The problem with Joe Biden’s going to the United Nations to promise a “new era of relentless diplomacy” is that while he says that, he keeps showing our allies that he has no intention whatsoever of pursuing anything of the kind.
The Biden administration already has made it perfectly clear — clear above all to our allies — that this president and his team are hopelessly incapable of even partially liberating foreign policy from the day-to-day demands of domestic politics, which heave from one half-articulated priority to another, lurching from crisis to crisis.
Biden’s notional goal — building a free-world alliance to contain Beijing — is the right one, but it already is obvious that the Biden administration does not have what it takes to turn that rhetoric into strategy.
For more than a decade, Washington has been enjoying the perks of leadership without doing the work of leadership. That is not a situation that is going to last forever.