Some of Trump’s foreign policies are worth sustaining. Biden should keep that in mind.
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W.H. Auden’s famous 1937 poem “Spain” about the civil war there includes this memorable refrain: “Yesterday all the past. . . . But to-day the struggle.”
Today, the struggle for President Biden begins with domestic policy. And it would be nice if Americans could remain inwardly focused for a while, meditating on Biden’s inaugural theme of unity and national reconciliation.
But the world won’t wait. It needs (and mostly wants) a strong United States back in harness. Biden’s task is partly just rebuilding after Donald Trump’s demolition derby. Biden rightly pledged in his inauguration address on Wednesday: “We will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again.”
Restoring support abroad won’t be easy, even with our friends. A poll released this week by the European Council on Foreign Relations registered enthusiasm for Biden’s victory, but 6 in 10 Europeans said they think the U.S. political system is broken, and that China will become more powerful than the United States over the next decade.
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