Person of the week: US President
Joe Biden is better than his reputation
By Wolfram Weimer
06/28/2022, 08:59 am
The US President has miserable poll numbers in his own country and a lot of domestic political problems. But in terms of global politics, he does a lot of things right – although many people no longer want to do that at home. Ironically, “Sleepy Joe” woke the tired Hegemon up again.
Joe Biden doesn’t just have to endure bad poll numbers these days – they’re miserable now. The American news magazine Newsweek reportsthat the mood in the US is currently at its worst since 1974 – the year Richard Nixon was ousted from the White House after the Watergate scandal. According to new surveys, only 13 percent of Americans are satisfied with the development in the USA. On the other hand, about 87 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the direction the country is taking.
Back in world politics: US President Joe Biden at the G7 summit in Elmau.
(Photo: AP)
Joe Biden’s personal approval ratings have also fallen below the 40 percent mark after a year and a half in the White House. He has the lowest acceptance rate of any US President at the time.
Biden is being criticized more and more loudly in the American public for being weak in age and leadership. Donald Trump’s mean label “Sleepy Joe” is being peddled in ever new facets. From the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan to inflation and rising interest rates to the abortion dispute, everything possible is chalked up to him as a domestic weakness. In the midterm elections in the fall, his Democratic Party is threatened with a severe electoral defeat, which domestically should be read like a receipt for the president.
As bad as the domestic political scene looks for Biden, he is currently making points in foreign policy, and even big ones. At G7 and NATO summits, Biden is what the US hasn’t embodied in years: the sympathetic leader of the free world.
New alliances in the south
At the moment of the historic threat, the American President has revived America’s old leadership role. It is he who is actively rallying the western community of states into an anti-Russian alliance. It is he who organizes the largest and most effective military aid to Ukraine. He pushed through $40 billion in aid to Ukraine in Congress. And he sets the pace in sanctions policy. His team keeps coming up with surprising sanctions proposals; he has mobilized the currency as a weapon against the Russian central bank.
Biden is forming an important strategic unity of the free world not only against Russia. From the outset, the US President focused equally on Moscow and Beijing. He immediately understood the war as an offensive by despotism against the democracies. It was Biden who drew the link from Ukraine to Taiwan and prepared the world public for the threat multiplier.
If the G7 summit in Elmau is not just attended by the seven strongest industrialized nations in the West, but also by important democracies from Argentina to South Africa, from India to Indonesia and Senegal, then this is in line with his global political strategy: the attacked West needs new alliances in the South . Biden does not want to leave the new zones of power and influence to Moscow and Beijing. He thinks and acts globally.
The new world political role of the USA is more important than it has been for decades. The biggest battle since 1945 is raging in Europe. The Ukraine war, the energy and food crises, and the climate issue have created a threat scenario in many countries beyond Europe that calls for new security. The regained strength of NATO and the 600 billion partnership program give these longings for patron saints new structures.
The US is back on the world stage
Biden is thus achieving something in foreign policy that he surprisingly succeeded in domestic politics when he was elected, when he defeated Donald Trump against many forecasts: Despite all his old age, “Sleepy Joe” is still a “smart fox” – a clever fox with great political experience and a clear coordinate system. Biden is a passionate Democrat and a staunch Atlanticist, and his entire team is made up of multilateralists. He thinks European and believes in the rule-based cooperation of the international community.
When he took office, Biden promised: “America is back”. Domestically he didn’t succeed, but that’s true in global politics. The USA is back on the world stage. This is also urgently needed, because thirty years after the end of the Cold War, a new division of the world is imminent. Russia and China openly form themselves as axes of despotism against the USA and Europe. The global balance of power threatens to tip to the detriment of the West. Biden has not only recognized this, he is also addressing it openly and offensively. The “unipolar moment” that the United States supposedly experienced after winning the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union actually never happened.
This new US line of actively shaping world politics again cannot be taken for granted. In his own country, Trump nationalism is virulent, and isolationism is deeply rooted. One must not forget that the intellectual legacy of John Quincy Adams has become the nation’s political subconscious: “The United States of America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. You are the well-wisher of freedom and the independence of all. They are advocates and defenders only of themselves.” Donald Trump, with his “nation first” doctrine, has made this vibrate. He and many Republicans have loudly portrayed Biden’s Ukraine policy as a multilateralist failure. In fact, the opposite is true. The tired Hegenom is awake again. Woken up by “Sleep Joe” of all things.