Biden Believes ‘America Is Back,’ but US Allies Aren’t So Sure
Voice of America
In his meetings with G-7 and North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies in Europe last week, President Joe Biden missed no opportunity to repeat his assertion that “America is back” on the world stage and ready to take the lead in addressing big problems like climate change, rising authoritarianism, cybersecurity and the distribution of coronavirus vaccines to low- and moderate-income nations.
Among other things, Biden rallied the leaders of some of the world’s largest democracies behind a plan to create a global infrastructure fund, called the Build Back Better World Partnership, or B3W, in a specific bid to challenge China’s eight-year-old Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The name of the program is a very deliberate callback to Biden’s campaign motto that promised he would help the U.S. “build back better” from the devastation of the pandemic. In announcing the program, he described it as “more equitable” than China’s BRI, and said B3W “will not only be good for the countries, but ... good for the entire world and represent values that our democracies represent, and not autocratic lack of values.”Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. Fire rages following an Israeli strike on an area designated for displaced Palestinians, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, in this still picture taken from a video, May 26, 2024. Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. A member of the bomb squad of the Israeli police collects debris after a rocket fired by Palestinian militants struck in the Israeli city of Herzliya on May 26, 2024.
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, right, and Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, left, leave a podium after marking Independence Day in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 26, 2024. Demonstrators with Georgian national and EU flags rally during an opposition protest against a foreign influence bill as they mark their country's Independence Day, in the center of in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 26, 2024.