What to expect on Biden’s first foreign trip as president: G7, Nato, meeting Putin and queen
- Joe Biden to attend G7 summit in England, meet with Nato allies in Brussels
- US president will meet Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Geneva on June 16
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“This is a defining question of our time,” Biden wrote in The Washington Post ahead of his trip.
“Will the democratic alliances and institutions that shaped so much of the last century prove their capacity against modern-day threats and adversaries? I believe the answer is yes. And this week in Europe, we have the chance to prove it.”
Biden’s pitch marks a return to a traditional US world view after four years during which Donald Trump flirted with autocrats and recast multilateralism as a dirty word.
Biden meets G7 partners – Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan – from Friday to Sunday at a seaside resort in southwest England, then visits Queen Elizabeth at Windsor Castle.
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That choreography – by far the most intense travel schedule since the 78-year-old took office – is designed to send a clear message to Putin: Biden will represent a democratic bloc, not just the United States.
“He will go into this meeting with the wind at his back,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said.
Trump argued that the United States can’t afford to be the world’s policeman, an isolationist stance popular with his voters.
But as the world crawls out of the coronavirus disaster, Biden is positioning the United States as the linchpin for vaccine sharing and ensuring economic recovery. He has re-entered nuclear talks with Iran and reclaimed leadership over the planet’s climate crisis.
“America is back,” goes the Biden mantra. The alternative, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Axios, is China taking over or even “chaos”.
Still reeling from Trump shock, European partners may eye Biden’s vows with scepticism.
There was friction last month when Washington blocked French attempts at the United Nations to demand a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Biden’s ramping up of vaccine donations around the world also follows what critics saw as a long period of hoarding.
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Biden’s meeting on the sidelines of Nato with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan promises to be especially prickly.
Biden has irked Erdogan, a sometimes Trump ally, by highlighting Turkey’s dire human rights and recognising the Ottoman Empire’s genocide against the Armenians. Washington risks “losing a precious friend,” Erdogan has warned.
In his first three summits, Biden can at least be assured of a friendly audience. Not so much in Geneva.
Blinken said the White House’s main goal with Russia does not go beyond making relations “more stable”.
The White House sees extension of the New START nuclear arms treaty in February as an example of where business can be done. Biden also needs the Kremlin to make progress with Iran, which is close to Russia.
The list of tensions, however, is far longer.
Biden blames Russia for the massive SolarWinds cyberattack, election interference, and at the very least harbouring criminals behind ransomware attacks against the vital Colonial fuel pipeline and the US subsidiary of Brazilian meatpacking giant JBS.
Sullivan said the Putin summit was going ahead “not despite our countries’ differences” but “because of our countries’ differences”.
Russian expectations are similarly low, said Dmitry Suslov, a professor at Moscow’s HSE University.
“We should not expect any sort of US-Russian reset,” he said. “Relations will remain confrontational.”
For all his tough talk, Biden faces limitations, as illustrated in the US decision to drop sanctions meant to stop the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, now set to feed Germany with Russian natural gas.
However the Biden-Putin meeting goes, it is unlikely to end with the kind of performance Trump put on in 2018 after meeting the Kremlin leader in Helsinki.
Trump shocked even his own Republican loyalists by saying he believed Putin over his own US intelligence agencies that Russia had not interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
This time, the idea of a joint Biden-Putin press conference itself is up in the air.
“I know that we will make President Biden available,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said. “I certainly hope my Russian counterparts make President Putin available.”
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Trip schedule
June 9: Biden and his wife, Jill, depart on Wednesday morning from Washington. Their first stop in the UK will be at Royal Air Force Mildenhall to greet US Air Force personnel stationed there. Mildenhall is home to the 100th Air Refuelling Wing, the only permanent US Air Force air refuelling wing in the European theatre.
June 10: Biden will meet British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in Cornwall, England, site of the G7 summit, to reaffirm the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom.
June 11: Biden will attend the G7 summit for three days starting on Friday, to work on US policy priorities such as the economy and allied unity.
June 12: Biden will attend more G7 summit meetings in Cornwall and have bilateral meetings with fellow G7 leaders.
June 13: Biden will finish his meetings at the G7 summit. Afterward, the Bidens will meet Britain’s Queen Elizabeth at Windsor Castle. Then Biden will travel to Brussels for the night.
June 14: Biden will meet Nato leaders and have a private meeting with the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
June 15: Biden will hold more Nato meetings and then fly to Geneva for the night.
June 16: Biden will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, their first face-to-face meeting since Biden became president.
Additional reporting by Reuters
