For most diplomats around the world, Biden’s foreign policy motto “America is back” is no metaphor.
On global issues ranging from climate change, non-proliferation, to human rights, the Trump administration literally collected its papers and pens and left the meeting room. The victory in Biden’s election and the choice of internationalists committed to leading the foreign policy team means that there will really be someone who has been left empty-handed.
U.N. of the International Crisis Group. “There’s a lot of relief that we’ll have a more general U.S. to deal with,” said Director Richard Goa. “The hallmark of U.S. diplomacy over the last few years is that other countries have really struggled to get a clear picture of what U.S. policies are on issues like Libya or Yemen.”
Goa said one of the many clear winners on the world stage since Biden’s victory was UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who spent four years working with Donald Trump to stop the outgoing president from pulling the plug on US involvement. , And funding for UN agencies.
“There’s been a lot of talk now that Guterres is preparing to put a lot of big ideas into fighting inequality next year, accelerating the fight against climate change and really trying to get the UN back on the center of the global agenda.”
How universally chanted slogans like “America is back” around the world will inevitably be a test for what is supposed to be the “real America” that has been absent for the last four years.
In liberal democracies in Europe, the common hope and expectation from Biden’s language and conduct is that America’s restored re-establishment includes all the best features of the past – with an extra degree of modesty.
“There’s something different than what George W. Bush would have said, or what Obama would have said in the context,” said Konstanz Stelzenmaller, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in the US and Europe. . “And that means this is a different kind of America – not the rapist America First at any cost, but a very neat assessment of its options and power limits.”
U.S. for entrepreneurship in foreign support. The apparent lack of popular support for – which was effectively replaced by Trump – the failures in Libya, Yemen and Syria and the relative loss of power and prestige over the past four years, suggests that the country has returned to the world stage of a holy America.
“I think Obama could still assume that the United States has almost unlimited power, and therefore has paramount choices about international engagement, and about the way it deals with authoritarian rivals,” Stalzenmલller said. “I think the big difference with this administration will be the different understanding of local and foreign limitations. And it puts a whole new value on peers, and gives peers great power. ”
Some leaders and governments were clearly happy with America as was evident in the Trump era – nothing more than the kings of the Gulf and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They are now making common ground for trying to block U.S. pre-Trump policies, particularly the U.S. return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
“These rulers were very fond of the Trump administration for many different reasons,” said Khaled Elgindi, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “Obviously the attitude towards Iran is an issue, but the laziness-fire attitude towards human rights and the rule of law is also another reason that I think many of these authoritarians will lose, especially the Donald Trump era.”
It’s not just the world’s autocrats who are afraid of the “America is back” slogan. U.S. For some longtime critics of foreign policy, the very idea of a golden age, where the administration can flow back, is an illusion.
For these atheists, Biden’s foreign policy team, familiar faces of the Obama era, will rely heavily on whether to establish a reorganization or seek a fundamental reconsideration.
“I think the big question – given that Biden is basically putting the Obama band together – is there anything they’ve learned from the last eight years in power that haven’t been a huge success in many respects?” Asked Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School.
“Have they gained a greater understanding of reality about what American foreign policy can accomplish and what American power can do?”
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