After four years of relentless attacks on the United Nations under the Trump administration, President Joe Biden has restored “a sense of normality” to U.N. diplomacy, says Richard Gowan, U.N. director at the International Crisis Group. But even as they expressed relief at being able to work with a more multilateralist U.S. president, many diplomats in Turtle Bay were still frustrated by the Biden administration’s decision to block action at the U.N. Security Council when renewed hostilities broke out between the Israelis and the Palestinians last month. On the Trend Lines podcast this week, Gowan joined WPR’s Elliot Waldman to [...]
During his first few months in office, President Joe Biden has largely followed through on his pledges to restore a more multilateralist U.S. foreign policy, rejoining a number of key international organizations and agreements that had been abandoned by his predecessor, Donald Trump. This new approach has come as a relief to many senior officials at the United Nations, particularly Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who was nominated for a second term by the U.N. Security Council this week and is expected to cruise to reelection. This week on Trend Lines, Richard Gowan, the U.N. director at the International Crisis Group and [...]
The United States is “back,” proclaims U.S. President Joe Biden, seemingly as often as he can. The coming week will show if the same is true of the West. At successive summits of the G-7, NATO and the European Union, Biden and fellow leaders will confront a dual task: reviving the community of advanced market democracies and showing that the West is capable of resolving today’s complex transnational challenges. Biden’s election in November heartened the U.S. foreign policy establishment, and understandably so. The new president promised to pick up the mantle of global leadership that Trump had cast aside and [...]
