Biden said “America is Back” in June. The World Will Be Tested


WASHINGTON – President Biden met with world leaders In a British seaside resort in June, it was an upside-down celebration of America’s return to diplomatic stability after a four-year hiatus. public locker and impulsive policy pullbacks Under President Donald J. Trump.

“America is back on the table,” Mr. Biden said at that meeting at the Group of 7 summit.

In the turbulent four months since then, the President has realized that not being Mr. Trump is not enough to fulfill his ambitions at home or abroad.

In his last public address before leaving Washington for the Group of 20 meeting in Rome this weekend, Mr. Biden was still struggling to unite the Democrats behind a $1.85 trillion economic and environmental spending plan. That plan included more than $500 billion to tackle global warming, which he hopes to use as leverage to secure commitments from other leaders as he attends a climate summit in Scotland early next week.

“This is about expanding the opportunity, not rejecting it,” Mr Biden said on Thursday. “It’s about leading the world. We let the world pass us by.”

Biden, often referring to his skills as a negotiator and decades of foreign policy experience, will seek commitments from foreign leaders to combat the pandemic, untie the knots in the supply chain and slow the rise of inflation worldwide. It will also try to counter criticism of the chaotic withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan in August and to settle the dispute with France over a nuclear submarine deal.

“I still think the president has a tremendous amount of fundamental goodwill in Europe,” said Ian Lesser, acting president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Despite Latest poll from Gallup “The fact that Biden is not Trump does not make it easier for all policy issues to be addressed,” Lesser said.

Mr. Biden will begin his mission in Rome by visiting Pope Francis, but after that, diplomacy is on the agenda. He will meet with Italian president Sergio Mattarella and prime minister Mario Draghi and will have another meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on the same day. Prioritizing France is a sign that Mr Biden is trying to placate them after the US has reached a deal to supply Australia with nuclear submarines – effectively cutting France off from its multibillion-dollar submarine deal with Australia.

The President will not meet with two rival leaders (Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping), who stayed home from the conference due to Covid concerns.

Prior to the trip, Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, dismissed the notion that Mr Biden would have a lesser leadership role at the two summits if he traveled to Europe without a signed economic and environmental spending agreement. Big infrastructure bill pending in Congress.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on his way to Rome on Thursday, Mr. Sullivan said Mr Biden will unveil his plans to modernize stockpiles and “build flexible supply chains”. He said another key focus at the G20 will be securing a statement that will outline a plan to protect the world against future pandemics.

“What the G20 will focus on is the future,” Sullivan said. “How can we prevent a future epidemic? How can we get the world coordinated in a way that wasn’t coordinated enough when Covid-19 hit last year?”

And Mr. Sullivan said the president saw the absence of Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi not as an obstacle to coordination, but as an opportunity to show that Western democracies can work together to resolve current and future threats. On Saturday, Mr Biden’s first major meeting of the summit will focus on economic policy and the pandemic, followed by a meeting with the leaders of France, Germany and the UK, 2015 nuclear deal with Iran back on trackBiden’s most difficult diplomatic targets since assuming the presidency.

Gita Gopinath, chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, said the most pressing economic task for leaders at the G20 summit is to slow the pandemic – largely by fulfilling promises to send vaccine doses to less wealthy countries. that remains critical to supply chains and the global economy, but struggling to access the draws.

“To truly end this health crisis and the economic crisis that comes with it, we need to have access to widespread vaccines around the world,” said Ms. Gopinath.

Mr. Biden’s advisers said he was confident in at least one economic policy victory from the conference: global agreement to set minimum corporate taxIt aimed to prevent companies from protecting their income in tax havens like Bermuda.

Mr. Biden’s softer diplomacy skills will be tested when he meets with Mr. Macron hours after he arrives in Rome. In September, Mr. Biden’s administration caused a diplomatic fight A deal with the French that frustrates a $66 billion French project to build attack submarines, after notifying them of the agreement to sell the nuclear-powered submarines to Australia.

The agreement, announced as part of a new defense alliance with Britain and Australia, infuriated the French so much that Mr Macron recalled his country’s ambassador to the United States, Philippe Étienne, for several days. including US officials. Anthony J. BlinkenThe Foreign Minister flocked to France to repair the damage. Vice President Kamala Harris will be in Paris in November.

Celia Belin, a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution Center for the United States and Europe, said in an interview that the Biden administration seemed to have forgotten the “art of tasteful diplomacy.”

Since the explosion, Mr. Macron has spoken openly about the need for European nations to practice so-called strategic autonomy; This is a policy that will mean that countries like France will increasingly rely less on the United States for military aid. Ms. Belin said that as the summit begins, Europeans will watch with interest whether Mr. Biden supports such an initiative.

Mr. Biden is also expected to address at least one more difficult diplomatic relationship while abroad. Recently, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Threatened to recall his ambassador Many embassies, including America’s, have traveled to the United States after calling for the release of an imprisoned activist.

Mr Sullivan, national security adviser, said he predicted that Mr Biden would meet with Mr Erdogan in Scotland.



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