The United States is faced with serious internal and external challenges. The American socio-economic and geostrategic situation requires immediate intervention if Washington wants to remain the world leader.
Let's pay attention to a couple of key factors - external and internal, which pushed Washington to start communicating with Moscow.
Escalation of confrontation with China
Beijing is gaining strength. The Chinese voice is heard more and more. 'The east wind suppresses the west' (东风 压倒 西风dōng fēng yā dǎo xī fēng). Washington still holds the lead, primarily technological, but China is catching up with America. In the meantime, Putin is skillfully filling the price of Russia as a "golden stake" in the confrontation between the two superpowers. The recent "Putin-Xi consensus" and rumors about the creation of a military quasi-alliance between the two Eurasian powers force Biden to seek a compromise on the Russian-American flank. The goal is to persuade the Russian Federation to be neutral. In 2022, we will witness Washington's attempts to find a common denominator with Moscow, given its audacious demands on Ukraine and Eastern Europe.
US midterm elections next November
The US House of Representatives and some of the governors will be re-elected. Joe Biden needs to enter elections with key cards in his hands. Primarily economic. The Democratic Party cannot go to the polls with such inflation - it will be a repeat of 2018 - when Trump's Republican Party lost to the Democrats and lost control of Congress. In November, inflation in America reached a record 6.8%.
Inflation dynamics in the USA
Washington has already taken measures to stabilize the volume of the money supply through a "reverse repo" - a transaction to buy securities with a further commitment to resell in the future. The Federal Reserve System and money-market mutual funds (MMMFs) are buying trillions of dollars of liquidity from the financial market, reducing the M2 money supply - first of all, bank reserves.
This temporary measure, which began in the summer, has shown good results: over the past month, US prices have fallen by 10-15%. However, growth in the US real economy has slowed; in November it amounted to 5.3% against 10.2% in June. It becomes obvious: Biden cannot radically reduce inflation by short-term manipulations in the financial market. The policy needs to be changed. And a potential way out is to reduce spending on the maintenance of international institutions and American hegemony in general. Results are needed as soon as possible - the sooner the voter sees a decrease in prices, the better for the rating of the ruling president's party.
Joe Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan concretized this idea publicly two months ago: “we, unlike our predecessors, will build a different international architecture - it will not be the Parthenon with large columns in the form of the IMF, NATO, UN, World Bank. The structure will become more flexible, temporary; now we have other tasks”. This means that unlike Dean Acheson, who dreamed of seeing "the United States as the locomotive of humanity" and not spare efforts and resources, Joe Biden will strive to minimize foreign policy costs and carry out internal reforms as much as possible. Here the president of the Russian Federation with revanchist sentiments in Europe, eager to restore Russia's influence in the spheres of interests it needs, will come in handy.
It is unlikely that Moscow's insolent demands on the US and NATO for security guarantees can be fully satisfied. But on the part of Washington, partial satisfaction of Russia's wishes is possible. Small-scale stabilization in Europe, even with the return of some uncritical lines, will enable Biden to reduce spending on foreign policy and focus on the main direction - containing China. In 2020, under Trump, only official spending on the external United States amounted to approximately $ 60 billion. Funding of international organizations by Washington decreased by 31.8%.
Financial injections into Ukraine are listed among the US priorities in containing Russia. However, the amount of aid is catastrophically less compared to support for Asia or Africa.