Given that most of the world hates Dona;d Trump nearly as much as I do, it’s not surprising that America’s standing in the world has increased greatly now that he’s out of the White House.
The Washington Post sums up the results of recent polling:
Trust in the U.S. president fell to historic lows in most countries surveyed during Trump’s presidency, according to Pew.
Under Biden, it has soared. In the 12 countries surveyed both this year and last, a median of 75 percent of respondents expressed confidence in Biden to “do the right thing regarding world affairs,” Pew found, compared with 17 percent for Trump last year. Sixty-two percent of respondents now have a favorable view of the United States vs. 34 percent at the end of Trump’s presidency.
So, good news, right
Not according to J.D. Rucker at the Liberty Daily, who takes aim at the polls in a post titled “Foreign Favorability of Biden Skyrockets and Mainstream Media Pretends this is a Good Thing.”
As Rucker sees it, this is because Biden is kind of a sucker; and people in other countries think they can basically just kick him around.
President Trump’s departure from the White House has been met with joy by the international community. It’s not because they have supreme confidence in Joe Biden’s ability to make America strong. It’s because they know that, like Barack Obama, Biden will weaken America. The international community loves this. They love a United States President who panders to their demands like Obama and Biden. They love an America with leadership that is “woke.” In other words, they love it when America is on the decline.
Biden’s America-last policies have already resonated with the international community, according to a new poll by Pew Research. This bodes ill for the United States as Biden’s skyrocketing popularity among foreign nations means they realize just how much weaker America is right now.
Yeah, that’s just not how any of this works. Foreigners hated Trump because he was making the world a more dangerous place, throwing out years of diplomacy with Iran, weakening NATO and other international bodies, allowing himself to be bamboozled by anyone willing to flatter him, from Vladimir Putin to Kim Jong-Un. I could go on and on. It’s no wonder that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands on the Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds to midnight under Trump. It’s going to take a lot of work on Biden’s part to even begin to undo the damage Trump did to our country and the world — and it’s not clear when and if our allies will be able to fully trust us again.
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Honestly, it’s kind of terrifying that so much of our international reputation (at least among our “allies and partners,” the only people surveyed) is based on the current spokesperson rather than our actual foreign policy, most of which is set by Congress and hasn’t in fact changed much.
We haven’t changed much, with Mr “Nothing will fundamentally change” at the helm.
DAFAQ!!! I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
I’m enjoying the reports from the G7 where everyone’s happy to see Biden (because at least he’s a grownup and believes in climate change), and Boris Johnson is trying sooo hard, except he’s just Tr*mp with a posh accent and Biden’s not having any more of *that* TYVM, plus Biden’s firmly in favor of the Good Friday Agreement re the 2 Irelands.
The amount of Right-Wing’s Conspiratoid Paranoia. and their Injection of it into legions of the Brainwashed/Gullible/Ignorant/Resetful is Truly Frightnig
OT, but does anyone here know of a Firefox add-on or something similar that allows ignoring or overriding the “cache-control” header on a web page?
Well said, Dalillama.
Well, it’s no secret that the USA isn’t always a reliable ally. Any Filipino can tell you that. No government of any country, with any sense, fully trusts their foreign allies. That’s why it’s worth assuming that allies spy on each other as much as they do on their rivals.
@ kevin
As Lord Palmerstone said, Britain has no permanent allies or enemies; just permanent interests.
Speaking of international relations; if you’re Cornish then this is hilarious…
It’s simple : if it’s done by Biden, it’s bad. If it’s done by Trump, it’s good.
They just don’t say it out loud.
As a Canadian, I can tell you that the majority of us are feeling better about Biden being in charge just because he’s not the flaming-so-bright-he-can-be-seen-from-space idiot that Trump was. Which is a really low bar to pass but we’ll take what we can get.
“Speaking of international relations; if you’re Cornish then this is hilarious…”
As a proud Cornish maid, I concur that this cracks me up 😀
The only good thing to be said about Ginsters is “at least they’re not Pukka.”
There. If that had been the entire article there would have been some truth in it.
Biden is a relief after Trump, but it’s like saying a bit of moldy bread is a relief after 4 years of eating radioactive sewage. And I’m mentally preparing for more sewage to come.
As a Canadian, I’ll start extending trust to your government when you reform the system such that a virulent minority can’t overtake the controls of government through shenanigans, and you prosecute the ones who are doing it now. Most of what they are doing is fully legal (if unethical), and that means laws will have to change.
@Dalillama : there’s actually two rational reason for reputation being better now.
The first one is that the foreign policy that concern allies and partner during Trump was very different from the one during Obama, unlike what you say. Now, both will randomly bomb the shit out of random countries and support random coup d’état for the sake of it, but the aforementioned allies and partner mostly don’t care about that. They do care quite a bit more about, say, the Iran or North Korea situation. Maybe you can chalk that to different congress too, but there’s a bigger correlation with presidential terms than with congress terms.
The second one is that the congress have shown time and again to not stop truly stupid ideas. Trump will try to push a lot of stupid, random, problematic ideas, and some will get throught and cause trouble. Biden is a lot more predictable, and overall less likely to do things harmful to his allies ; most of the one he will do everyone will be expecting that.
You can argue it’s two different flavor of rotten. And it is, but it’s not the same. It might be mostly the same depending on your country, like if you’re in the Sahel you probably won’t see much of a difference, but that’s not true everywhere.
This Liberty Daily person sounds like the kind of person who honestly thinks under Trump there was eternal world peace, with Russia, China, and North Korea all singing Kumbaya with the US, while eternal peace reigned in the Mideast between Israel and Palestinian. Then within hours of Biden taking over the country the Mideast is a war zone with everyone fighting to the death, while the other three countries now hate the US enough to do anything to see us dead.
(Don’t laugh; that is a paraphrase one of my regular customers told me about the state of the US after Biden was sworn in. That things are a tad more complicated than that is something that he wouldn’t hear.)
Without surprised, self-centered, greedy and anti-social people view international relations as a zero-sum game and thus see that if other people like you, it means you are in trouble. The reason why allied country seem to be happy of Biden, is that they believe, not without cause, that he won’t torpedo international institutions like the WHO, the Paris Accord, the Iran Nuclear Deal, maybe even join back the UNESCO. They also fear less being struck by tariffs over some petty dispute despite the fact that Biden pursues a protectionist foreign policy (though that’s been the case for the US for the last three POTUS).
@Ohlmann
That’s exactly my point, yes.
There is no “Iran situation”, and there’s even less of a “North Korea situation,” at least in terms of legitimate international politics. To start with the latter case, North Korea barely has the military capacity to reach South Korea, let alone harm anyone else. Their missile technology is laughable; they couldn’t reliably hit the Pacific Ocean if it wasn’t for gravity. North Korea’s internal state is a thing technically known as not our fucking problem, where ‘our’ includes all of NATO and indeed the entire world not consisting of Korea. The likelihood that foreign intervention could improve the situation on that peninsula at the present time is nil. The same goes for US policy towards Iran: it’s based entirely on getting vengeance for the overthrow of the US’ chosen dictator, and even if the US actually wanted to improve the situation in Iran, the only way we could do so is by leaving them the hell alone for once.
You missed an important detail. Fucking over the Kurds is a bipartisan position, for example. As far as asinine and counterproductive ideas, Congress is the source of them and thus can’t be expected to stop them, nor is Biden likely to.
It’s not two different flavors of rotten, it’s precisely the same flavor with a different colorant added. Neither Americans nor the victims of America will see a difference, and it remains terrifying how strong an international grip white supremacy still has.
Less orange?
Seriously, I agree with you. I’m not USian and if I were I would have voted for Biden, but mostly because I’d have voted for pretty much anyone who wasn’t Trump. I’m really fucking dubious that he will seriously challenge any of the USA’s entrenched problems and problematic behaviours. This is coming from an outsider’s perspective of course.
Tl;dr: I would still be very scared if I were to travel to the USA.
@Dalillama : You talk too much in generic terms to try to prop your points. Trump have willfully changed stuff in a random way toward Iran (no more deal, and once again complicated international sanctions, which cause no end of problem), and have tried to change stuff with Korea (mostly to no avail, which sort of is a relief). That you think it’s not the problem of western country don’t change that theses two countries actively impact western countries, so change in politic toward them impact more people than them.
While bombing random muslim countries is something that won’t change as you note, the people from whom the opinion of America have changed aren’t theses targets ; they are impacted on their everyday life by a ton of decisions, most of them completely unrelated to that.
So, yes, two different politic. The fact it don’t change the point you would like to change don’t mean there’s no differences. In particular, you forget to remember to look from the lens of the people they asked their opinion of.
I will say, as a trans American, while Biden has much left to be desired, and definitely isn’t championing the systemic changes we need as a country, I do really appreciate that the federal government is no longer explicitly antagonistic to me existing. I know that’s not a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, but it does make me a little dubious of those who say there’s no absolutely difference between Biden and Trump.
@Ohlmann
Once again, it’s not that I don’t understand their perspective, it’s that the said perspective is morally and to a great extent factually wrong.
@Tessarion
As a trans American, if the current administration actually wanted to keep trans people alive, they’d be pushing for universal healthcare. Whether you can hypothetically sue over healthcare discrimination or not is largely irrelevant, because most people can’t afford to, and those who can usually lose.
Hmm. I guess I wouldn’t say there’s no difference, and I don’t think that’s quite what Dalillama meant either(?). Rather that the system overall has a…maybe “momentum” is the word, or perhaps “rut”. Biden is better but then is that a high bar? Again, I’m not in the USA so my opinion is not going to be the best-informed. (I actually didn’t have much awareness of Biden’s positions on trans people, for example; that’s good that things are improving for you).