With Trump expected to announce another presidential bid and control of Congress still unclear, Biden seeks to assuage nervous allies about U.S. leadership.
President Biden arrived here Saturday, the second stop of a week-long foreign trip seeking to reassure the world community that, no matter the political disruptions back home, the United States can still be a reliable global leader.
On the heels of a midterm election that gave him better-than-expected results — yet still could cost his party full control of Congress when final results are in, complicating his goals — he has used both appearances so far to press that theme and rally other nations.
During a speech in Egypt at the COP27 climate conference, Biden touted the United States as the global pacesetter in fighting climate change. And in Phnom Penh for a summit of southeast Asian nations, he immediately began trying to unite other nations to provide a counterweight to the rising economic and military threat that China poses.
One of the president’s enduring challenges, however, has been to persuade his fellow leaders that former president Donald Trump’s disruption of American foreign policy was an aberration, not a long-lasting shift. Hours into his presidency, Biden moved to rejoin the Paris climate accords that Trump had left, and after voters last week rendered a verdict on his first two years in office, he attempted to signal that his declaration of renewed American leadership was not in jeopardy.
Biden hopes to tamp down any notion that GOP hard-liners led by Trump, who may announce another presidential campaign within days, could gain power and torpedo any promises his administration makes on climate change. In addition, he’s working to unify the world against Russian aggression and show that the American commitment to Ukraine’s cause isn’t in jeopardy despite possible Republican control of Congress.
As he began meetings with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, he said he would address “the biggest issues of our time,” including energy, climate, health and national security, as well as the impacts that nations here are feeling from Russia’s war in Ukraine. He called ASEAN “the heart of my administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy.”
The president also said he hoped to “defend against the significant threats against rule-based order and threats to the rule of law,” a seeming reference to China.
