Bilahari Kausikan, a former high-ranking Singaporean diplomat, is known to be outspoken. But his recent comments about Susan Rice, a U.S. national security advisor during the Obama administration, were even blunter than usual. “Rice would be a disaster,” he wrote on Facebook in August, when Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden was reportedly considering Rice as a running mate. Kausikan described Rice—a possible candidate for secretary of state or defense in a Biden adminstration—as weak-willed on Beijing: “She was amongst those who thought the United States should deemphasise competition to get China’s cooperation on climate change, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of international relations.” His prediction in case of a Biden victory: “We will look back on Trump with nostalgia.”
If Kausikan’s sharp views have often made him an intellectual outlier in Asia, this case is different. To a degree that will surprise many in Washington, the United States’ friends in the region are quietly anxious about a Biden victory, and that counts even more for vital partners such as Japan and India. In the United States, Trump’s critics on both the left and right find him offensive and despair of his politics—and assume that any right-minded foreigner would, too. That may be the case in much of Europe, but not so in much of Asia: Officials in Tokyo, Taipei, New Delhi, Singapore, and other capitals have grown relatively comfortable with Trump and his tough approach on China. The prospect of a Biden presidency, by contrast, brings back uncomfortable memories of an Obama era that many Asian movers and shakers recall as unfocused and soft toward Beijing. Whether or not that memory is correct is beside the point. Biden has an Asian credibility problem—and one that may prove tricky to solve.
