WASHINGTON (AP) – A new old ritual is taking shape at the White House in Biden, starting with bulky information packs, “what if” war games and discussions in the Oval Office on how to speak to this or that particular Ally or US opponent.
Twelve times since taking office, President Joe Biden called a world leader after reinstating what was an old White House standard that Donald Trump defused: vigorous preparation. The unnecessary tours and exaggerated flattery or harangues of other heads of state are gone.
Changes in telephone diplomacy they were about style and substance, as Biden sought to send the message to foreign leaders – many of them embittered by Trump’s habit of reprimanding his colleagues and confusing personal interests with the national security of the United States – that Biden is determined to restart the United States relationship. with the world.
“They came up with the idea that they need to manage alliances very well right away,” said Matthew Goodman, who served on the White House National Security Council team during the Barack Obama and George W. Bush administrations. “It is a principle of central organization, as they seek to turn Trump’s page and put alliances back on track. Call preparation is part of that. “
Biden foreign policy ultimately, you will be judged by the results, rather than the form or preparation. But his approach so far is a marked shift from Trump, who seemed to have a better relationship with autocrats like Vladimir Putin from Russia and Kim Jong Un from North Korea than with many historic U.S. allies. The former president often strayed from telephone conversation points and advice from his advisers to his dialogue with world leaders.
Transcripts of leaked conversations showed that days after his administration, Trump was ready for diplomatic subtleties and intimidated Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto against saying publicly that Mexico would never pay for a wall on the southern border, a call characteristic of the president’s 2016 campaign. Trump also complained to Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull that he was forcing Trump to endure the “most unpleasant appeal” and was “worse than me” for detaining refugees on small islands off Australia.
Most notably, the Republican president’s phone call in 2019 with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy led to Trump’s impeachment after it was revealed that Trump had asked him to “do us a favor” and investigate the activity of Biden and his son Hunter in the country.
As was the practice in previous administrations, Biden counselors usually prepare the president before calls with a written information packet, including summaries of recent developments in the country, a recap of previous interactions with the leader, discussion points on issues to highlight , as well as “if requested” notes to help shape the president’s response to sensitive issues that his counterpart might raise.
Trump’s advisers realized early on that the president had little patience to summarize material or topics for discussion. At first, they offered him a six-page pre-brief with attachments before the calls, but it ended up being too long. So they made a one-page version. Later, Trump received note cards that normally contained only three talking points.
“It didn’t matter the details of every word in a memo, because communicating the right message on behalf of the United States didn’t matter to the president,” said Frances Brown, who served as a senior adviser to the National Security Council in the Trump and Obama administrations. “For an NSC employee, this caused a bit of an existential crisis.”
Last week, Biden called Xi Jinping from China for a two-hour conversation in which he raised concerns about human rights abuses and unfair commercial practices. Previously, in a liaison with Putin, Biden condemned the arrest of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and pressured Putin on his country’s involvement in a vast cyber espionage campaign in the United States
Before both calls, senior Biden government officials predicted for reporters what the president planned to say, a move designed to help prevent potential efforts by Beijing and Moscow to control public messages about the talks.
Biden’s first call as president was for Justin Trudeau of Canada, the prime minister that Trump once discredited as “very dishonest and weak”.
For Biden, the conversation with Trudeau was partly difficult and partly easy. Biden explained his decision to stop building the Keystone XL pipeline, a Canada-US project supported by Trudeau. Biden also recalled his late first wife’s family ties to Toronto and his own visit to Ottawa in 2016, when Trudeau honored him with an official dinner.
The two leaders discussed the coronavirus pandemic, the economy and two Canadians imprisoned in China in apparent retaliation for the Canadian arrest of a top Huawei executive, according to Canadian officials.
A senior Canadian official familiar with the call said Biden seemed well prepared for the half-hour conversation and noted that it lasted longer than any call from the Prime Minister to Trump.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has spent years flattering and courting Trump, said in an interview on Sunday with CBS on “Face the Nation” that his conversation with Biden was “fantastic” and they talked about issues like climate change, NATO, Iran and more.
The White House has notably published an official photo of Biden’s meeting in the Oval Office with national security adviser Jake Sullivan and senior director of European affairs for the NSC, Amanda Sloat, as he prepared for his recent liaison with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
James Carafano, a national security analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that Biden, in his first round of calls, has been mainly concerned with sending the message that he turned the page on Trump. But Carafano argues that the new president has avoided in detail what this means, in substance, for US foreign policy.
“He did not go beyond what we are going to work on with the theme of friends and allies,” said Carafano.
Biden made clear his desire to return to diplomacy after Trump withdrew from the Obama-backed international nuclear deal with Iran.
Across the world, considerable attention is also being paid to countries that have not yet joined the Biden call list.
The new president has not yet spoken to Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who had a close relationship with Trump, even when the US and Turkey were at odds over a number of issues, including Syrian politics and Turkey’s decision to buy the Russia’s advanced anti-aircraft missile systems. The latter led Washington to expel Turkey from its F-35 stealth fighter program.
Biden in the election campaign called Erdogan an autocrat and, as vice president, was forced to offer an official apology in 2014, after suggesting that Turkey played a role in the rise of the Islamic State group.
Former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, on Wednesday he tweeted a list of 10 countries he said had received calls from Biden. “Is it now time to call the leader of #Israel, the closest ally of the #US?” Danon posted.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said nothing should be interpreted about the lack of calls so far. “It is not an intentional dissent,” she said, and promised that a call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would come.
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Gillies reported from Toronto.