President Biden will have a full plate to deal with next month when takes over….
A Pandemic….
A dropping Economy….
And distracted and absent United States on the world stage….
Biden has set out some big principles — pay close attention to the interplay between domestic and international priorities, consult with allies and participate in international institutions, elevate climate to the top of the agenda — along with plans for first-day reversals of some of President Trump’s more egregious departures from historical norms on issues such as immigration.
But on a host of matters in between, Biden faces competing priorities, congressional hurdles and wary, if welcoming, allies. In some cases, such as with North Korea and Venezuela, the most daunting obstacle to foreign policy success is the one that has bedeviled several presidents before him. There are no good options.
The fight against the coronavirus and righting the economy are likely to consume much of the new president’s first-year emphasis and energy. Biden is “inheriting a country in crisis,” said Ellen Laipson, director of the International Security Program at George Mason University.
“Between the pandemic and not traveling and economic pain, it’s not going to be an easy time for the foreign policy crowd. They’re going to have to wait their turn,” she said.
Some issues will not wait….
image…Defense One
Biden went to the State Dept to show a new Foreign Affairs turn for America and to show support for a Dept. that Trump had no use for….
President Joe Biden criticized Russia in his first visit to the State Department on Thursday, part of the new leader’s effort to reverse the foreign policy posture of his predecessor.
“I made it clear to President Putin in a manor very different from my predecessor that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions — interfering with our elections, cyber attacks, poisoning its citizens — are over. We will not hesitate to the raise the cost on Russia and defend our vital interest and our people,” Biden said.
Former President Donald Trump was reluctant throughout his term to publicly speak out against Vladimir Putin. Trump suggested in 2018 that he believed Putin over American intelligence when the Russian president denied that he meddled in the 2016 election, he refused to condemn the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and was quiet on Russia’s hacking of U.S. government agencies last year. Trump’s ties to Russia were also the subject of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe….
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