How to regain the world's trust
Since Donald Trump took office as president, the image of the United States has suffered across many regions of the globe. As a new 13-nation Pew Research Center survey illustrates, America’s reputation has declined further over the past year among many key allies and partners. In several countries, the share of the public with a favorable view of the U.S. is as low as it has been at any point since the Center began polling on this topic nearly two decades ago.
Even during the depths of our misadventures in the Middle East, our allies didn't look down on the US as much as they do in the Age of Trump.
When Joe Biden and Kamala Harris expel this regime, they will have a repair job on our international relationships the likes of which an American government has never had to contemplate. Even the repairing of relations in which former president Barack Obama had to engage will pale by comparison.
The difference between former president George W. Bush and the Trump regime is simple: for all his faults and missteps and outright errors, Pres. Bush and his government knew to at least try to keep allies on-side. The loudest voices castigated allies like France and Germany for not joining in the Iraqi adventure; but the government itself made sure that these voices didn't translate into policy which otherwise alienated these allies. Foreign policy disagreements can be papered over if the rest of the relationships remain on sound footing. Trump, on the other hand, has gone out of his way to disparage the alliances which have allowed the West to maintain a liberal democratic world order. Have no doubt: If Trump somehow gets into a second term, the edifice of global institutions which the US has built over the past seven decades will be dispensed with.
A Biden Administration will have to move quickly on several fronts, all of equal importance in an interconnected world. Foreign policy cannot take second seat to domestic concerns, as both are inextricably intertwined. Domestically, a President Biden will have to move quickly to address the COVID-19 pandemic in a way which stops it in its tracks. But this isn't merely a domestic objective; doing so will signal to our worried allies that the United States is back to some semblance of its former self, taking the pandemic seriously, and able again to take a leadership role.
The second conjoining of domestic and foreign policy will concern climate change. My beautiful West Coast is burning to a crisp, and behaving like ostriches is no longer tenable. An America which joins, again, the Paris Accord, and which moves decisively to wind down the carbon economy, will again signal that it is ready to resume its leadership role.
And make no mistake: Most of the globe wants a vigorous, forward looking US back on the world stage. What the past long, four years have shown is that America really is the indispensable nation. We created the post-war world order. It doesn't work without our leadership and buy-in. And there's nothing to replace it save self-interested power politics. Pres. Obama, through treaties like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, was trying to change the rules of international politics to make them more fair and equitable, and check the ambitions of states like China and Russia, which thrive in a vacuum of American power. After World War II, America knew it couldn't withdraw again as it had after the Great War, dooming the League of Nations to impotence. It had won the war, it had come out of it with its territory and industrial base unscathed, and to prevent a third world war it had to set the rules of the road. The past almost-eight decades haven't been all smooth sailing; many tragedies have occurred, some as a direct result of American action. But a rough peace has obtained, and humanity hasn't descended into general war. The world is now in a place where such a war is, if not unthinkable, highly undesirable. The days of July 1914, when everyone wanted to rip the scab off and settle outstanding grievances by war are long gone. If they hadn't, Vladimir Putin would have pressed even further and sent "volunteers" into western Ukraine. Even he, with his revanchism, has no desire for a conflagration.
A President Biden will have to work quickly to win again the world's faith in American leadership. The good thing is that domestic issues are also foreign policy issues, and in dealing with one set of problems at home, he's also dealing with the same problems abroad. After four years of chaos, this is the win-win situation we and the globe need.