Bonus Perspectives: Biden Foreign Policy Report Card, Five Years of COVID in Japan, Stanley Kubrick's 1960s Films, and Harry Potter
A debriefing on the outgoing admin's foreign policy, Japan marks five years of COVID, and your weekly media recommendations.
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A report card of Biden’s foreign policy
If you are reading this column, Donald Trump will have been inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States. For better or worse, a new era for American hegemony is now upon us. Trump has already made history as only the second president to serve non-consecutive terms, which means that when he leaves office on January 20, 2029, there will be 12 years of flip-flopping U.S. foreign policy decisions to look back upon. 16 years if you want to include Obama’s second term before Trump took over the first time. The soap opera never ends, does it?
As my field is international relations, I thought it would only be fitting to look back on the Biden administration’s foreign policy and give it a report card. To get my biases out of the way, I consider myself to be a center-right moderate and a strong supporter of U.S. hegemony, so it was a mixed bag of things I liked and didn’t like. Under the Trump admin, I hope for some level of continuity that will promote American interests abroad and maintain important alliances. But for now, I’m looking at the good, the bad, and the ugly of the last four years. So without further ado, let’s grade the outgoing administration by regions of key interest.
Afghanistan: Easily the biggest foreign policy blunder of the entire Biden administration. Yes, Afghanistan was an inherited issue. Yes, like the Vietnam War multiple administrations share blame. Yes, it was going to be a shitstorm no matter what. But there was no reason for Biden to essentially give the Taliban tens of millions of dollars in U.S. military equipment which they can both use and sell. There was no reason to leave hundreds of Afghans out to dry despite being brave allies who risked their lives to help Americans. There was no reason for 13 more American servicemen to lose their lives during the botched withdrawal. No matter how you slice it, the Biden administration dropped the ball with bringing the sad saga of the war in Afghanistan to a close while giving Republicans an easy point of attack they’ve been wise to use in political debates. It receives my lowest score on this report card, F.
China/Taiwan: Biden’s policy toward China demonstrated far more competence, but the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan gave dictators like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin the assurance they needed to question the strength of U.S. hegemony. Luckily in practice Biden did not waver on the policies that mattered. While Trump has the reputation of being the tariff man, Americans would be well to remember that Biden largely maintained the same continuity and actually increased some rates on Chinese imports. This is perhaps one of the few foreign policy issues that Democrats and Republicans are largely united on. The CHIPS and Science Act, while not without its flaws, was also a step in the right direction toward the U.S. bringing manufacturing back home.
Biden was consistently a stalwart ally of Taiwan, pledging that U.S. forces would defend the island if mainland China were ever to attack. On the other hand, I’m not a fan of the U.S. continuing to avoid calling Taiwan a country and continuing to play the rhetoric game by Beijing’s rules in refusing to support Taiwanese independence. Former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga showed more integrity by explicitly referring to Taiwan as a country, but Biden continued the same contradictory line of previous administrations. I get it, the U.S. has always had to walk a fine line between both sides. When is this going to end though? For how long will the world be forced to kowtow to the Chinese Communist Party? Regardless, it would not be accurate to call Biden pro-China by any stretch as Republicans are apt to. His policy gets a B+ from me.
Europe: Ukraine was perhaps the Biden administration’s most pressing foreign policy issue. Again, it can be argued that the U.S. leaving Afghanistan the way it did was a major factor that emboldened Putin to invade Ukraine, which is now reaching the end of its third year. Would a Trump presidency have prevented this? There’s no way to tell, but I will give Biden more points than Obama for finally treating Russia like the geopolitical threat it is. His administration strengthened ties with NATO allies and sent Ukraine the military aid it needed for it to have a fighting chance. These are things I strongly support and hope Trump won’t walk back on.
Biden falls short of receiving full marks for pointless restrictions placed on Kyiv regarding how far it could strike military targets in Russia which were only removed this year. Putin’s forces could have been significantly weakened by now if they were never there to begin with. Depending on how the upcoming peace negotiations go, Trump may actually prove to be even more hawkish than Biden on Ukraine since he has indicated that the aid will continue. In any case, the outgoing administration has played a key role in Ukraine’s survival until now, as well as general security throughout Europe amid increased Russian aggression. Biden’s Europe policy gets an A, which was easily his strongest area over the last four years.
Iran: This Politico article by Nahal Toosi sums up Biden’s Iran strategy accurately — he didn’t have one. While Trump showed the regime in Tehran that the U.S. would not tolerate their sponsorship of terrorism throughout the Middle East, the Biden administration unfroze $6 billion in assets which undoubtedly only helped the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah. The existing sanctions continued, but Iran continued to embolden terrorist groups with Washington seemingly doing very little to really stop them. On that front, it’s the Israel Defense Force which deserves credit for doing the hard work over the last four years in destroying Iran’s proxies.
Iran is a complicated problem for sure, but kicking the can down the road is not a foreign policy. Biden gets a D.
Israel/Gaza: I’m going to somewhat stick up for Biden with how he handled the Israel-Gaza conflict. I’ve already outlined my position on the issue here and have always been open with my support of Zionism despite not being Jewish myself. Hamas is one of the worst terrorist organizations currently operating in the world and they are directly responsible for the deaths of Palestinians. I find it utterly disgusting how much the pro-Palestine crowd across the Anglosphere ignores this fact and carries water for a gang of totalitarian theocratic fascists, but that’s been an issue between the West and radical Islam for years.
As with Taiwan and Ukraine, the Biden admin was a stalwart ally of Israel and gave the country important military aid to bolster its defenses. While Benjamin Netanyahu is hardly the most ideal man to be in charge, it is unlikely that any other prime minister would have acted much differently after the unspeakable carnage of Oct. 7, 2023. What will happen next is obviously an ongoing development that changes week to week, but as of this writing talks are currently underway between Israel and Hamas for a temporary ceasefire. This could only have happened thanks to decisive IDF victories, and the Biden admin’s support of Israel was not nothing throughout all of this. Trump too has a long history of support for Israel, so I don’t expect that to waver during his second term. Biden gets a B here.
Japan: Biden, my man, what the hell are you thinking? You started off so well by maintaining strong U.S.-Japan relations at the beginning of your term, but then had to throw all of that away in the last days of your tenure by blocking Nippon Steel’s plan to purchase U.S. steel. As outlined in this article from The Free Press, the vast majority of steelworkers from my birthplace of Pittsburgh supported this deal because it would have guaranteed them job security amid their struggling industry, resulted in better pay, and was set to be a mutual win-win for both the American and Japanese economies.
If this hadn’t happened, I was ready to give Biden a standard B+ grade for foreign policy with Japan because it’s usually quite hard for any administration either Democrat or Republican to make things tangibly worse. Washington continued its strong military alliance with Tokyo and consistently showed China it was not playing around, but the Nippon Steel affair is a colossal screw-up that could have been completely avoided. I have no choice but to lower my grade to C+ for such a bone-headed move and I never thought Rahm Emanuel was a good choice for ambassador.
The Korean Peninsula: In contrast to Trump’s (albeit very flawed) direct approach to addressing North Korea, the Biden administration essentially treated it as a back burner issue in contrast to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. There were new sanctions sure, but the Kim regime spent the last four years expanding its nuclear arsenal. To be fair to Biden, the DPRK was never going to denuclearize under Trump admin either and Washington should abandon any such hopes moving forward. Presumptive Secretary of State Marco Rubio has more or less acknowledged this. The best case scenario is measured arms control instead of the complete eradication of nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula, but that too is unlikely for the foreseeable future for as long as diplomacy with North Korea is put on ice.
In terms of tangible regional policy, Biden’s focus on existing partnerships resulted in arguably the best period for the trilateral quasi-alliance between the U.S., Japan, and South Korea seen in years. It helped that former Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and (very likely soon to be ex-) ROK President Yoon Suk-yeol were more cooperative than previous leaders, but it took the U.S. to bring it all together. Some may call the Camp David Joint Statement a mere formality, but getting all three sides to be on the same page with security issues is harder than most think. Unfortunately, the changing political situation in Japan and South Korea, as well as Trump’s own personality, brings the future of this agreement into question. Within the context of when it was produced though, the Biden administration deserves full praise. I award his Korean Peninsula policy a B grade.
Overall: Here’s the Foreign Perspective report card for the foreign policy of Joseph Robinette Biden from 2021 to 2024:
Afghanistan: F
China/Taiwan: B+
Europe: A
Iran: D
Israel/Gaza: B
Japan: C+
The Korean Peninsula: B
Averaged out, that’s roughly a C grade for Biden’s foreign policy overall. I’ll admit, that’s lower than where I thought it would end up. Afghanistan and Iran were his worst areas, while Japan should have been an easy win that he foolishly threw away at the eleventh hour. On the other hand, I think the Biden admin made reasonably good moves when it came to China, Israel, and the Korean Peninsula within the limitations that existed. The best foreign policy success was easily the aid to Ukraine and it will go down in history as one of his most important achievements.
Biden’s long history in foreign affairs proved to be an asset with him maintaining or expanding relationships with key U.S. allies. How the Trump administration deals with issues like Ukraine and Taiwan moving forward, however, will determine the future of these alliances. As common wisdom generally goes, one could largely predict what moves Biden would take, but Trump is a wild card who talks a big game but can act very differently. I only hope that “peace through strength” will be more than just a campaign slogan. Join me in four years time to find out.
COVID in Japan, five years on
Last Wednesday marked the fifth anniversary of Japan’s first COVID-19 case. Apart from the fact that I cannot believe that half a decade has already passed since the start of the pandemic, it reminded me how much my own life in this country has been since then. This week, I thought I’d use this space to provide some brief reflections on my experiences with the pandemic in Japan and discuss how the government addressed it.
Knock on wood, but I’ve so far been lucky to not have contracted the virus. Perhaps it’s my habit going back to childhood to wash my hands multiple times a day or perhaps it was just dumb luck. Either way, my wife and I were able to get through the pandemic without any serious health issues. We were both vaccinated twice and received cash stimulus payments from the government like millions of other Japan residents. While over 100,000 people are reported to have died from COVID-related causes here, that number should be put into context against the over 1.2 million people who died in the United States. When one considers Japan’s famously aged population, it’s extraordinary that the number was not orders of magnitude higher.
It’s easy to forget now, but the discourse around how Japan handled the pandemic lead to some truly unhinged takes from both outside observers and foreigners living in the country with an existing chip on their shoulder. Japan having a far lower death toll compared to other countries had conspiracy theorists alleging that the government was “hiding the bodies,” as my Bloomberg contributor friend Gearoid Reidy likes to repeatedly make fun of. Others accused Japan of xenophobia for locking its borders to foreigners, even though Australia took far more draconian measures, going as far as banning its own citizens from re-entering the country.
Japan did not enact mandatory lockdowns. Individual businesses were simply asked to close earlier amid a declared state of emergency and pay a fine if they chose to stay open longer. Some places took advantage of the situation by becoming the only game in town, leading to an increase in profits that greatly outweighed whatever penalty they owed. Japan did not make masks mandatory either. It was down to one’s own individual choice, but the majority ended up masking anyway due to the country’s long existing history of covering up when being sick. I personally thought most of this was security theater as wearing a mask when walking outside or exercising at a gym is mostly pointless, but then again living in Japan means accepting arbitrary rules that only exist as formalities.
While there were a minority of anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists, most Japanese people treated them like the cranks they were. Unlike in the Anglosphere, vaccines and masks were not culture war issues that tore at the fabric of society. Given the fact that Japan is already a culture that emphasizes cleanliness and generally isn’t touchy-feely, the mechanisms were already in place for this country to be prepared to handle a pandemic better than most. To be sure there were still the same concerns over the development of children’s social skills and to what extent places should stay closed, but Japan in 2025 has returned to pre-pandemic life largely unscathed.
I was lucky to have been in Japan before the borders closed to tourists. There was a brief period early in the pandemic when even permanent foreign residents were banned from re-entry, but this was reversed by Sept. 2020. From that point onward, one could freely leave and return to Japan provided that one’s paperwork and PCR tests were in order. I had to do this multiple times and while it was a headache to do, especially when I had to visit my father in the United States before he passed away of cancer, nothing that was being asked was particularly unreasonable.
While I can empathize with foreign students and others who intended to move to Japan for work or study, only to have to cancel those plans, the pandemic was a once-in-a-century kind of rare event that necessitated temporary changes to border policies and international travel. In hindsight we can look at what strategies were more effective than others, but by the end Japan was able to keep fatalities to a minimum while maintaining as much normalcy as could be expected given the circumstances. Throughout that time, tourism was not a priority and restricting who could enter the country from abroad was the right call. Keep in mind that the 2020 Olympics were held the following year and despite foreign media hysteria of it being a “super spreader event,” nothing of the sort happened.
To recap, Japan’s success with handling the pandemic comes down to several things. Society here is not divided enough for people to engage in culture wars over masks and vaccines. The majority followed the government guidelines while consideration for surrounding people’s well-being is something already inherent to existing practices like mask-wearing. That kind of mentality is anathema to many of the red states in America where fierce individuality and questioning of authority are cultural parts of life. On the other hand, strict border policies that Western progressives would call “xenophobic” were entirely reasonable and lead to a significant reduction in risk of the virus being imported from abroad. Japan was singled out for temporarily suspending tourism and new immigration visas, yet Australia is a “success” even though it employed even stricter policies in those areas.
Despite whatever screeching you may have heard from Western commentators decrying Japan as some kind of xenophobic dystopian hellhole (though they do that normally anyways), I’m glad that I spent the pandemic in a country where my life largely carried on without any huge impacts to my personal freedoms. Whatever inconveniences I encountered were always going to be temporary and it was nothing compared to what much of the Anglosphere had to go through. Many assumed that Japan would have the most severe COVID-19 policies given its tendency to be a rule-based culture, but that wasn’t the case. Existing societal pressure and norms were enough to get people through the pandemic, and now everyone has moved on with the rest of the world.
What I’m watching — How Stanley Kubrick developed his auteur style in the 1960s
As I wrote in my Bonus Perspectives column last week, I’m currently in the middle of a rewatch of Stanley Kubrick’s filmography. I covered his early period and now I’m moving on to his output of the 1960s. This is where most people start when it comes to Kubrick’s work, likely because it was the era when his distinct auteur style really became noticeable.
Spartacus released in 1960 marked what was Kubrick’s last conventional work. It stands out amid the rest of his filmography because of how relatively straightforward it is and due to the fact that he wasn’t supposed to even direct the picture. I’m not surprised that David Lean was originally considered, as Spartacus is much closer to something like Lawrence of Arabia than it is to the more cerebral films Kubrick would later become known for. I’m also not surprised that Kubrick later disowned the film as he did not have complete creative control over its narrative. Kubrick was hoping that he could explore more of the psychology of the titular character, but that was not what the studio executives were looking for with an epic action movie at the time.
That isn’t to say that Spartacus is a failure. Amid other “sword and sandal” epics of its era, Spartacus holds up as one of the best. The scale is incredible, the visuals are immaculate (especially via the 4K UHD Blu-ray put out a few years ago), it has a beautiful score, and the cast starring the likes of Kirk Douglas and Laurence Olivier makes the story compelling. The biggest issue is that one can tell Kubrick was just not as personally invested compared to other projects where he controlled every aspect of the production. If one of your lesser achievements in retrospect is something like Spartacus though, that just speaks volumes about your overall legacy. Most directors would kill to have had something like Spartacus under their belts, but Kubrick wanted to challenge himself beyond typical Hollywood standards.
Lolita, based on the novel by Vladimir Nabokov, certainly tried to be different than anything else at the time. Owing to the controversial subject matter of a man in his mid-thirties being sexually obsessed with a teenage girl, the film’s marketing made that a selling point by repeatedly asking, “How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?” Well, the answer is that Kubrick kinda sorta didn’t. Yes, the skeleton of Nabokov’s work is still there, but there was never going to be a book-accurate version of Lolita released in 1962. In that sense, Kubrick deserves credit for transforming odious content into a slickly-made film that walks the finest line between good and bad taste.
The novel’s most compelling aspect was that it was told from the first-person viewpoint of its protagonist. The unreliable narration meant that we could only see the world from his eyes, which included how Lolita herself was depicted. Film is a more “objective” media by design and given the content restrictions he was facing, Kubrick’s Lolita is closer to a black comedy that strays away from the darker psychological themes of Nabokov. That’s evident by the emphasis on Peter Sellers, whose character Quilty played a far smaller role in the book. Being a Kubrick film, Lolita is beautifully shot and well-paced. It’s still worth watching, but given how even *more* contentious the novel is in today’s world, I think most are going to have trouble getting through it.
The rest of Kubrick’s filmography from here is more or less smooth sailing. Rounding off the 1960s are Dr. Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey. What do I even need to say about them that hasn’t been said already? The former is one of the greatest political satires ever made and it continues to stand the test of time as the threat of nuclear warfare has only increased in the ensuing decades. The latter, like Citizen Kane and Casablanca, is firmly in the canon of movies everyone from film school students to Letterboxd reviewers have to see. Watching 2001 in 2025 is inevitably going to be a challenging experience for modern audiences who are used to everything being explained to them, but I still can’t recommend it enough. Put aside an afternoon, turn your phone off so it isn't a distraction, and just absorb 2001: A Space Odyssey in all its slow burn glory. People have been endlessly debating it since 1968, so whether you end up liking it or not, consider it the first step toward repairing your destroyed attention span and getting into a larger world of more contemplative cinema.
Join me in two weeks when I conclude this Stanley Kubrick retrospective by looking at his final works.
What I’m reading/listening to — Stephen Fry’s wonderful Harry Potter audiobooks
And now to contradict what I just wrote in the last paragraph, sometimes you need to take a break from deep films and depressing geopolitics. Going back to the likes of Harry Potter is the perfect opportunity to lose yourself in fantastical worlds just for the sake of pure fun, which is what I’ve recently been doing via the audiobooks of the series narrated by the legendary Stephen Fry. I’ve always been a fan of the erudite British actor, comedian, and writer, but watching Blackadder and A Bit of Fry & Laurie for the first time over the last couple of years has really cemented my appreciation for his incredible talent. Reminds me that I need to get into P. G. Wodehouse and Jeeves and Wooster eventually, but that’s a column for another time.
Back to Harry Potter though. J.K. Rowling’s best-selling franchise has gone through considerable ups and downs since its inception in 1997. Being born in the same year Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone debuted in bookstores across the world, the novels and film adaptations were staples of my childhood. Of course, that isn’t saying anything new. Millions of people across the world grew up with Harry Potter and not just millennials either. While Rowling is no J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis, her penchant for accessible writing made her books a global sensation that continues to attract new readers even now.
Rowling choosing to dip her toes into contentious social issues has lead to a considerable backlash in the last few years, while fans largely decry derivative works like Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and the Fantastic Beasts spin-off films as inferior cash-grabs. I don’t think any of that takes away from what the original seven books achieved though. Returning to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone reminded me that Rowling, when she keeps things focused, is an incredible world-builder. Whether it’s your first time with the series or your dozenth like me, the universe of Harry Potter takes you in and compels you to want to learn more.
Hogwarts both in the books and the films fully grabbed my youthful imagination as a child. The story appropriately starts off with a tone of innocence, only to grow darker over time with the increasingly difficult challenges faced by our heroes. As Harry and his friends grew up through each year of school, so did I with my own path in life. Revisiting all of this as an adult has only increased my appreciation for what Rowling set out to do, and this time I was more aware of her subtle critiques of British class discrimination with the series’ ongoing conflict between Muggles and magical people.
As a longtime audiobook aficionado, I can tell you that a bad narrator will completely ruin the best of books. Yet Stephen Fry’s gentle delivery, superb skills with accents, and delightful cadence all make the Harry Potter audiobooks must-listens. His narration reminded me of a parent telling their child a bedtime story and it only enhances Rowling’s original text instead of taking away from it. Fry has a knack for character voices, with his Dumbledore and Hagrid impressions being particularly impressive. Even with the announcement that the Harry Potter series will be receiving new audiobooks with a full cast, music, and sound effects later this year, the Stephen Fry ones will continue to occupy a special place in my heart.
Americans will be more familiar with the audiobooks narrated by Jim Dale which were produced for U.S. audiences. While I’ve heard good things about them, my love for Fry’s work and Harry Potter being a British book series made the choice obvious for me. I already had the U.K. audiobooks on my hard drive for quite some time due, but they’re now finally available officially in the U.S. via Audible. Having breezed through Philosopher’s Stone in less than a week, I’m already on Chamber of Secrets and look forward to getting through the rest.
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Curious about the Nippon steel thing, I have only heard it mentioned recently and most people don't refer to the context of the story.
"Under the Trump admin, I hope for some level of continuity that will promote American interests abroad and maintain important alliances." so about that.. Im looking forward to your coverage of current events.