US security provision under Joe Biden: A preliminary reconstruction of national strategy

Abstract

The article proposes a new understanding of the phenomenon of security as the desire of the state to achieve the most favourable trajectory of development under existing constraints. The concept of a favourable trajectory depends on objective factors and its subjective interpretations that are fixed in strategies and programs. In order to make these interpretations systematic and form a holistic model consisting of them, a new algorithm for strategical and program documents has been developed. According to the algorithm, every priority should be marked by code (or its combination) which corresponds to one of the subsystems of the global system and its component to create a database. The analysis of the database makes it possible to isolate problems whose relevance was artificially overestimated prior to elections, to forecast the directions of sequestration of their priorities, to determine the degree of continuity, to rank areas of the policy, to identify probable interconnections among them and to predict the foundations of a promising strategy. In regard to Biden’s program, the algorithm made it possible to achieve the following results. It was revealed that the program is more a succession to Trump’s strategy than innovative. The priority of the economic, social and financial spheres was artificially overestimated and the degree of their importance will be reduced after Biden’s inauguration. Economic, energy and legal spheres will be the cornerstones of Biden’s future strategy. Cyber, raw materials and technological subsystems will be assigned the role of drivers of development. Their successful functioning will be dependent on the dynamics of the military and agricultural sectors. In turn, demographic, trade, financial and credit, civil, humanitarian and cultural subsystems will acquire a more subordinate position and their role will be determined by the solution of specific issues. At the same time, it is difficult to determine the concrete positions and roles of future social and ecological policies because they had been overdeveloped or unclearly prioritized in the electoral program.