WASHINGTON (AP) – A new, old ritual takes shape at Biden’s White House, which begins with voluminous packs of information, playing war on “what-ifs” and Oval Office discussions on how to speak with this or that particular Ally or adversary of the United States.
Twelve times since he took office, President Joe Biden has called on a world leader after re-establishing what was a White House standard that Donald Trump had long maintained: vigorous preparation. Gone are the unnecessary digressions and the exaggerated insolation or harangue of fellow heads of state.
Changes in telephone diplomacy have dealt with both style and background, as Biden has tried to send the message to foreign leaders – many embittered by Trump’s habit of denying his counterparts and combining personal interests with U.S. national security – that Biden is determined to re-establish the United States ’relationship with the world.
“They have understood the idea that they need to manage alliances very well,” said Matthew Goodman, who was part of the White House National Security Council staff during the Barack Obama and George W. Bush administrations. “It’s a principle of central organization, as they try to turn the page on Trump and regain alliances. Call preparation is part of that. ”
Biden’s foreign policy ultimately, it will be judged by results rather than by form or preparation. But his approach so far is a marked change from Trump, who seemed to have a better relationship with autocrats like Russian Vladimir Putin and North Korean Kim Jong Un than with many historical allies in the United States. The former president often distanced himself from telephone conversations and the advice his aides provided for his dialogue with world leaders.
Transcripts of the leaked talks showed that days after his administration, Trump had diplomatic delicacies and hated Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. against publicly saying that Mexico would never pay for a southern border wall, a so-called signature of the 2016 president’s campaign. Trump also complained to Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull that he was forcing Trump to endure the “most unpleasant call” and that he was “worse than me” for detaining refugees on small islands near Australia.
In particular, the Republican president’s call in 2019 with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy sparked Trump’s ouster after it was revealed that Trump had asked him to “do us a favor” and investigate the activity of Biden and his son Hunter in the country.
As was done with previous administrations, Biden advisers usually prepare the president before calls with a written background information package, including summaries of the country’s recent developments, a summary of previous interactions with the leader, discussion points on issues to highlight, as well as “if asked” notes that help shape the president’s response to important questions that his or her counterpart might raise.
Trump aides soon realized that the president had little patience to report material or talk. At first, they offered him a six-page pre-brief with attachments before the calls, but it turned out to be too long. So they made a single page version. Later, Trump received note cards that typically contained only three conversation points.
“Sweating the details of every word of a note didn’t matter, because communicating the right message on behalf of the United States didn’t matter to the president,” said Frances Brown, who served as senior adviser to the National Security Council on the administrations of Trump and Obama. “For an NSC member, it invited an existential crisis.”
Last week, Biden called Chinese Xi Jinping for a two-hour conversation in which he raised his concern about human rights abuses and unfair trade practices. Earlier, in a call with Putin, Biden condemned the imprisonment of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and put pressure on his nation’s participation in an extensive cyberespionage campaign in the US.
Faced with the two calls, senior Biden administration officials warned reporters what the president planned to say, a step that meant helping to avoid possible efforts by Beijing and Moscow to control public messaging over the talks.
Biden’s first call as president was for Canadian Justin Trudeau, the prime minister whom Trump once despised as “very dishonest and weak.”
For Biden, the chat with Trudeau was partly a tough conversation and an easy joke. Biden explained his decision to stop construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, a Canada-US project that Trudeau supports. Biden also recalled Toronto’s family ties to his first wife and his 2016 visit to Ottawa when Trudeau honored him with a state dinner.
The two leaders discussed the pandemic of the coronavirus, the economy and two Canadians imprisoned in China in apparent retaliation for Canada’s arrest of a senior Huawei executive, according to Canadian officials.
A senior Canadian official familiar with the call said Biden seemed well prepared for the half-hour conversation and noted that it was longer than any call the prime minister made to Trump.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who spent years flattering and courting Trump, said in a CBS interview on Sunday on “Face the Nation” that his conversation with Biden was “fantastic” and that they had talked about issues such as climate change, NATO, Iran and more.
The White House remarkably posted an official photo de Biden met in the oval office with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and NSC Director General of European Affairs Amanda Sloat as she prepared for her recent call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
James Carafano, national security analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said Biden with his first round of calls has been primarily concerned with sending the message that has turned the page on Trump. But Carafano argues that the new president has largely avoided detailing what this essentially means for U.S. foreign policy.
“It really hasn’t gone any further than we’re going to work on the issue of friends and allies,” Carafano said.
Biden made clear his desire to return to diplomacy after Trump withdrew from the Obama-backed international nuclear deal with Iran.
All over the world, a lot of attention is also being paid to which countries have not yet entered Biden’s call list.
The new president has not yet spoken to Turkish Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had a close relationship with Trump, even as the United States and Turkey disagreed on a number of issues, including Syria’s policy and Turkey’s decision to to Buy Russia’s Advanced Anti-Aircraft Missile Systems | . The latter pushed Washington to expel Turkey from its F-35 stealth program.
Biden, on the campaign trail, called Erdogan an autocrat and, as vice president, was forced to offer official apologies in 2014 after suggesting Turkey played a role in the rise of the Islamic State group.
Former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon on Wednesday he tweeted the list of 10 countries he said he had received calls from Biden. “Now might be the time to call on the leader of #Israel, the closest ally of the #US?” Danon published.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said nothing should be read about the lack of a call so far. “It’s not a deliberate seventeen,” he said, and promised that a call would come to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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Gillies reported from Toronto.