This was originally published by DC Journal.
Former president Donald Trump’s foreign policy was once panned as “transactional.”
President Biden, when speaking at the virtual Munich Security Conference in 2021, stated that “our partnerships have endured and grown through the years because they are rooted in the richness of our shared democratic values. They’re not transactional.”
Maybe they both are right. There are some long-standing partnerships that continue to endure through time. The United Kingdom and the United States, France and the United States, Canada and the United States are several to name a few.
Nonetheless, many political marriages are transactional (we are referring to countries here, not individuals).
U.S. politicians will have to become more accustomed to the transactional nature of international diplomacy.
Yes … security alliances and pacts, especially when discussing troop deployments, require more than transactional engagement. If the United States and Israel did not have a long-standing partnership, then American troops would not have been deployed to the Middle East to prevent a broadening of the current conflict in Gaza.
That similar support, however, will not unquestionably be afforded to other countries.
Take the recent agreements with India and Saudi Arabia, where alliances make sense but are transactional as the U.S. treatment of each country and vice versa still has a sense of hesitancy or suspicion.
India’s engagement with the United States has been described by the Biden administration as the emergence of a new strategic partner in Asia. But the reality suggests this is less a marriage of the minds but an agreement on price.
There may be no other country that has done more (other than maybe China) to shore up Russia’s economy among economic sanctions than India’s oil-guzzling economy with its copious Russian oil purchases. If Biden made a call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, you can imagine him saying China and India have done everything to buoy Russian oil revenues. Yet, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined a short list of foreign leaders to address a joint session of Congress — a list that includes Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill and Volodymyr Zelensky.
Biden is not wrong for turning his attention to India. It is the world’s fifth-largest economy with its GDP expected to overtake Japan and Germany by 2028. The Indian population has exploded and overtaken China while the economic war game of friend-shoring (the act of manufacturing and sourcing from countries that are geopolitical allies) both simultaneously forces American companies to explore options for production outside China (such as India) and the U.S. government to ensure it has a good understanding of who are its true allies.
Taken from a view that China is its ultimate competition, the Biden administration is happy to cozy up to India with a series of defense cooperation deals, especially as India faces border skirmishes with Chinese troops. Nonetheless, the current form of Indian populism and politics remains suspicious of Western countries — not simply the United States but also look at the tough relationship with Canada.
India, like China, is focused on global power and is not accepting the U.S. claim to global leadership. Weapons deals and defense cooperation may theoretically shore up U.S.-Indian relations, but it would be a mistake to think it is not simply transactional. American weapons today do not necessarily negate Russian oil tomorrow. The United States also has a good example of how playing nice blindly can backfire — China was once the dance partner with the United States until the music stopped.
Following the Abraham Accords negotiated by the Trump administration, Biden, as a candidate, vowed to punish Saudi Arabia for the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He labeled the kingdom as a “pariah’ that should be pushed to the side. Then came Biden’s trip to the kingdom less than two years into his presidency where he gave an awkward fist bump to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The fist bump was not a COVID-driven health measure for greetings but rather an unceremonious admission of defeat by the anti-Saudi Arabia hardliners in the administration.
As Biden quickly learned (or was reminded) in his first year, Americans hate inflation, especially at the gas pump. Second, the desire to slow U.S. exploration and production of oil (arguably at a pace that new energies have not been able to match) puts the American economy at the mercy of global oil prices in which Saudi Arabia plays a major role. Saudi Arabia, since that awkward meeting of Biden and MBS, has continued to coordinate production cuts with OPEC+ members, including Russia.
Now (or at least before the Israeli-Hamas war started) the United States is at the center of a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal that includes a long list of interests and preconditions. As a sign of deep commitment to the Abraham Accords, the United States is prepared to sign up to a security pact with Saudi Arabia and provide a civilian nuclear program. Both have some conditions … though, even with conditions, such an agreement by the United States automatically disperses with any talk of Saudi Arabia as a “pariah.”
Saudi Arabia would agree to stop sensitive transactions with China, work to resolve the conflict in Yemen, and align more with U.S. interests, including on economic issues like oil production and prices. Israel would benefit from wider political and economic integration with Arab countries in exchange for cooperating with Saudi Arabia on Iran deterrence (likely a mutual benefit to each country) and concessions to the Palestinians (which will likely require further negotiation and understanding after the recent war in Gaza).
This type of deal can only be described as a transactional — mutually aligned success or failure as a deal. The United States reportedly will manage the civilian nuclear plant and have special carve-outs on the security pact. This is clearly not a marriage of equally yoked partners but rather the epitome of a contract that remains as viable as its partners getting along daily and making it work — nothing more transactional than reassessing your friendship on a monthly or yearly basis.
Many U.S. relationships date back to the end of the Second World War — such that former U.S. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, when looking at the end of the Cold War, once wrote “most of the international military obligations that we assumed were once important are now outdated.” The United States remains a partner to many countries via North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Organization of American States and Major non-Nato ally (MNNA) status.
NATO, an intergovernmental military alliance established in the aftermath of World War II, is a partnership that has “endured and grown through the years” and is “transactional” — Trump among others felt the United States was funding an organization that it did not exactly receive equal benefits from with Trump suggesting the United States could go into “standby” mode and potentially exit NATO. Then the war in Ukraine broke out, and European members started spending more to aid Ukraine.
Under MNNA status, 18 countries have the right to enter into contracts with the U.S. military (in many instances similar to NATO countries). Those 18 countries are Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Qatar, South Korea, Thailand and Tunisia. A few of those countries, including Egypt, Israel, and Jordan, receive significant foreign aid from the United States with the aid to all three relationships heavily criticized, even in the last few weeks with some in the Congress suggesting pausing aid to Egypt until the resolution of charges against Sen. Robert Menendez.
The relationships with Brazil and Colombia fluctuate in strength based on who occupies the presidency — Jair Bolsonaro (now out of Brazilian presidential office as of the start of the year) and Gustabo Petro (president of Colombia since August 2022) are not Biden’s type of strategic partners. With Pakistan, the United States conducted a mission deep inside Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden without informing Islamabad ahead of the mission (the United States claims there was a standing warning that it would send operatives if there was evidence of bin Laden being in the country) — Pakistani polling thereafter showed distrust of the United States and has never really changed. In short, critiquing the MNNA list is not hard because, in most instances, most observers would describe U.S. relationships with all the members to be a balance between partnership and transactional.
Critics will continue to argue (and rightfully so in some cases) that the United States is funding security where certain countries are not equally (or proportionately depending on how the agreement is structured) matching their obligations. The push by many within the American security apparatus and within policy circles to encourage equal burden-sharing and more transactional engagement may simply be a recognition of the American public’s pushback on the funding of many multilateral organizations and a feeling of less than fair return on investment.
Many married couples know that every relationship is not 50/50 in general or on most days, but 80/20 or (something near that) every day will usually create strain. Now imagine that type of engagement between two countries who are not necessarily lovers but simple situational friends.
