US President-elect Joe Biden may have promised a “return to normalcy,” but the truth is that there is no going back. The world is changing in fundamental ways, and the actions the world takes in the next few years will be critical to lay the groundwork for a sustainable, secure, and prosperous future.
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HAMBURG – After four years of Donald Trump, his impending departure has sent hopes soaring. The Great Disruptor will be replaced by Joe Biden, an internationalist and institutionalist. He likes Europe and NATO, and, unlike Trump, he will treat America’s friends better than its traditional foes, including by honoring free trade. In the realm of security, he won’t clobber allies with threats amounting to “pay up, or we pull out!” Multilateralism will again guide American policy. It will be back to liberal hegemony instead of Trump’s narrow-minded illiberal version.
“Liberal” implies a rules-based international order, the promotion of democracy, and open societies. Trump not only ditched these principles, but also demonstrated a penchant for the world’s strongmen, alternately flirting with the likes of Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. (Of course, the United States’ coddling of Saudi Arabia cannot be pinned on Trump; every administration has adhered to the time-honored dictum: “He may be a bastard, but he’s our bastard.”)
Trump’s game was strictly zero-sum, especially on trade. This was a marked departure from the post-war American tradition, which stressed positive-sum outcomes in which both sides won. Trump dragged the world back to nineteenth-century power politics: states have no permanent friends, on this view, only permanent interests.
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