At the United Nations’ annual gathering of world leaders this week, President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke ambitiously about international cooperation and a new diplomatic approach for the post-Trump US.
But almost all of his diplomatic efforts at the United Nations General Assembly were under President Donald J. – and complicated – by Trump’s legacy.
In a call with President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday, Biden touted strained relations with France. Blinken met his French counterpart in New York on Thursday. But French officials have compared the Biden administration to Trump for failing to warn of a strategic deal with Britain and Australia, saying he pulled them out of a submarine contract.
In a fiery address to the global body on Wednesday, Iran’s President Ibrahim Raisi suggested there was little difference between Biden and his predecessor, raising their respective foreign policy slogans: “To the world ‘America First’ or ‘America Cares’.” Must be number 1. Is back.'”
And in response to the ambitious goals proposed by Biden in his own address to reduce global carbon emissions, an editorial in Beijing’s hard-line Global Times newspaper raised an all-too-familiar point for Biden officials: “If the next American The administration is again a Republican one, very likely to rescind promises made by Biden,” the paper wrote – a point the Iranians also made about a possible return to the 2015 nuclear deal that Trump abruptly withdrew.
At a news conference capping the week of diplomacy, Blinken offered a positive assessment. He said US officials met with counterparts from more than 60 countries and emphasized climate and US leadership coronavirus.
Asked about several recent criticisms of US foreign policy, such as the withdrawal of Afghanistan, stalling nuclear talks with Iran and diplomatic offenses in Paris, the secretary of state said she had not heard such complaints directly in New York this week. .
“I’ve been listening in response to the president’s speech over the past few days, the direction he’s taking us in was extremely positive and extremely supportive of the United States,” Blinken said.
He spoke before leaving a week-long diplomatic conference, backing a virtual United Nations program last year as a cautionary tale after the coronavirus pandemic.
Many foreign leaders, including the presidents of Russia, China and Iran, did not attend this year’s gathering. His absence halted last season’s drama about whether the President of the United States might have a sudden encounter with a foreign rival. Hours after his address on Tuesday, Biden made only a brief appearance.
In that speech, he portrayed an America whose withdrawal from Afghanistan had turned the page on the 20 Years’ War after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Now, he said, the United States was ushering in a new era of cooperative diplomacy to address global challenges, including climate change, the coronavirus and rising authoritarianism.
The speech was a grand tribute to internationalism and a stark contrast to Trump’s non-diplomatic stigma. But it came amid growing complaints that some of Biden’s signature policy moves echoed Trump’s view.
French officials said they were blinded by the US submarine deal with Australia, a complaint to which Biden officials had no easy answers.
“This brutal, one-sided and unexpected decision reminds me a lot of what Mr Trump used to do,” Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told a French radio outlet, according to Reuters. “I am angry and bitter. This is not done among coworkers.”
This was eased until Thursday after Biden’s call with Macron and Blinken’s meeting with Le Drian. But the statement of the French diplomat suggested that the matter was not forgotten. “The exit from the crisis we are facing will take time and will require action,” he said.
The flare-up with Paris may have been dismissed as an isolated episode, but echoes complaints by some NATO allies that Biden did so without consulting them fully or alerting them to Washington’s timeline. . withdrawn from Afghanistan. Trump has long been notorious for impulsive or one-sided actions to surprise allies.
Blinken protested that he visited NATO officials in the spring to gather their views on Afghanistan, but officials in Germany, Britain and other countries said his plea for a slow withdrawal had been rejected.
Biden’s aides say they exaggerate the comparisons, although they do not lack the germ of truth.
Lauren Djong Shulman, who works in national security, said: “It is absurd for allies, partners or anyone to think that there is any continuity between Trump and Biden in how they view allies, interacting internationally or nationally. We do. go to safety. Council and the Pentagon during the Obama Administration. “It’s a talking point, and it’s a laughing point.”
But he said other countries had legitimate questions about how, in the shadow of the Trump era, the Biden administration can make lasting international commitments like a potential nuclear deal with Tehran and build more public support for foreign alliances. Can do. Is.
“It can’t be a case of ‘trust us,'” said Jong Schulman, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
It is not just irritable allies who have embraced the notion of Biden-Trump equality; Opponents have found it useful against Biden. The Global Times, which often echoes the views of the Chinese Communist Party, has said Biden’s policies on China are “almost similar” to Trump’s.
They include Biden’s continuation of Trump-era trade tariffs, which Democrats strongly condemned before Biden took office but which his officials saw as a source of leverage in their dealings with China.
Similarly, Iranian officials bitterly complain that Biden has not lifted any of the many economic sanctions Trump imposed after withdrawing from the nuclear deal. Early in Biden’s presidency, some European allies urged the administration to lift some of those sanctions as a way to start nuclear talks, but Biden officials refused to do so.
Last month, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei alleged that “the current US administration is no different from the previous one, because what it demands from Iran on the nuclear issue is different in words but Trump’s demands are the same,” Khamenei said. The official website quoted him as saying.
Now, after a months-long break in talks and the election of a new, hardline government in Tehran, Biden officials are warning Iran that the time for a mutual withdrawal on the nuclear deal is running out.
Trump was criticized by countless foreign policy veterans on both sides. But there is also growing criticism of the Biden team’s management, especially after the US military’s misguided drone strike in Kabul last month that killed 10 civilians, including seven children and an aid worker.
Some Biden officials have said without admitting fault that the job of diplomacy has been particularly difficult, as many veteran Foreign Service officers have retired during the Trump administration. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has blocked dozens of Biden nominees for senior positions in the State Department and ambassadors.
Biden is also facing comparisons to Trump in other settings, including immigration.
“The question that is being asked now is, how exactly are you different from Trump?” Marisa Franco, executive director of Migante, a Latino civil rights organization, told The New York Times this week.
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