WASHINGTON (AP) – Joe Biden will make his first major appearance on the world stage as president on Friday, offering the group of seven allies and other foreign leaders a glimpse of his plans to drastically reform US foreign policy, even if he does. has with a number of international crises coming to a head.
Ahead of Biden’s virtual appearances at a G-7 meeting and the Munich Security Conference, the White House sought to underline that the new administration will quickly move towards a US reorientation of Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ mantra by major Trump’s reversals. administration policy.
Biden was expected to use his speech at the Munich conference to emphasize that the US is ready to rejoin the talks about re-joining the 2015 multilateral Iran nuclear deal. abandoned by the Trump administration. The Biden administration announced on Thursday that it wanted to re-enter Iran and took action at the United Nations to restore policy to what it was before President Donald Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018.
Biden was also expected to address Russia and China’s economic and national security challenges, as well as the two-decade war in Afghanistan, where he has a May 1 deadline to remove the remaining 2,500 US troops under a peace deal with Trump. the Taliban
“Our partnerships have endured and grown over the years because they are rooted in the richness of our shared democratic values,” Biden said, according to excerpts from prepared remarks for the Munich Conference released by the White House. They are not transactional. They are not extractive. They are built on a vision of the future where every vote matters. “
His message would be beloved by an underlying argument that democracies – not autocracies – are models of governance that can best meet the challenges of the moment, said a senior official who previewed the president’s speech to reporters.
“We are in the middle of a fundamental debate about the future direction of our world,” Biden will say, according to the excerpts. “Between those who argue that – given all the challenges we face, from the fourth industrial revolution to a global pandemic – autocracy is the best way forward and those who understand that democracy is essential to meet those challenges.”
At the G-7, government officials said Biden was focusing on what lies ahead for the international community as it seeks to extinguish the public health and economic crises caused by the coronavirus pandemic.White House officials said Biden would announce at the G-7 that the US will soon release $ 4 billion for an international effort to support the purchase and distribution of coronavirus vaccines to poor countries, a program Trump refused to support.
Both the G-7 and the annual safety conference are pretty much taking place because of the pandemic.
Biden’s turn will hit the world stage when the US officially rejoins the Paris climate agreement on Friday, the biggest international effort to combat global warming. Trump announced in June 2017 that he was pulling the US out of the historic accord, arguing that it would undermine the US economy.
Biden announced the US intention to rejoin the accord on the first day of his presidency, but he had to wait 30 days for the move to take effect. He has said he will include climate change considerations in every major domestic and foreign policy decision facing his government.
His first foray into international summits will inevitably be seen by some as simply an attempt to correct Trump’s agenda. However, the new president has made it clear that his domestic and foreign policy agenda will not just be an obliteration of the Trump years.
“I’m tired of talking about Donald Trump,” Biden lamented earlier this week at a CNN town hall in Milwaukee.
Biden on the campaign trail pledged to reaffirm U.S. leadership in the international community, a role Trump often shied away from while complaining that the U.S. was being abused too often by freeloading allies.
To that end, the White House said Biden would encourage G-7 partners to keep their promises to COVAX, an initiative of the World Health Organization to improve access to vaccines, even if he re-opens the U.S. tap.
Trump had withdrawn the US from the WHO and refused to join the COVAX program in more than 190 countries. The Republican former president accused the WHO of covering up China’s missteps in dealing with the virus at the start of the public health crisis that unraveled a strong US economy.
It remains to be seen how the G-7’s allies will respond to Biden’s calls for more international cooperation in vaccine distribution, as the U.S. refused to participate in the Trump initiative and there are growing calls for the Democrat government to supply some US-manufactured vaccine overseas.
French President Emmanuel Macron has called on the US and European countries to allocate up to 5% of current vaccine supplies to developing countries – the kind of vaccine diplomacy that China and Russia have begun to deploy.
And earlier this week, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres sharply criticized the “hugely unequal and unfair” distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, noting that 10 countries administered 75% of all vaccinations.
Biden, who announced last week that the US will have enough supplies of the vaccine by the end of July to inoculate 300 million people, remains focused for now on getting every American vaccinated, government officials say.
Allies will also listen carefully to hear what Biden has to say about an impending crisis with Iran.
Iran informed the International Atomic Energy Agency this week that next week it would suspend voluntary implementation of a provision in the 2015 deal that would allow UN nuclear observers to conduct short-term inspections of undeclared locations in Iran, unless the US imposes sanctions. by February 23. .
Secretary of State Antony Blinken told his colleagues from France, Germany and the UK on Thursday that the US is ready to enter into talks with Iran in an effort to reach an agreement to return to full compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal, a joint effort said. statement of the three nations.
Trump withdrew the United States from the pact negotiated by the Obama administration and renewed sanctions on Tehran, a move Biden as a candidate said was shortsighted and dangerous.
But the joint statement by Blinken and the other ministers made it clear that the Biden administration still expects Iran to fully comply with the 2015 deal before the US rejoins. It also urged Iran to “consider the ramifications of such serious action, especially at a time of renewed diplomatic opportunities.”