Joe Biden, with almost 50 years of experience in Washington, kept promises to return to normalcy.
Washington:
After Donald Trump in his first week as president spoke with Australia’s prime minister, the call leaks left many dumbfounded, with the new American leader haranguing and hanging up on the close ally.
When Joe Biden spoke by phone on Thursday with Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the president-elect’s office said Biden looked forward to working with him on “many common challenges” and the Australian leader said he would submit a study on how his country fought COVID. -19. contact tracking.
After four years of presidential resentment and chronic chaos in dealing with foreign leaders, Biden has already signaled a change: He’s making American diplomacy predictable, even boring, again.
His transition office, which does not receive the usual assistance from the State Department as Trump refuses to concede the elections, is issuing the kind of soporific readings that until the 2016 elections were the main means of presidential communication in the United States.
With Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whom Trump ridiculed on Twitter after a summit as “very dishonest and weak,” a statement from Biden after a congratulatory phone call said the couple “reaffirmed the close ties between the United States and the United States. Canada “and promised cooperation against Covid-19 and future biological threats.
After his conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whom Trump had openly criticized for welcoming migrants, Biden “noted his interest in working closely” to address the pandemic, climate change and other issues and “praised her leadership. “.
The lack of drama in Biden’s approach is no surprise.
Biden, with nearly 50 years of experience in Washington, delivered on promises to return to normalcy, reviving the traditional decision-making process that involves expert inquiries rather than impulsive tweets.
In a campaign speech on foreign policy, Biden pointed to the steep decline in global respect for the United States under Trump and vowed to turn the page on “the chest blows, the self-inflicted setbacks and the fabricated crises of this administration.”
Priorities sign
Biden’s return to a more traditional diplomacy is more than a less blatant personal style.
He’s also signaling that he places a higher value on working with the world, said Monica Duffy Toft, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
“Trump likes to do things bilaterally and unilaterally. The big difference is that Biden respects and understands that sometimes it is necessary to work multilaterally,” he said.
“I think it will be less personal, less chaotic and much more by protocol, and obviously not by tweet,” he added.
She hoped Biden would revive the role of the State Department, derided by the ever-suspicious Trump as the “Deep State Department,” and steer clear of personal and family connections.
Autocratic leaders have assiduously sought unfiltered channels towards Trump, who dispensed with the usual note takers when he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and who was said to take phone calls made directly by his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan without any preparation. by his assistants.
Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has been put in charge of the Middle East and would chat on WhatsApp with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who can expect significantly more pressure on human rights from Biden.
“If you were one of those strongman countries, it would be easier. They knew they could somehow get Trump’s attention and get what they wanted,” Duffy Toft said.
“It might be good for that world leader, but it is very unsettling for other world leaders,” Toft said.
Biden is not always the polar opposite of Trump. Like the mogul, Biden likes to talk about how he has cultivated relationships with foreign leaders and speaks more the language of pragmatism than geopolitical grand strategy.
But it’s hard to imagine allies limiting access to talks with Biden for fear of embarrassing leaks, as Germany allegedly did with Trump’s calls.
As former President Barack Obama said in the Biden administration’s election campaign, “it just won’t be that exhausting.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated channel.)
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