After Joe Biden’s victory in the US election, most world leaders congratulated the president-elect. Those of Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau came minutes after the networks announced that Biden had passed the necessary threshold of large voters. Other world leaders, on the other hand, preferred to wait. Some took a few hours to congratulate Biden, others a few days, others haven’t yet. Many of these reluctant leaders lead countries which, for a variety of reasons, have reasons to be unhappy with the Democratic Party candidate’s election, and which are likely to struggle with the new administration.
Russia
Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has not yet commented on the result of the elections, and Dmitri Peskov, his spokesman, said the president considered it appropriate “to wait until the result of the elections is final”. There are good reasons to think that Putin is not happy with the result. Donald Trump has never made a secret of his admiration for the Russian president, while Biden, on the contrary, during the electoral campaign defined Putin as a “KGB hooligan”, and Trump as his “little dog”.
Trump has not always behaved like Putin’s little dog, indeed: he has maintained the sanctions against Russia imposed by his predecessor Barack Obama after the crisis in Ukraine, and he’s out from a major nuclear weapons treaty after accusing Moscow of not respecting it. Aside from that, however, Trump’s “America First” policy has been pro-Putin. The United States has neglected fundamental alliances within NATO and with the European Union, leaving Russia a lot of room for maneuver: we have seen again these days, when Putin alone negotiated an agreement to end the guerra in Nagorno-Karabakh, sharing power with Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey and leaving the United States out of negotiations. Biden, on the contrary, intends from day one to reconnect with NATO allies and reassure them that America “is back.”
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Brazil
Jair Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil, modeled his political career on that of Donald Trump, and his election in 2018 was seen as a sign of strength from populists around the world. Bolsonaro has cultivated his relationship with Trump a lot, and on the contrary he has already clashed with Joe Biden: during the first presidential debate, Biden said that the United States should have done more to convince the Brazilian government to protect the Amazon rainforest. Bolsonaro, who in recent years loosened forest protection measures, replied that Biden’s statements were “disastrous”. Even Bolsonaro has not yet congratulated Biden.
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UK
Donald Trump has always been a supporter of Brexit, and has repeatedly promised Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister, that as soon as the UK exits the European Union, a very beneficial trade deal would be ready for him (which will not is never materialized). On the contrary, Barack Obama, of which Biden was the vice president, implicitly said he was against Brexit: in an event in London, just before the referendum, he said that in the event of Brexit, the United Kingdom would be finished “.at the end of the row»In trade negotiations.
Since then, and following his appointment as prime minister in 2019, Johnson has nurtured relations with Trump. An article of the Times released a few days ago, with anonymous sources inside the Biden electoral committee, claims that the team of the president-elect considers “Boris and [Dominic] Cummings like Trump and Bannon ». Cummings is Johnson’s closest adviser, Bannon was the same for Trump before fall from grace. A Democratic Party source told al Times, referring to Biden’s committee: “They don’t think Boris Johnson is an ally, they think the UK is an ally.” Biden had also long ago defined Johnson as “a physical and psychological clone of Donald Trump”. Furthermore, the president-elect has Irish origins: a Brexit deal that jeopardizes the peace between Ireland and Northern Ireland would not be welcomed by his presidency.
It also seems that Biden has not forgotten about a racist offense made by Johnson against Obama in 2016: commenting on the fact that Obama had removed the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office, Johnson said that the then president had an “ancestral contempt” for the British Empire because it would be “partly Kenyan”.
Israel
The Biden presidency will not reduce US support for the state of Israel, which has always been strong, but it will likely reduce American alignment with the political agenda of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who in recent years has received political support from Trump in virtually every action he takes, and that he has benefited enormously from numerous administration decisions, including the relocation of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the exit from the Iranian nuclear deal, which Netanyahu considered dangerous for Israel’s security. The Trump administration has also pushed many Muslim-majority countries to recognize Israel.
Biden, who was one of the architects of the nuclear deal, said he intends to “recover the path of diplomacy” with Iran, and will likely reopen Palestinian diplomatic offices in Washington, which Trump had shut down.
– Read also: What the hell does Trump want to do with Iran?
Saudi Arabia
The Saudi monarchy had developed a very close relationship with the Trump administration, in some cases even personal: Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and his advisor on many issues, is particularly close to Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince. From a strategic point of view, much of this closeness was due to the common aversion towards Iran: as in the case of Israel, the Saudis were very opposed to the nuclear deal wanted by the Obama-Biden administration, and they celebrated Trump’s decision to get out.
Trump also did not retaliate against Saudi Arabia after the journalist’s murder Jamal Khashoggi, for which he was heavily criticized by Biden, who also promised to withdraw US support in the war in Yemen (fought by proxy between Saudi Arabia and Iran) and to “re-evaluateThe whole diplomatic report, because the United States, he said last October, must not give up their values ”in order to sell weapons or buy oil”. Saudi Arabia is the largest buyer of American arms. Despite the differences, however, the country has been an ally of the United States for decades, and a Biden administration is unlikely to drastically change that reality.
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Poland and Hungary
The two populist European governments have always had a condescending ally in Trump, who has filled the two countries with diplomatic courtesies: he visited Poland in 2017 and in August this year, Polish President Andrzej Duda was the first hosted head of state at the White House after the coronavirus crisis. Trump also hosted Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian Prime Minister, in the Oval Office a year ago, and complimented him on his “exceptional work”: “You are respected throughout Europe. Perhaps, like me, you are considered a bit controversial, but that’s okay, ”she told him. Uniting Trump to the rulers of Poland and Hungary are populism, anti-immigration policies and anti-Europeanism.
Orbán openly cheered on Trump’s re-election, and so did another European populist, Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa, who was probably the only head of government in the world to congratulate Trump and not Biden ( both Orbán and Mateusz Morawiecki, the Polish premier, congratulated Biden).
It’s pretty clear that American people have elected @realDonaldTrump @Mike_Pence for #4moreyears. More delays and facts denying from #MSM, bigger the final triumph for #POTUS. Congratulations @GOP for strong results across the #US @idualliance pic.twitter.com/vzSwt9TBeF
– Janez Jansa (@JJansaSDS) November 4, 2020
And China?
Not even Chinese President Xi Jinping has yet congratulated Biden. This does not necessarily have to be considered a negative sign. Even in 2000, when the US presidential election remained in doubt until December, then President Jiang Zemin waited until all disputes were resolved to congratulate the winner. It is therefore difficult to say whether or not China will benefit from the election of Joe Biden. On the one hand, Donald Trump’s trade war has been detrimental to the Chinese economy (including the American one), and especially for some companies such as Huawei. On the other hand, Donald Trump’s isolationism in foreign policy has benefited China: for example, Trump decided at the beginning of his mandate to leave the TPP, the free trade agreement between Pacific countries that the Obama administration had thought of, among other things, as a means of containing Chinese expansionism in the area. The US exit from the deal has greatly benefited China.
In general, partly due to Donald Trump’s policies, the attitude of the entire American establishment towards China has hardened a lot recently, and this is also true of Biden (the same has happened in China, in reverse ). The new president is likely to be a more reliable counterpart, but there are many severe proposals against China on his agenda.
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