Some note that “In September 2017, Trump wrote a letter to the president of South Korea ending the free trade agreement the United States had with that country… Worried about the consequences of Trump’s gambit, neither [Gary] Cohn nor [Rob] Porter tried to talk him out of it. Instead, Cohn simply pilfered the letter. ‘I stole it off his desk,’ Cohn explained… When other copies of the letter were produced, Porter stole those. The gambit was that Trump would eventually forget that he wrote the letter. This proved to be the case…

“According to Woodward, ‘It was no less than an administrative coup d’état, an undermining of the will of the president of the United States and his constitutional authority.’… The narrative Woodward constructed is of brave government officials protecting national security from Trump’s worst instincts. Woodward glosses over the inconvenient fact that Trump was elected while Cohn and Porter were not… Joe Biden is not likely to face similar coups… [But] Unless there is a reckoning with the national security establishment, American democracy will be at risk.”
Jeet Heer, The Nation

“Few US elections were watched quite as anxiously as this one around the world. Widespread relief at Joe Biden’s victory is evident. Much foreign policy, unlike domestic, can be enacted by executive order, without the backing of the Senate. At the most basic level, he will be a president who is patient enough to read a report and knowledgeable enough to understand it; who grasps that America cannot prosper alone; who does not lavish praise on dictators while humiliating democratic allies; who listens to his own intelligence services over Vladimir Putin; and who will entrust Middle East policy to seasoned officials rather than his son-in-law…

“Mr Biden has already vowed to undo many of Mr Trump’s decisions, rejoining the Paris climate change agreement and rescinding the order to withdraw from the World Health Organization. He plans to extend the soon-to-expire New Start treaty with Russia – the last arms control agreement standing. Tackling the pandemic is likely to be a priority for his international diplomacy: signing up to Covax – the global initiative to ensure that poorer nations also get a share of coronavirus vaccines – would send a powerful signal. More than 180 countries have already done so, including China.”
Editorial Board, The Guardian

“A massive free trade pact signed by 15 Asia-Pacific nations on Sunday is the most tangible sign yet of how the US retreat from global leadership under Trump has forced other countries to make their own arrangements… the pact makes one of Washington's biggest fears a reality — that China will have an outsize say in creating the region's trade rules…

“This all creates a dilemma for Biden. How can he show that the US is ‘back’ in Asia without seeking to become part of the region's trading infrastructure? But how can he reconcile such a move with a political climate in the US — including in the Midwestern swing states that won him the election — that sees any form of trade deal as tantamount to throwing away US jobs? The Asia trade question is just one of the thorny issues reflecting the fact that while Biden's election represents a return to a more traditional US role in the world, things have changed since he last spent time in the White House.”
Stephen Collison, CNN

“Recent weeks have seen the deadly reemergence of long-dormant conflicts in the Caucasus, Ethiopia, and Western Sahara. These otherwise unrelated events have one key trait in common: cease-fires or political compromises enacted in the early or mid-1990s that are now breaking down…

“Take Ethiopia, which is on the verge of a full-blown civil war after fighting that broke out between the central government and the separatist authorities in the northern Tigray region on Nov. 4. The conflict is now spilling over into neighboring Eritrea as well. Hundreds have been killed, at least 25,000 have fled… No administration [ever] really knows, before it comes into office, what challenges it will face on the international stage, but it’s looking more likely that the reemergence of conflicts the world thought it had left behind 30 years ago may be among the bigger surprises Biden’s team will face.”
Joshua Keating, Slate