WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden used his first speech before a global audience on Friday to declare that “America is back, the transatlantic alliance is back”, after four years of a Trump administration that displayed its policy external through an “America First” lens.
Speaking virtually at the annual Munich Security Conference, Biden made a daunting list of things to do – save the nuclear deal with Iran, address the economic and security challenges posed by China and Russia and repair the damage caused by the pandemic of the coronavirus – which he said would require close cooperation between the US and its western allies.
Without mentioning Donald Trump’s name once in his speech, Biden mixed the conversation of an invigorated democratic alliance with a rebuke to his predecessor’s approach, a message warmly received by Western allies.
“I know that the past few years have damaged and tested the transatlantic relationship,” said Biden. “The United States is determined to engage again with Europe, to consult with them, to regain our position as a trusted leader.”
The president also participated on Friday in a virtual meeting of the Group of Seven industrialized nations, where the leaders managed to work on the theme of the Biden campaign in their joint closing statement, promising “to work together to win COVID-19 and rebuild better ”.
“Welcome back, America,” said European Council President Charles Michel, effectively summarizing the climate of the Munich conference.
But while this happy conversation conveyed a palpable sense of relief among the allies with Biden’s total commitment to fixing relations between the United States and Europe, much has changed in the past four years, creating new challenges.
China has consolidated its position as a fierce economic competitor on the continent, as the United States reconsidered national security and the long-standing economic priorities embodied in the transatlantic alliance. Populism grew in much of Europe. And other Western countries have, at times, sought to fill the vacuum left when the United States moved away 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 less of an existential threat than the United States and has its own strategic and economic concerns that are not always in sync with Biden in Russia.
Still, 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 they did two years ago, and it has a lot to do with Joe Biden becoming the president of the United States of America,” said Merkel. “His speech now, but also the first announcements from his government, convinced us that it is not just about conversation, but about action.”
Biden made his speech to a global audience while his government took steps this week to reverse key policies of the Trump administration.
He said the United States is ready to return to negotiations on the reintegration into the 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement with Iran. abandoned by the Trump administration. The Biden government announced on Thursday its desire to reengage Iran and took steps at the United Nations to restore the policy to what it was before Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018..
Biden also spoke about the two-decade war in Afghanistan, where he faces a May 1 deadline to remove the remaining 2,500 US troops under a Trump-negotiated peace deal with the Taliban.. He also called for cooperation to address the economic and national security challenges posed by Russia and China and identified cyberspace, artificial intelligence and biotechnology as areas of increasing competition.
“We must prepare together for a long-term strategic competition with China,” said Biden.
His message was girded by an underlying argument that democracies – not autocracies – are models of governance that can better meet the challenges of the moment. The president urged other world leaders to show together that “democracies can still deliver”.
At the G-7, government officials said, Biden focused on what lies ahead for the international community while trying to extinguish public health and economic crises created by the coronavirus pandemic.. He announced that the U.S. will soon begin to release $ 4 billion for an international effort to strengthen the purchase and distribution of vaccines to poor nations, a program that Trump refused to support.
Biden’s turn on the world stage came when the United States officially re-joined the Paris climate agreement, the biggest international effort to curb global warming. Trump announced in June 2017 that he was withdrawing the U.S. from the historic deal, arguing that the pact would harm the American economy.
Biden announced the US intention to return on the first day of his presidency, but he had to wait 30 days for the change to take effect. He said he will include climate change considerations in all major domestic and foreign policy decisions his government faces.
“This is a global existential crisis,” said Biden.
Biden also encouraged G-7 partners to keep their promises to COVAX, an initiative by the World Health Organization to improve access to vaccines, even as he reopens the U.S. tap.
Trump withdrew the U.S. from 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 dealing with the virus at the beginning of the public health crisis that undid a strong American economy.
Biden called for greater international cooperation in vaccine distribution amid growing requests from his administration to distribute some supplies of vaccines manufactured in the United States abroad.
French President Emmanuel Macron called on the United States 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 implementing.
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 on ensuring that all Americans are vaccinated, government officials said. On Friday, Macron again pressured 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 quickly as possible,” he said.
The allies were listening carefully to what Biden had to say about an impending crisis with Iran.
Iran informed the International Atomic Energy Agency this week that it would suspend voluntary implementation next week of a clause in the 2015 agreement that allowed UN nuclear monitors to conduct inspections of undeclared sites in Iran in the short term, unless the US revoke sanctions by 23 February. .
“We now need to make sure that there is no problem with who takes the first step,” Merkel told reporters. “If everyone is convinced that we should give this agreement a try again, then we must find ways to make this agreement work again.”
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Associated Press writers Darlene Superville in Washington, Geir Moulson in Berlin and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.