US President Joe Biden in his first major international-themed speech after arriving at the White House on Friday highlighted his return to cooperation with Europe following the Donald Trump administration’s separatist turn. “The United States is back,” he announced at the Munich Security Conference, where he met with his European allies. Biden warned of the risks hovering over democracies. “In many places, including the United States and Europe, democratic progress is under attack,” he said, calling for China’s fight against “economic misconduct and coercion”.
Biden is an old acquaintance of this Munich forum, in which he participated as Vice President of the Barack Obama Administration (2009–2017) and before that, during his long career as a United States Senator. However, the speech he recalled on Friday was the one he recently delivered in 2019, when, along with leaders such as “East” and the head of government, Donald Trump, he promised: “The United States They Will Return , have no doubt “. Two years later, in a tone of satisfaction, the new president celebrated via videoconferencing: “I am a man of my word. The United States Has Returned ”.
The change of direction from Trump’s Biden era in foreign policy can be expressed in a few rounded phrases. Route of “America First” [América primeiro]Slogan of republic, for “America is back” [América está de volta], Which does not come out of the mouth of his Democratic successor. The reality is more complex. Washington has not yet removed the tariff that its predecessor had applied to European products and it differs in tone and strategy to follow in relation to Beijing and Moscow and identifies it as a serious totalitarian increase. Both views were mooted in Friday’s speech, the first addressed to an international audience since he assumed the presidency of the United States.
“The Transatlantic Alliance is back and we will not look back,” Biden told French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, two leaders who have been dazed by their fears about Trump and Europe in the recent four years. The United States, Biden insisted, is “fully committed” to NATO, an organ that Republicans despised. Democrats said, in fact, when the Alliance first resorted to Article 5, the one that calls for action if an allied party is attacked, it was in the 9/11 attacks against the United States . Biden also declared that the country is “determined to return to Europe.” This alliance, in his opinion, revolves around shared democratic values, and therefore should be transformed into a stronger hand in the face of authoritarian impulses that exist in different parts of the world.
“Democratic progress is under attack in many places including the United States and Europe,” he said. “Our cooperation has continued and developed over the years as it stems from the wealth of our shared democratic values. They are not going to do transactions or withdrawals, ”he said. The US president warned that this crisis and other structural challenges, as a result of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, put countries at an “inflection point” that believes “autocracy is the best way” which is a struggle to move forward And who, on the contrary, think that “democracy is the best way to face challenges”.
China holds a central place in the challenges the United States has identified. If Trump insists on trade imbalances, Biden unleashes aggression for rights and freedoms, but does not forget economic competition, which he considers unfair. Washington and Beijing are facing the toughest moment in their relations in recent decades, and this crisis, on many fronts, is beyond government change. “We must prepare together for a long-term strategic competition with China,” warned the current president on Friday, and continued.
Biden argues that a specific Cold War “East-West” bloc policy with the Xi Jinping regime should not disrupt policy or cooperation in important global crises such as coronoviruses or climate change. But his accent is not light when it comes to the Asian veteran. At the summit, he called for the retreat of “economic abuses and coercion by the Chinese government, which has weakened the foundations of the international economic system”. “Everyone should play under the same rules”, he insisted.
He also pointed to Moscow. “[Vladimir] Putin wants to end our transatlantic coalition because it is easier for the Kremlin to attack those countries and threaten to negotiate individually to combine countries together. “In this sense, he continued:” Russian leaders want people to think that our system is more corrupt, or corrupt like them, “he condemned,” but the world knows that this is not true, including Russia itself Citizens of. ” An hour earlier, he attended the G-7 summit, a forum to which Washington, still does not want to invite Moscow. The first multilateral meeting of the Biden era took place on the same day that his country was formally returned to the Paris Agreement. The US has changed, but its main front remains China and Russia.
