Joe Biden was the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s chairman, then a vice president handed many global tasks by his boss, President Barack Obama. But as he embarks on his first trip abroad as president, he will feel the bright lights of the world stage in full beam for the first time.
That means there will be more pressure than when he, as a senator, met with world leaders to explain a Democratic president’s policies or privately let one know Congress was poised to check the global whims of a Republican chief executive.
When he spends six days in the United Kingdom and Europe, he won’t have the luxury of simply making a sales pitch, leaving Obama to close any possible deals.
As he huddles with a wide range of leaders, with an equally wide range of interests, including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, NATO and EU allies, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, his ability to broker deals himself or coerce change will be tested for the first time as president.
Biden, who along with first lady Jill Biden also will meet with Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle, has failed to cut major deals with Republicans at home. His first foreign trip will offer clues about whether he can deliver on his promise to restore U.S. leadership after four years of former President Donald Trump’s “America first” rule.
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Such trips often come with an agenda resembling a boxing card, with several high-profile matchups culminating in a main event. This trip is no different, with the biggest test for Biden coming on the final day. Here are three things to watch.
Biden v. Putin
After “BoJo,” after the queen, after Merkel and Erdogan will stand Putin on June 16, the final day of the trek.
The U.S. president is vowing to press the hard-line Kremlin boss on a list of contentious issues, from companies that supply gasoline and beef to Americans being targeted by Russian groups with ransomware attacks, his recent military buildup on the Ukraine border, and his meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as well as a host of other matters.
“We’re in direct touch with the Russians as well to convey our concerns about these reports,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday about the ransomware hacks. “We’ve discussed it in the past and delivered the message that responsible states do not harbor ransomware criminals.”
Biden used part of his Memorial Day remarks to let the Russian leader know he intends to press him on several human rights issues. “I’ll be meeting with President Putin in a couple of weeks in Geneva, making it clear that we will not, we will not stand by and let him abuse those rights,” he said.
The U.S. diplomat in chief seemed to get under his Russian counterpart’s skin earlier this year when he agreed with an interviewer that Putin is “a killer.” Biden also has claimed that, as vice president, during a meeting with Putin, he looked into the strongman’s eyes and said, “I don’t think you have a soul.”
Emily Harding, a former Senate Intelligence Committee deputy staff director, said new guidelines that the Biden administration issued on cybersecurity to prevent more ransomware strikes are “an important step for better defense,” but she added that the rules “will not deter future attacks.”
“To deter, and prevent, ransomware attacks, the United States must hold accountable the countries that allow criminal groups to operate from their territory,” according to Harding. “The United States should abandon the fiction that Moscow has no control over these criminal hacking syndicates and hold them to account. … [Biden should] continue to press Putin to prosecute criminal syndicates of all stripes.”
Turkey tussle?
Biden will find mostly like-minded leaders when he spends three days with G-7 leaders in the U.K., then two more days in Brussels for meetings with the heads of NATO and members of the European Union.
Erdogan is the exception to that rule.
Tensions began to rise between Ankara and Washington long before Biden took office. Trump once called himself a “big fan” of the Turkish leader, but he then became frustrated by Erdogan’s thirst to go after Kurds in Syria and his military cooperation with Putin. Trump even kicked Turkey out of the F-35 fighter jet program.
Then came Biden’s decision to refer to the Ottoman Empire’s mass murder of Armenians as a “genocide.” Erdogan and his top aides criticized that change in long-standing U.S. policy — but a major diplomatic tit for tat was avoided.
“This restraint on Ankara’s part largely stems from the fact that recognition of the Armenian genocide is far from the main problem in U.S.-Turkish relations, which have been in crisis now for several years,” journalist Kirill Zharov wrote recently for the nonpartisan Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “There are plenty of far more practical difficulties and conflicts to tackle, from Syria and the Kurds to the military cooperation between Turkey and Russia.”
All are on the agenda with the man Biden, while president-elect, called an “autocrat” who had earned from Washington “a very different approach to him now, making it clear that we support opposition leadership.”
Expect few smiles when these two leaders appear before the cameras together.
Date with royalty
Don’t expect Biden to repeat Trump’s power play with the queen when he left her waiting in the sun at Windsor in 2018.
After all, Trump was a reality television star — and one of the first rules of show business is “keep them waiting.”
Expect Biden to emphasize protocol over television ratings.
But that does not mean his meeting with “Her Majesty” is not without risk.
The internet nearly melted down before Trump’s armored limousine finally showed up three years ago — and then, the president shook the sovereign’s hand. The same was true when then-first lady Michelle Obama hugged her in 2009.
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Biden has a long track record of gaffes during his nearly 50-year political and diplomatic career. In fact, he often quips that an off-the-script remark is going to “get me in trouble” with his staff.
Protocol, beware.
