Washington DC, SAEDNEWS, Feb. 19: In his first big appearance on the global stage, President Joe Biden promised the Group of Seven (G7) leaders during the virtual Munich Security Conference that the United States was recommitted to multilateral engagement, including the Paris Agreement on climate change.
“America is back,” he said on Friday, breaking away from his predecessor Donald Trump’s isolationist foreign policy that saw the US withdraw from significant global agreements and alliances.
“Our partnerships have endured and grown through the years because they are rooted in the richness of our shared democratic values. They’re not transactional. They’re not extractive. They’re built on a vision of the future where every voice matters,” he said.
Biden told US allies that they must stand firm against the challenges posed by China, Russia and Iran, saying Russia was seeking to weaken the transatlantic alliance and calling for a united front to counter what he called China’s abusive economic practices.
Biden arrived bearing gifts – a $4bn pledge of support for global coronavirus vaccination efforts, the re-entry of the US into the Paris Agreement climate accord and the prospect of a nearly $2tr spending measure that could bolster both the US and global economies.
A month after Biden took office, the world’s largest economy and second largest carbon emitter was formally back in the 2015 global agreement aimed at confronting the planet’s dangerously rising temperatures.
The re-entry of the United States means that the Paris accord again includes virtually every country after Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump made the United States the sole outlier.
Biden first met G7 leaders from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan by videoconference on Friday. He plans to join them for an in-person summit hosted by the UK this summer.
Al Jazeera’s James Bays, reporting from the United Nations in New York, said Biden’s speech signalled the US’s return to multilateralism.
“‘America is back’ was the main theme of the speech, a theme of global cooperation, and also of the US standing by Europe’s side”, he said.
“He was clear when he spoke about China and Russia that this new Biden administration was going to stand up to them – but also on key issues like COVID-19 and the climate crisis, work together with them, too” (Source: AlJazeera).
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