will have to skillfully allocate his time and limited political capital to push through a tight list of priorities. The House committee’s investigation into the attack on the Capitol, which marked its first anniversary on Thursday, is entering a race against time over the possibility that the legislative elections could wrest control of Congress from Democrats. If the Republicans seize him, the annulment of the investigation is assured.
The Republican Party, in the hands of Trumpist extremism, has not made a secret of its aversion to an investigation that would reveal its involvement in the attempt to reverse the electoral results with foreseeable criminal consequences. More than a thousand public officials were complicit in Donald Trump’s attempt to annul his defeat at the polls. The dangerous advance of the antidemocratic movement after the riot against the Capitol has invested with a new urgency the efforts to strengthen the electoral system before the elections in November.
Driven by former President Trump’s “web of lies” – as Joe Biden accused him in his speech Thursday – Republicans in many states have approved new restrictions on voting access and placed loyalist politicians in positions from which they could subvert the legitimate electoral results in 2022. The former Republican president has already supported candidates for the secretary of state and lieutenant governors in key territories, in a worrying effort to place his followers in positions capable of manipulating eventual loss of votes for his party.
Senate obstruction
Biden and the Democrats hope to combat these maneuvers through federal legislation that would homogenize access to the vote in all states. The Freedom of Voting Bill remains, however, stalled in the Senate due to obstructionism from Republicans. Another side project, the Voting Rights Act named after John Lewis, the late legendary civil rights leader and congressman from Georgia, was also blocked by Republicans on November 3.
The key to obstructionism is based on a parliamentary archaism that allows the minority to block the legislative projects of the majority by requiring three-fifths of the votes of the Senate, 60 parliamentarians of the total of 100. The measure, fundamentally undemocratic, began to used in the early 1850s and comes from the Spanish term ‘filibuster’.
In the international arena, the challenges for Biden are not few. Rising tensions with China and Russia define the axis of the ‘new cold war’ and this year will require diplomatic effort and coercion in equal measure. Chinese President Xi Jinping has made it clear that the world’s second largest economy is a rising superpower that wants to reshape the global order to suit itself. Biden has promised that the US will prevail in strategic competition with the Asian giant. To do this, the Democratic leader has acted both unilaterally and with allies in Europe and Asia to create a common front to curb China’s growing economic, technological and military aggressiveness.
His Administration has maintained the trade tariffs already applied by Trump, has reinforced the military presence of US ships through the Taiwan Strait and continues diplomatic pressure on Beijing condemning the suppression of freedoms in Hong Kong and the abuse of human rights of the Uyghurs. in Xinjiang. It also intends to continue strengthening the Quad coalition in Asia and with NATO, in addition to deepening new alliances such as AUKUS with the United Kingdom and Australia. This strengthening of its defense relations with other countries should serve as a spur in a year in which Beijing’s growing military aggressiveness with Taiwan could reach its boiling point in the short term.
Summit with Russia
The perception of domestic instability after the violent assault on the Capitol seems to have emboldened the hegemonic calculations of China and Russia. President Vladimir Putin, who considers Ukraine a western province of Russia for the distribution of natural gas to Europe, has increased the military presence on the borders of this country in order to send a clear message to NATO about the “red line »Of territorial demarcation of Moscow’s geopolitical interests.
Biden, who rejected this “red line” in December but agreed to a meeting with four prominent NATO members to discuss Russian concerns this coming week, has put all his stakes on diplomacy, which may or may not provide a ramp. exit to avoid a war that nobody wants. Russia’s European energy dependence will be a motivation for everyone to reduce tension.
However, protests in Kazakhstan this week and the intervention of Russian peacekeepers open a new front of international instability in Central Asia’s largest and highest-performing economy. Rich in minerals and fossil fuels, the country concentrates large foreign investments and is the second world center in the so-called cryptocurrency mining.
Although perhaps the real confrontation of the new world order has already begun not on Earth but in space, where US military satellites suffer daily actions of electronic warfare by Russia and China. The so-called “reversible attacks” do not permanently damage the satellite, they are carried out by means of lasers, radio frequency jammers and cybernetic assaults and their purpose is to hinder the progress of rivals in the space race, in which the Asian giant is leading.
Failure in the fight against coronavirus
A year ago, in the first speeches after his presidential appointment, Joe Biden promised to tame the pandemic. Today is the great failure of his first twelve months in office. At the center of their table is the fight against the epidemic again, with almost a third of Americans still reluctant to be vaccinated and whose spread delays domestic and global economic recovery.
The latest figures speak for themselves: the infections reported this Saturday return to scandal figures, with almost 900,000 new infected. And children under the age of five are of particular concern. More than a thousand people with covid have been admitted to the hospital in a single day.
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