Among the many crises triggered by Donald Trump’s presidency, there is one that has been largely overlooked by the 2020 election. It also just happens to be the one that Joe Biden has spent his entire career preparing for: the crisis of global confidence in American leadership.
The former vice-president spent 34 years on the Senate foreign relations committee, and another eight years in the Obama White House with an expansive brief on foreign affairs including the American withdrawal from Iraq. Today he stands as the presidential nominee with the most formidable foreign policy credentials of any candidate since George HW Bush in 1988.
But at a time when respect for American leadership has largely collapsed around the world, Biden’s worldview, and the foreign policy he would likely pursue, is mostly an afterthought in an election dominated by the antics and outrages of the incumbent in the White House.
Biden’s team is under no illusions about the scale of the diplomatic…
