Biden travels to Europe to meet with allies and Putin

By Shannon Pettypiece - NBC News

WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden will land in Europe on Wednesday and will try to rebuild relations with America's closest allies to counter mounting threats from China and Russia in their first big moment on the world stage since taking office.

In many ways, it will be familiar ground for Biden.

Few presidents have had his level of foreign policy experience

, from decades on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to his time as vice president.

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But the world has undergone dramatic changes in the more than four years since Biden was last at the forefront of American foreign policy.

The global economy has been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, China has become an even more dominant economic and military power, and the growing ability of

 Russian

hackers

to execute cyberattacks has affected Americans.

Amid all these challenges, America's longest-running allies are skeptical that they can trust a partner that for the past four years has pursued a foreign policy under the Trump Administration's "America First" slogan.

President Joe Biden salutes from the entrance to the Air Force One plane at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, on March 16, 2021.AP Photo / Susan Walsh

Senior Administration officials fully recognize the challenges they face and are pragmatic about the goals they can achieve while heading abroad.

Biden has framed the journey by focusing on restoring America's place at the international negotiating table rather than on how it hopes to achieve the government's goals once it regains its position.

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"This trip is about realizing America's renewed commitment to our allies and partners, and demonstrating the ability of democracies to meet the challenges and deter threats of this new era," Biden stated in an op-ed for The Washington Post on Saturday.

Biden will begin the trip by meeting with UK Prime Minister

Boris Johnson, followed by a meeting of G-7 leaders, which includes the heads of state of Canada, the UK, France, Italy, Germany and Japan.

He will then attend a meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and have an audience with Queen Elizabeth II before attending what Administration officials have indicated will be a contentious meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Shortening the distance over the Atlantic

Biden is expected to receive an overwhelming welcome from allies, who for four years tried to handle the often undiplomatic style of former President Donald Trump, according to national security officials from the Trump and Obama administrations.

At Trump's first G-7 summit, he clashed with his counterparts on climate change and trade.

The following year, he left the summit early to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, and lashed out at Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Twitter as he walked out the door.

The last time Trump met with G-7 leaders in person, in 2019, he threatened a trade war with France and lobbied for Putin to be included in the group.

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"It was mostly train crashes and there was a lot of blood on the ground when Trump left these meetings," recalled Charles Kupchan, who served as senior director of European affairs in the Obama Administration and is currently a senior member of the Council on Foreign Relations. of the last summits of the G-7.

"So there is a tremendous sense of relief at the appearance of normalcy in the White House," he added.

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 But Biden will face a skeptical audience from world leaders to try to reestablish America's leadership role, although there are concerns that any international agreement they may reach with the country over the next four years will be scrapped by the next president. since Trump annulled the Paris climate agreement and the nuclear one with Iran.

"Allies have doubts about the forces that were born out of Trump's election in 2016 and wonder if those are gone forever or is there a possibility that the United States could return to a more contentious and transactional approach," explained Alexander Vershbow, Former NATO Under Secretary General and US Ambassador to Russia in the Bush Administration.

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One advantage Biden will have is his well-established relationships with several of the leaders he will meet with this week.

The first in-person overseas meeting of your presidency will give you the opportunity to have informal conversations with your counterparts over dinner and other more informal moments, according to Kupchan, who helped prepare Biden for a series of trips abroad when he was vice president. .

Putin is the center of attention

It's no coincidence that Biden is going to spend nearly a week meeting with America's closest allies before his Geneva summit with Putin: National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said

it's about Biden being able to address the meeting with him. Russian president "with the wind in favor

.

"

The list of contentious issues that the White House says Biden will address with Putin is long and includes

ransomware

cyberattacks

, human rights violations, electoral interference and attacks against Ukraine.

Administration officials have said they anticipate the meeting to be long and tense, and do not expect any results.

Sullivan said that Biden will lay out what the United States 'expectations of Russia are and what the United States' response will be if certain activities continue to occur.

It's a message that he said Biden must convey directly to Putin in person.

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"Taking the measure of another president is not about trusting them, and the relationship between the United States and Russia is not about one of trust," Sullivan said.

"This is a verification relationship, it is a relationship of clarifying what our expectations are and stating that if certain types of harmful activities continue to occur, there will be responses from the United States."

Addressing the pandemic

Although Putin's summit has put Russia in the spotlight, Biden and world leaders are expected to focus most of their attention behind closed doors on issues such as climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and China, according to administration officials.

In the short term, Biden will have to face a world still struggling with the pandemic from a health and economic perspective.

For the world to return to normal, it will be critical to greatly expand the supply of vaccines to the poorest countries, many of which have vaccinated only a small fraction of their populations.

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"It all depends on vaccine distribution, and the success and lasting recovery of the G-7 nations, from developed countries, depends on distribution to the developing world, where, of course, we derive much of our supply chains. supply, "said Julia Friedlander.

senior fellow of the Atlantic Council and director of the White House for the European Union, Southern Europe and economic affairs during the Trump Administration.

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The United States has pledged to ship 80 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine overseas by the end of June, with 25 million expected to be shipped in the coming weeks.

But the commitment, although more than in any other country, is a small fraction of the 1.8 billion doses that international aid groups aim to deliver to the poorest countries by early 2022.

The United States has been criticized by world leaders and public health officials for until recently restricting American companies from shipping vaccine raw materials and supplies abroad and for storing tens of millions of doses that were not being used.

Sullivan claimed that Biden will outline broader plans during the trip on how the G-7 nations will respond to the pandemic, and Administration officials have noted that the current international vaccine commitment is just the beginning of what the United States plans to distribute. .

Us, not them

Beyond the pandemic, Biden and world leaders are also expected to discuss steps they can take together to address climate change and the increasing proliferation of cyber attacks.

They also plan to discuss ways to counter China's growing influence "so that democracies and no one else, not China or other autocracies, is writing the rules of commerce and technology for the 21st century," Sullivan noted.

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But as much as the G-7 and NATO leaders will focus on tackling problems and challenges beyond their borders, such as the global pandemic, Russia, and China, more attention is also expected to be paid to the domestic challenges that each has. will have to face.

"One new thing about this meeting is that the conversation has to be more about 'us' than' them," Kupchan said.

“The elephant in the room is the political turbulence and dysfunction that has fallen in the West.

We have just experienced a shocking era in American politics, the United Kingdom has just left the European Union and populism is alive and well on the continent.

Part of the conversation has to be about us and what we can do to make sure liberal democracy is rock solid, "he concluded.

With information from The Washington Post.