Reconstruction of the West

Joe Biden is sworn in as the 46th president of the United States.Andrew Harnik / AP

The journey to the end of the night that the United States, and the West, have suffered with Donald Trump as the great helmsman has concluded.

Four years of democratic degeneration, systematic lies, encouragement of the worst human instincts, and incompetent administration are ending.

The legacy they leave behind is division, distrust, resentment.

The arrival of Joe Biden to the White House as the 46th president of the United States heralds a new day and there are plenty of reasons to celebrate.

There is, however, no guarantee that this will be long and sunny.

Weighing on the shoulders of this 78-year-old politician, without special charisma and pragmatic and moderate instincts, the herculean task of achieving it in a presidential term that is presented as the most complex since World War II.

The US and the West need it to be successful to neutralize the threat of decline that hangs over them.

Biden faces three orders of extraordinary challenges.

The first and immediate is the pandemic scourge, in its health aspects (already 400,000 registered deaths) and economic (some nine million fewer employees than in February).

The second and underlying is the disease of American democracy, with the serious division of its society and the weaknesses that Trumpism has exposed (among them, the sugar-like dissolution of the spine of a party like the Republican at the dictates of the populist magnate and the terrible role of social networks and some media).

The third and external is the unstoppable rise of China and the corresponding erosion of the prominence of the US and the West.

The task is tremendous;

success, if not unlikely, at least very difficult.

But, to begin with, some elements point in a hopeful direction: the first words and gestures of the new president show a precise understanding of the problems and that his depth does not allow lukewarm answers;

the government team exhibits remarkable strength;

Control by Democrats of both Houses, even if only minimally, facilitates the legislative task.

Three words stood out in Biden's inaugural address: unity, truth, democracy.

Its meaning: to recollect the tear that American society has suffered, to banish the virus of manipulation of the facts that prevents consensus and, ultimately, to restore the vigor of a democracy under siege, as physically demonstrated by a inauguration celebrated with measures exceptional security.

Furthermore, the speech and the first gestures pointed to a just willingness to be daring to seek extraordinary solutions for times that are also extraordinary.

Moderation is an attitude of the spirit that does not mean cowardice;

pragmatism is not synonymous with hesitation or weakness;

lack of charisma does not equate to inability to build.

In its early stages, Biden launches a broad offensive to dismantle the most brutal aspects of the Trump presidency via executive orders;

promotes a huge new plan to support the economy worth 1.9 trillion dollars, which adds to the previous ones in an overwhelming public display;

it is preparing a vigorous ecological transition and the unhesitating reincorporation of the United States into the international order, of which it was the main creator and, possibly, beneficiary.

All of this is going in the right direction.

The team that will support you in this task is promising, with figures of great solvency (Janet Yellen for the Treasury, John Kerry for the climate, Antony Blinken for Foreign Affairs or the vice president herself, Kamala Harris) and a lot of diversity.

Freshness and novelty are lacking, but experience abounds.

The conquest in extremis of the Senate opens a narrow path to the approval of legislative measures, although it will be necessary to keep together a Democratic Party with different souls.

In foreign terms, his Administration will have to manage the vertiginous rise of China, which each year reduces the margin of the economic, military and technological advantage that Washington enjoys.

This rivalry has the risk of turning into a new cold war.

In this framework, Biden will have to find the balance between maintaining the pulse but not igniting conflicts;

and the responsibility, as

primus inter pares

, to promote a realignment of the group of liberal democracies, very frayed in the Trump years.

They share values, but not always interests.

All of them must calculate well the cost of being guided more by the latter than by the former.

The change in Washington coincides, on this side of the Atlantic, with the next departure from the scene of Angela Merkel, the main European leader in the 21st century.

The fundamental thing is not to forget that Trump is not a tumor of democracy that has already been removed.

It is a symptom.

The citizen discontent that underlies its rise;

the digital and informational media that allowed it;

the lackey attitude on the part of the political establishment… everything is still there.

Democracies are fragile, Biden recalled.

It's not just for the US With the departure of Trump, the monstrous jellyfish is not decapitated.

Therefore, it continues to have the capacity to petrify those who fix their gaze on its eyes.

"We will return, somehow," he warned in his farewell.

The mogul was just the most visible of the snakes that Medusa has for hair.

The West must undertake a reconstruction, towards a more effective politics and a more inclusive capitalism.

Biden's new day is opportunity.

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