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Biden limits his radicalism to the frontier of the home

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The guitarist with the zebra shirt in the background is the one who makes up the board. It’s a video making rounds which shows that Donald Trump is leading a life after the presidency, let’s say with a lesser consensus with Jimmy Carter. The film has him on the hotel stand, now denouncing dirty tricks in the six-month election, as if he is dressed as soon as the call for a resumption of White House duties is not possible.

Norma Desmond of Palm Beach has at least two consolations. One, unlike in pure fantasy Sunset Boulevard, return is feasible. Bet exchanges side with him As a Republican White House candidate in 2024.

Second, while awaiting such a restoration, he will be able to see an encouraging number of foreign policies still working with the new president.

Trump proposed that U.S. forces withdraw from Afghanistan last Saturday. Joe Biden’s reform has been to push back the date all four months. Trump refused to blame Saudi Arabia for killing a U.S. resident journalist and for the brutal war in Yemen. According to Biden, the kingdom is not like that “Paria” he promised that he would. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal. The revival of the roads has been slower more conditioned than most expected.

In all three cases, Trump’s line was seen as an unwelcome condemnation: evidence of the US’s absent world renter. In all three, Biden has held more than he has thrown. Continuity leads to some policies that underestimate the bad opinion and wisdom of the new president in old policies.

Examples don’t stop there either. Biden hasn’t been a bit over the top vaccine nationalism. It was only after reprimanding him that he raised Trump’s cap refugee admissions. Any approach Cuba it remains mostly theoretical. In Washington, he named the city a trade consensus, Trump’s taste for autarky was briefly subversive. Biden is now able to propose Buy American to capture the overall scheme of purchase. The same bad case for economic protection, a much nicer creative case: liberals need to calm down where they find themselves.

And nothing touches the bilateral relationship of the century. Bidenena attitude towards China It’s more true than Trump’s compared to Barack Obama’s, and with the difference that should create difficulties in the sessions of the old boss and the old deputy. Rates remain there. Both armies continue in shadow boxing.

Biden’s complaints to China have a moral or at least philosophical dimension: Trump, for the most part against Beijing, did not care about his authoritarianism. But that means more military careers under Biden’s command, not less. In a speech to Congress in the first week, Compared the U.S.’s “Indo-Pacific” presence to “what we do in NATO in Europe”. References to the Cold War have gone from a column of columnists to a way of perceiving the president another superpotr. There are now hopes for a post-Trump arrest: what? – Blurred openness to collaborate in areas of mutual interest.

Trump’s adherence to his successor’s worldview is not absolute. It is likely that Biden will never take any deeper action than virtually his first: Re-signing of the Paris climate agreement. He is the same restoration of aid to the Palestinians (though not the Israeli embassy from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv). Its tonal warmth with well-known allies, Then and the very idea of ​​internationalism is also welcome, insofar as tones matter.

It was natural, however, to expect more starting points. In foreign affairs the president is as strong as the greatness of the work suggests. Congress is a complication, not the Bermuda Triangle best placed plans. If Biden wanted a clear break with the nationalism of the previous four years, he could be much further ahead in that project. Certainly his slowness owes something to the deplorable fear of Democrats seeing him as soft. (Remember which side of the Vietnam War started and intensified.) But the rest is real hardening of perspectives center-left in recent years. For the president of a mandate, Trump changed America’s thinking about the world tremendously. It is up to this world to live with the effects.

This is another reason to hold on to the idea that we are witnessing a presidency on Mount Rushmore. Terrible U.S. leaders have tended to transform foreign policy. Seeing his first job, Biden just wants to adapt. In the parts he now sees in the world, his predecessor emits tragicomic importance. In the highest problems of the state, it remains unbelievable.

janan.ganesh@ft.com

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