GOOD MORNING FROM LONDON #209 5 MAY 2021
Similarities; – Trump proposed withdrawal from Afghanistan – Biden has merely pushed it back by 4 months
Trump refused to scold Saudi Arabia for the killing of journalist Khashoggi. Biden has already pulled back from an election promise to make SA a “pariah state”.
Trump took the US out of Iran nuclear pact – Biden’s revival is slower + conditional and insignificant.
Biden has also engaged in vaccine nationalism + no rapprochement with Cuba. In China, Biden’s policy is indistinguishable from Trump’s.
There are differences; – Biden is involved with climate change. He is restoring aid to the Palestinians but neither make for a real change.
Significant US leaders have always made big foreign policy changes. FDR went to war; Eisenhower went to Europe + Nixon went to China. But Biden merely meddles at the edges + makes Trump look even bigger.
The problem is that the US has met its match in China. It is a real headache. Biden needs a “breakthrough moment” to recast the script but Blinken made that impossible at Anchorage. Looking forward world affairs will be tense, fraught and anxious – until the penny drops. Co-operation is always better than Confrontation
