WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden used his first address in front of a global audience on Friday to declare that “America is back, the transatlantic alliance is back,” after four years of the Trump administration displaying its foreign policy through an America First objective.
Speaking at the Annual Security Conference in Munich, Biden ticked off a list of daunting tasks – rescuing the Iranian nuclear deal, meeting the economic and security challenges posed by China and Russia and repairing the damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic – which he said it requires close cooperation between the US and its Western allies.
Without mentioning Donald Trump’s name once in his speech, Biden mixed talks about an invigorated democratic alliance with a rebuke of his predecessor’s approach, a message warmly received by Western allies.
“I know that the last few years have strained and tested the transatlantic relationship,” Biden said. “The United States is committed to re-engaging in Europe, consulting with you and regaining our position of reliable leadership.”
The president also attended a virtual meeting of the Group of Seven Industrialized Countries on Friday, in which leaders managed to incorporate the theme of Biden’s campaign into their joint closing statement, vowing to “work together to defeat COVID-19 and to build better ”.
“Welcome back, America,” said European Council President Charles Michel, effectively summing up the mood of the Munich conference.
But while such a happy discussion has conveyed a palpable sense of relief among the Allies over Biden’s full commitment to remedying the disappointed US-Europe relationship, much has changed in the last four years in challenging ways.
China has strengthened its position as a fierce economic competitor on the continent, as the US has reconsidered national security and long-term economic priorities embedded in the transatlantic alliance. Populism has risen in much of Europe. Other Western countries are currently trying to fill the remaining void as America takes a step back from the world stage.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel noted that some differences between the US and Europe remain “complicated”. Europe sees China’s economic ambitions as a lesser existential threat than the US and has its own strategic and economic concerns that are not always in sync with Biden and Russia.
However, Merkel, who had a strained relationship with Trump, did not hide her preference for an American foreign policy, informed by Biden’s worldview.
“Things are looking much better for multilateralism this year than two years ago, and that has to do with the fact that Joe Biden has become the president of the United States,” Merkel said. “His speech right now, but also the first announcements of his administration, convinced us that it is not just about words, but about action.”
Biden addressed a global audience as his administration took steps this week to reverse the Trump administration’s key policies.
He said the United States is ready to join talks on re-entering Iran’s 2015 multilateral nuclear deal abandoned by the Trump administration. The Biden administration announced on Thursday its desire to re-engage Iran and has taken steps at the United Nations to restore policy to what it was before Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018.
Biden also spoke about the two-decade war in Afghanistan, where he faces a May 1 deadline to eliminate the remaining 2,500 U.S. troops in a peace deal negotiated with the Trump administration with the Taliban.. He also called for cooperation in addressing the economic and national security challenges posed by Russia and China and identified cyberspace, artificial intelligence and biotechnology as areas of increasing competition.
“We need to prepare together for long-term strategic competition with China,” Biden said.
His message was surrounded by a basic argument that democracies – not autocracies – are models of governance that can best meet the challenges of the moment. The president urged his fellow world leaders to show together that “democracies can still achieve results.”
At the G-7, administration officials said, Biden focused on what is expected of the international community as it tries to extinguish public health and the economic crises created by the coronavirus pandemic.. He announced that the United States would soon begin releasing $ 4 billion for an international effort to strengthen the purchase and distribution of the vaccine to poor countries, a program Trump has refused to support.
Biden’s turn on the world stage came when the United States officially met at the Paris climate agreement, the largest international effort to reduce global warming. Trump announced in June 2017 that he was removing the United States from the reference agreement, arguing that the pact would undermine the American economy.
Biden announced the US intention to join again on the first day of his presidency, but had to wait 30 days for the move to take effect. He said he would consider climate change issues in every major domestic and foreign policy decision facing his administration.
“This is a global existential crisis,” Biden said.
Biden also encouraged G-7 partners to live up to their commitments to COVAX, a World Health Organization initiative to improve access to vaccines, even as it reopens the US peak.
Trump withdrew the United States from the WHO and refused to join more than 190 countries in the COVAX program. The former Republican president accused the WHO of covering up China’s mistakes in treating the virus at the beginning of the public health crisis that revealed a strong US economy.
Biden has called for greater international cooperation in the distribution of vaccines, amid growing calls for his administration to distribute some US-made vaccine supplies abroad.
French President Emmanuel Macron has called on American and European nations to allocate up to 5% of current vaccine supplies to developing countries – the kind of vaccine diplomacy that China and Russia are already pursuing.
Biden, who announced last week that the United States will have enough vaccine by the end of July to inoculate 300 million people, remains focused for the time being on making sure every American is vaccinated, administration officials say. On Friday, Macron again pressed the US and Europe to do more.
“It is up to Europeans and Americans to allow all poor and emerging countries in the world to have access to vaccines as soon as possible,” he said.
The Allies were listening intently to what Biden would say about an approaching crisis with Iran.
Iran informed the International Atomic Energy Agency this week that it will suspend voluntary implementation next week of a provision in the 2015 agreement that allows UN nuclear monitors to conduct inspections of Iran’s undeclared sites shortly, unless the US cancels them. sanctions until February 23. .
“Now we have to make sure that there is no problem about who takes the first step,” Merkel told reporters. “If everyone is convinced that we should give this agreement a chance again, then ways should be found to set this agreement in motion again.”
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Associated Press writers Darlene Superville in Washington, Geir Moulson in Berlin, and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to the report.