The US and the G20 Summit: “Bringing Red Lines”

Biden wants to strengthen the international front against Russia at the G20 summit – and reaffirm his own claim to leadership. The biggest challenge awaits him at a meeting with China’s President Xi on Monday.

It was a classic Freudian slip that slipped out of the US President shortly before his departure: “The fact that we won,” began Joe Biden, correcting himself immediately. The Democrats didn’t win the midterm elections. But it did much better than was generally expected.

And so Biden – at least in his own experience – travels strengthened to Asia to reaffirm the United States’ claim to leadership there. A claim that is also expected of his colleagues, Biden believes: “If the USA withdraws from the world stage tomorrow – then a lot would change in the world. A lot!”

First meeting as President with Xi

Biden expects what is probably the greatest diplomatic challenge in Bali before the actual summit begins: on Monday he will meet with China’s President Xi Jinping. It is the first face-to-face meeting with Xi since Biden has been president.

Whether it would come about at all was an open question for a long time. Relations are as strained as they have been in decades. China is angered by the visit of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in September. And about Biden’s export bans on semiconductors and semiconductor components, which China’s economy urgently needs.

Biden for fair competition

Conversely, the US is fundamentally concerned about China’s global economic, military and technological leadership ambitions, as well as its treatment of minorities and human rights.

But the US didn’t want a conflict with China, they wanted fair competition, Biden emphasized before he left Washington. Rather, he wants to achieve with Xi “that we show each other our red lines. So that he can say what is in his country’s critical national interest. And he understands what is ours. And if there is a conflict, to discuss it how we can solve it.”

Avoided meeting with Putin

Biden is avoiding another thorny question at this G20 summit: how to behave when meeting Vladimir Putin. Because despite an invitation from Indonesia, the Russian President has canceled his participation and is only sending his Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

But Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine and how to end it will still be one of the main issues. And a very difficult one for Biden. Also because America’s claim to leadership is no longer simply accepted around the world, says Charles Kupchan of the independent think tank Council on Foreign Relations.

A more multipolar world

“The fact that much of the world is not taking sides in this war is an expression of how they view the future,” says Kupchan. These countries didn’t want to put all their cards on the West – but neither did they want to put their cards on China. Instead, they would say, “We’ll do it this way, this way. The world is more multipolar and that’s why it’s so much harder to govern.”

Accordingly, Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan dampened expectations of a united front against Russia: “We will call on as many like-minded nations as possible to speak out emphatically against Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.”

And Sullivan reiterated the Biden administration’s mantra regarding possible negotiations in Russia’s war against Ukraine: that was Kiev’s decision alone.