Biden deforms Trump’s diplomacy dull as president-elect

Without any question , current US president Donald Trump was not everyone’s cup of tea regarding diplomatic supremecy. Many neighbouring countries kept aloof from his diplomatic relations. Hence , newly elected president has started deforming changes in diplomacy.

When Joe Biden spoke by phone on Thursday with prime minister Scott Morrison, the president-elect’s office said that Biden hoped to work with him on ‘many common challenges’ and the Australian leader said that he would forward a study on how his country fought COVID-19 through contact tracing.

Following four years of presidential pique and chronic chaos in dealing with foreign leaders, Biden had already signalled a reversal – he was making US diplomacy predictable, even dull, again.

His transition office — which was not receiving customary assistance from the state department as Trump refused to concede the election —was putting out the sort of soporific readouts that until the 2016 election were the primary means of US presidential communication.

With Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, whom Trump derided over Twitter following a summit as ‘very dishonest & weak,’ a Biden statement after a congratulatory phone call said that the pair ‘reaffirmed the close bonds between the United States and Canada’ and pledged cooperation against COVID-19 and future biological threats.

After his conversation with German chancellor Angela Merkel, whom Trump had openly criticised for her welcome to migrants, Biden ‘noted his interest in working closely’ to address the pandemic, climate change and other issues and ‘praised her leadership.’

The lack of drama in Biden’s approach was, well, no surprise.

Biden, with nearly 50 years of experience in Washington, ran on promises to return to normalcy, bringing back the time-honoured decision-making process involving expert consultations rather than impulsive tweets.

In a campaign speech on foreign policy, Biden pointed to the sharp decline in global respect of the United States under Trump and promised to turn the page on ‘the chest-thumping, the self-inflicted setbacks and the manufactured crises of this administration.’

Biden’s return to a more traditional diplomacy was about more than a less brash personal style.

He is also signalling that he places a greater value on working with the world, said Monica Duffy Toft, a professor of international politics at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

‘Trump likes to do things bilaterally and unilaterally. The big difference is that Biden respects and understands that you need to work multilaterally sometimes,’ she said, adding, ‘I think it’s going to be less personalistic, less chaotic and much more by protocol, and obviously not by tweet.’

She expected Biden to revive the role of the state department— derided by the ever-suspicious Trump as the ‘Deep State Department’— and move away from personal and family connections.

Autocratic leaders had assiduously sought unfiltered channels to Trump, who dispensed with the usual note-takers when meeting Russian president Vladimir Putin and who was said to take telephone calls placed directly by his Turkish counterpart RecepTayyipErdogan without any preparation by aides.