To voters unsettled by President Trump’s disruptive approach to the world, Mr. Biden is selling not only his policy prescriptions but also his long track record of befriending, cajoling and sometimes confronting foreign leaders — what he might call the power of his informal diplomatic style. “I’ve dealt with every one of the major world leaders that are out there right now, and they know me. I know them,” he told supporters in December.
Brett McGurk, a former senior State Department official for the campaign against the Islamic State, said Mr. Biden had been an effective diplomat by practicing “strategic empathy.”
There’s that empathy again! We’ve talked about how Biden builds ties with his fellow Americans. But it’s not just the people at home.
How does he do it?
Mr. Biden’s political trademark was a blue-collar Everyman style that seemed more suited for state fairs than state dinners. But from the start of his Washington career, he prioritized foreign policy.
In 1979, a 37-year-old Mr. Biden met with China’s leader, Deng Xiaoping, in Beijing, and later recalled the value of seeing firsthand Mr. Deng’s “very real fear of the Soviets.” The same year he visited Moscow for nuclear arms talks with Kremlin officials including the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev. After a senior official was evasive about Soviet tank numbers, Mr. Biden offered a vulgar retort that a translator diluted to, “Don’t kid a kidder,” he later wrote.
Biden forges real relationships that make us all safer. For example, when in office Biden knew all the birthdays and the names of the grandkids of every foreign leader.
Mr. McGurk, the former envoy to the coalition against the Islamic State, recalled how Mr. Biden constantly asked after the health of the Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a cancer scare. The approach made it easier for Mr. Biden to navigate more difficult conversations, said Mr. McGurk.
Mr. Ross [Dennis Ross, a former aide] said that Mr. Biden’s method “builds a trust, and then you can say really hard things when you need to — and not just get a brick wall.”
But don’t let the relationship-building lead you to conclude Biden has a problem saying what needs to be said. He knows who are enemies are and he is tough as hell with them.
Mr. Biden has recalled he told Mr. Milosevic: “I think you’re a damn war criminal and you should be tried as one.” (Whether Mr. Biden uttered those exact words has been disputed, although Mr. [James] Rubin, who was present, called the encounter “the most intense grilling I ever saw an American give to a foreign leader.”) Biden came away convinced that Mr. Milosevic was “evil,” he later wrote, and that the United States should bomb Serbian forces.
He often recalls a 2009 meeting in Moscow with Vladimir V. Putin, then serving as prime minister, in which Mr. Biden says he placed a hand on the Russian’s leader’s shoulder and said: “Mr. Prime Minister, I’m looking into your eyes. I don’t think you have a soul.” Or the 2004 meeting in Libya with the dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi (“the strangest bird I think I’ve dealt with,” he recalls today), whom he called a “terrorist” to his face.
Mr. Haqqani, the Pakistani diplomat, recalled a 2009 meeting in Islamabad during which Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, suggested that the United States would abandon Afghanistan because its people were afraid to fight there. The comment sent Mr. Biden “into a moderate rage,” Mr. Haqqani said. “Don’t you think we are ever frightened!” he snapped. Mr. Zardari was impressed, but not offended, according to Mr. Haqqani.
“He can be blunt without being rude, which in diplomacy is a great asset,” said Mr. Haqqani, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington.
In this extraordinary GQ article from 2013, Jeanne Marie Laskas recalls a telling anecdote from one of many interviews she did with then-VP Biden:
He mentions a famous world leader. He won't say who, but it could have been any number of leaders from any number of countries across the globe—Karzai, Medvedev, Netanyahu—a moment, one of a million moments in a political career spanning four decades.
"We were trying to get a world leader to refrain from doing something. He came to Washington, and it was a big deal. Most people thought that if he had done what he was going to do, it would have caused a war to break out."
Send in Joe Biden. Arm around the world leader. Talk to the world leader. Soft voice, a few easy laughs, show some Joe Biden empathy to the world leader.
"And I convinced him to forgo it and do something else," he says. No big deal. It's what he does. Save a country or two from some miserable war. To the extent that all politics is personal, Joe Biden is the historic monument.
Joe Biden has a smart, emphatic, moral, and ethical view of foreign relations. He will build bonds but also listen to the clear-eyed people he keeps around him. Biden has the expertise, personality, and knowledge to lead our relationship with the world. American interests matter deeply to Joe, but so do human rights and the big picture.
Is there still more work to be done? 100%! Lots more work. But Biden has done so much more than many people guessed could be done. He deserves a lot of credit. AND he deserves to be re-elected.
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This is an entry in my ongoing series Boosting Biden.
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These posts are written by Goodnewsroundup (Goodie),
edited by Matilda Briggs, supported by 2thanks and WolverineForTJatAW
and reinforced by several other notable Kossacks!
As with all good things, it takes a village.
