President Joe Biden took office with an ambitious foreign policy agenda summed up by his favorite campaign tagline: “America is back.” Above all, that will mean repairing the damage done to America’s global standing by his predecessor, former President Donald Trump.
Multilateralism has suffered in the past six years, but for those who consider it to be as essential as it is imperfect, the past week offers some cause for optimism. It’s premature to declare that multilateralism “is back.” But if it does enjoy a resurgence, the past week could be the moment its fortunes began to turn around.
For nearly a decade now, an increasingly large chunk of government, academia and civil society has fought against media manipulation, which has been associated with and blamed for a wide range of social and societal ills. Yet the tide doesn’t appear to be turning. Why, given the attention being paid to the problem, is nothing working to counter it?