Biden Attempts to Reclaim American Leadership and His Own Leadership


GLASGOW – The main goal of President Biden’s second overseas trip since taking office was to reassert America’s ability to lead the world on climate change before it’s too late. But he also wanted to reintroduce Joe Biden.

From the moment he landed in Rome for a Group of 20 meeting on Friday and then went to the climate summit in Glasgow, Mr. Biden has taken on the role of a traveling salesman, boasting of the back-slapping, personalized policies he believes he has done. He is a strong negotiator and can turn into an important deal.

“The way you look someone in the eye while trying to do something never ceases to amaze me,” Mr. Biden said. said At a press conference in Rome. “They know me. I know them. We can get things done together.”

Mr. Biden took some wins to Washington with him on Tuesday night. a new global minimum tax as well as climate agreements for companies reduce methane emissions – an agreement that his management says is its “fundamental commitment” – and deforestation. But if these deals were significant, they were largely finalized before his trip.

Faced with a lack of consensus among world leaders on how to move forward globally and the climate agenda hanging in the balance at home in Congress, Mr. Biden’s time in Glasgow has revealed the fact that his preferred personal style has yet to help. closes the gap between his ambition and his achievement.

“He likes the personal side of personal diplomacy” said Richard Haass, a former senior State Department and national security official and currently chair of the Council on Foreign Relations. “In my view, it exaggerates its impact. All the glamor of the world isn’t going to surround Brazil in the rainforest, or Australia with coal, or China or Russia with many things.

“Diplomacy only takes him so far.”

Two of the world’s largest producers of greenhouse gas emissions in Glasgow, China and Russia, sent negotiating teams to the conference known as the COP, but not their leaders. Chinese President Xi Jinping by simply sending a written statement, he promised that his country would “continue to prioritize ecological conservation and pursue a green and low-carbon path for development”.

Dozens of other heads of state have made introductory statements on keeping the shared climate goals alive, but have offered competing ideas on how to do it.

“There’s just no consensus,” Haass added, adding that “the United States can’t just hit the table and insist on one.”

At a farewell press conference, Mr. Biden said he thought it was a “big mistake” for China not to attend the conference, while again trying to defend American leadership. “They’ve lost their ability to influence people around the world and people here at the COP,” said Mr Biden.

He said he’s open to playing the long game when it comes to convincing China to come to the table: He said he and Mr. Xi have had a new relationship at least since his tenure as vice president, and they’ve spoken “on the phone at least since January.” five or six hours.

But he was also fundamentally optimistic about the ability of democracies to work together. Mr. Biden spent most of his time in Glasgow telegraphing that with the power he had, he was doing everything he could, either through executive action or by restoring the kind of environmental regulation that had been gutted under Trump.

“We’re all on the same team with basically the same issues,” he told his allies, including British prime minister Boris Johnson and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, at a US-sponsored global meeting. infrastructure initiative. “Democracy is still the best way to bring results.”

But the limits of these results can sometimes be very clear: Organizers are at a meeting on the new global agreement to limit methane emissions. a map It shows the 90 countries that signed the agreement in blue. Still, some of the world’s biggest emitters, including China, Russia, and India, have emerged as large white spaces as they haven’t signed on yet.

Mr. Biden’s strategy was to take the absence of Mr. Xi and another rival, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, as an opportunity to prove that the world’s democracies could succeed. Earlier on the trip, national security adviser Jake Sullivan tried to increase the pressure on China by telling reporters on Air Force One on his way to Glasgow that China “must step into greater ambitions as we move forward.”

Chinese ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin soon reacted, demanding that the United States take more responsibility in reducing greenhouse gas pollution and provide more support to poor countries most affected by the consequences of global warming.

“In particular, the climate policies of the United States, which has been an important historical emitter, have continually turned upside down, fell and went backwards, and its own emissions peaked and only started to fall in recent years,” said Mr. Wang.

Yet under this fuss, the relationship with China remains the most critical going forward. Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi have not met in person since Mr. Biden took office, but they are expected to meet. hold a virtual meeting What officials said later this year could help the two men bond.

The summit here will run until November 12, and Mr. Biden’s is leaving behind a delegation that is helping to secure a delegation led by John Kerry. Paris climate agreement in 2015 as foreign minister and currently serves as the Administration’s climate ambassador. On Tuesday, Mr. Kerry said: new financial commitments awaited Fulfilling a long-delayed promise to provide $100 billion a year in aid to developing countries to combat and adapt to global warming, but it was unclear whether each country could deliver on its commitments.

Throughout the journey, confronted with depressing approval numbers at home, Mr. Biden seemed confident that the same measured approach he took abroad would eventually result in the adoption of two major bills pending in Washington: a $1.85 trillion social safety net measure followed by provisions for clean energy and Includes $1 trillion infrastructure bill.

California Democrat Representative Ro Khanna, who is working with the president to reshape the climate agenda, said in an interview that Mr. Biden told him ahead of his European trip that “American prestige” was at stake.

The president, Mr. Khanna, told him that “when meeting with foreign leaders, they talk about the benefits of autocracy and authoritarianism. He wants to be able to show that democracies can govern and do big things and do big things at an appropriate pace.”

Mr. Biden is keen to establish himself as a global leader of collective action on climate policy. That’s a very different way from the Trump administration’s approach, which rolled back more than 100 environmental protection rules, and according to some experts, accelerated the effects of climate change.

“The first thing to do is to stop the bleeding,” he said. Leah Stokes, an associate professor University of California, Santa Barbaraworking on climate and the environment and advising Senate Democrats on how to create legislation. “The next thing to do is make progress, get back to the starting line and start moving in the right direction.”

The progress Mr. Biden had hoped for was stalled by Democratic infighting in Congress. The climate-focused measure has been scaled down from its most comprehensive form, largely because West Virginia Democrat Senator Joe Manchin III and one of two members of the party. Opponents of the spending package said they would not vote for the package until they knew more about the plan.

But if Mr. Biden can secure the transition, the $555 billion bill to tackle climate change, largely through tax incentives for low-emission energy sources, will be the most ambitious plan ever adopted by the United States.

Mr Manchin’s reluctance does not seem to have softened Mr Biden’s optimism about having votes to pass his agenda in both houses of Congress, whose agenda he expects no Republicans to support.

“I believe Joe will be there,” said Mr. Biden, referring to Mr. Manchin. “I think we can achieve this”

Chris Buckley contributed reporting from Sydney and Somini Sengupta of Glasgow.





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