President Joe Biden stated that the days of the US “rolling over” to Russian President Vladimir Putin are left as he ordered for the quick liberation of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. During his first visit to the State Department as president, Biden declared his strongest rebuke of Putin as large objections have burst out everywhere in Russia after the detention of Navalny. Thousands of protesters have been held.
The new American president was also attempting to make transparent to the world that he’s executing a dramatic shift away from Putin after the presidency of Republican Donald Trump, who evaded meetings and frequently tried to downplay the Russian leader’s malign activities. Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner, and Putin’s most defined political opponent were arrested January 17 upon returning from a five-month convalescence in Germany from a nerve agent poisoning, which he has criticized the Kremlin.
This afternoon, I’m visiting the @StateDept and delivering remarks on America’s role in the world. Tune in. https://t.co/zWG3UETxGX
— President Biden (@POTUS) February 4, 2021
“I made it clear to President Putin, in a manner very different from my predecessor, that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions – interfering with our election, cyber-attacks, poisoning its citizens- are over. We will not hesitate to raise the cost on Russia and defend our vital interests and our people,” said Biden, who last week addressed to Putin in what White House officials declared a firm first exchange.
Biden’s remarks on Russia came as he declared a broad reset of American foreign policy, including nullifying Trump’s rule to repeal US troops placed in Germany, finishing aid for Saudi Arabia’s military attack in Yemen, and ensuring to help LBGTQ rights as a foundation of diplomacy. Using the visit to plan how his foreign policy would vary from that of his forerunner, Biden asked for a reversion to the “grounding wire of our global power.” He tried to resist up the diplomatic corps, many of whom were dismayed by Trump’s policies and nature.
“America is back. Diplomacy is back,” Biden told State Department staff before delivering his foreign policy speech. “You are the center of all that I intend to do. You are the heart of it. We’re going to rebuild our alliances” With Biden’s most public diplomatic force of his young presidency, White House officials said he was expecting to give an unambiguous sign to the world that the United States is ready to continue its role as a global leader after four years in which Trump pressed an “America First” agenda.
He proposed a list of problems where he said he would convert Trump’s policies or fake different preferences, including dismissing the ex-president’s idea to remove about 9,500 of the approximately 34,500 US troops posted in Germany. The European nation treats important American military facilities like the Ramstein Air Base and the headquarters for US European Command and US Africa Command. Biden added that he would also declare a presidential memorandum that will handle defending lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals globally. As a nominee, Biden vowed to prioritize LGBTQ claims on the international platform, vowing to use “America’s full range of diplomatic tools” to support justice.
Biden also declared strategies to develop the cap on the number of refugees permitted into the United States to more than eight times the level at which the Trump administration moved it. Trump drastically decreased the cap to only 15,000. Biden’s plan would increase it to 125,000, exceeding the ceiling set by President Barack Obama before he left office by 15,000. The timing of Biden’s visit so early in his term is judicious, as much figurative as it is an acceptance to his interest in foreign policy and his years as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when he served Delaware.
“I promise I will have your back,” Biden told the department staff. “And I expect you to have the back of the American people.”Although Biden’s first nominations and appointments to senior positions at State have trended massively toward political representatives, the president and Blinken have promised to support career staffers. To that end, Biden stated he was selecting a longtime US diplomat for the Middle East, Tim Lenderking, as his special representative in Yemen. The movement comes as Biden is seeking a diplomatic conclusion to the Saudi Arabia-led military campaign that has increased humanitarian distress in the Arabian peninsula’s poorest nation. Lenderking, a career foreign service member, has worked in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere.
The State Department visit comes after Biden moved to stretch the last surviving treaty restricting Russian and American stockpiles of nuclear weapons, working just two days before the pact was set to lapse. It also happens days after a coup in Myanmar that has developed as an early verifying ground of Biden’s strategy to multilateralism. A Moscow court on Tuesday directed Navalny to prison for more than two and a half years, deciding that he infringed the duration of his ordeal while healing in Germany. Biden again called for Navalny’s release.” Mr. Navalny, like all Russian citizens, is entitled to his rights under the Russian constitution,” Biden said. “He’s been targeted, targeted for exposing corruption. He should be released immediately and without condition.”
Post Your Comments