At two summits held in Europe this week, President Joe Biden shed fierce political turmoil at home and turned to a more joyous world of diplomacy—but the experience may be equally frustrating.
For senior foreign policy experts like Biden, the G20 summit in Rome over the weekend and the UN COP26 climate summit in Glasgow next Monday and Tuesday (November 1st to 2nd) should be a respite. Even if it’s not exactly a Roman holiday.
Biden will not fight his divided Democrats, nor will he try to ignore the insults of angry former President Donald Trump and his Republicans, but mainly brush past his friends.
The 78-year-old will have an excellent opportunity to promote his “America is Back” slogan.
However, for a president struggling to turn these words into slogans, Russian leader Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping are expected to be absent from Rome and Glasgow, which will make it difficult for him to achieve much.
Despite calling the US-China relationship the most important relationship on earth, Biden has not yet met with Xi Jinping. Two phone calls and a video summit planned for later this year are the best things he can do.
G20 is usually a forum that brings together members of Western clubs (such as NATO and G7) with more uncertain allies and even opponents.
This time, the White House has not even announced a bilateral meeting with the leaders of the two highest U.S. allies (if there are problems): Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman .
“We don’t even know who will represent Saudi Arabia,” National Security Adviser Jack Sullivan told reporters.
On the contrary, Biden will be primarily friends, although friends want to know how strong this relationship is after the United States was traumatized from Afghanistan.
Biden’s opening meeting with Pope Francis in the Vatican on Friday will see the second Catholic president of the United States join forces with the Pope to share most of his politics, both in terms of the environment and in caring for the needs of the poor.
On the same day, Biden will hold one of his most watched meetings with French President Emmanuel Macron.
In mid-September, a major quarrel broke out between Washington and Paris because Australia suddenly announced that it would purchase American nuclear-powered submarines and abandon its earlier deal with conventional French ships.
But the Rome meeting may mainly emphasize that the two sides are ready to move on.
At large summits, Biden will find himself preaching mainly to converts, or at least preaching to sympathetic audiences, thanking the person in front of the microphone for not his predecessor Trump.
He will point to the United States’ leadership in global Covid vaccine donations and urge people to recognize that, despite his drag in Congress, he has brought the United States back to the negotiating table on climate change action.
Biden will also credit an agreement facilitated by the OECD that sets a 15% global minimum corporate tax-a plan designed to create a level playing field for governments competing to attract international companies.
Sullivan said: “After a lot of comments on the state of transatlantic relations in recent weeks, the United States and Europe entered the two summits and united on the main content of the global agenda.”
Trouble at home
But Biden will not be able to avoid the specter of domestic plight that threatens his credibility abroad.
When Air Force One takes off on Thursday, Biden may still not know whether his Democrats will let him win in trillions of dollars in infrastructure and social spending.
If the party passes, perhaps even in the next few days, Biden will be supported.
However, if the president’s first term is only nine months, then the failure will be catastrophic. This leaves a loophole in his argument that democracies need to prove that they can compete with authoritarian countries such as China.
As Biden crossed the Atlantic, he was still hanging over the tense Virginia governor election next Tuesday—the day he flew home.
In the state where Biden defeated Trump by 10 percentage points last year, a Republican and the Democratic candidate went hand in hand.
This is just a state. But losing there will trigger humiliating comments on Biden. Biden took time to run for the Democratic Party before his European trip on Tuesday, and heralded a broader party defeat in the party in mid-2022, making Biden even more vulnerable.
