In the twilight of his term, Biden greets global audience weary of war and wary of US politics

President Joe Biden has been in contact with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz dozens of times formally and in person to further a friendship that strives for democracy and common values.

In return, Scholz spent considerable political capital on Biden’s behalf: Releasing a Russian murderer from a German prison as exchanging him with three Americans from Russia, easing previous restraints set in the defense pact to let Ukraine to use German supplied tanks against Russia and supporting Biden following a debate which doomed his presidential run.

PBS reported that Scholz said in an interview prior to NATO’s 50th anniversary in Washington: “It would be a big mistake I believe to underestimate the president”.

Now, with Biden out of a race that remains razor thin and has allies on edge, Scholz will extend a welcome to the American president to Berlin, a visit to prioratize critical foreign policy agendas and for more than a presidential warm farewell of a president who found friendship as the solution to conflicts.

During the visit, Biden will hold meetings with Steinmeier and Scholz, as well as introduce a new US-German exchange program and dialogue on the “coordination” of investments with the development of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, the official said.

It will be an honor for Biden to discuss with the chancellor for the time partnership between both leaders and the future collaboration for free democracies.

Besides meeting with the German leadership, Biden will also be attending a European Quad meeting where he will be meeting the leaders of the UK, France and Germany to address “emergent” global issues including Ukraine’s victory plan and the current conflict in the Middle East according to the senior official.

Still, the meetings will occur at a sensitive time: American voters will head to the polls in less than three weeks; Russia’s war in Ukraine has reached new heights in recent days; and Israel is in the middle of a conflict with Hamas, having launched airstrikes to dismantle the group’s terrorist infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. But Biden will not secure new policies out of the visit, according to the White House.

Joe Biden’s concept of Minilateralism

Biden will have expanded talks with Scholz and his team as well as with the leaders of France and Great Britain that downgraded from the official state visit planned before Hurricane Milton hit the US during one officially Jeremy Dayton only meeting. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was supposed to attend the meeting before it was scheduled.

The agenda for the summit, officials say, will feature two key priorities for the leaders: The increasing difficulties for Ukraine where partners disagree on how to meet Zelensky’s ‘Victory Plan’, increasing calls for longer range weapons and the worsening conflict in the Middle East as Israel plans its forthcoming reprisal for the latest Iranian ballistic missile attack.

As the “European Quad,” as Western officials have called it, is one of the smaller coalitions that Biden relied on to get a consensus, Europeans remain cautious about large international organisations because of popularist strains across the Atlantic.

Rather, Biden has chosen “minilateralism,” or as foreign policy analysts have now defined Biden’s approach to handling various groups of like-minded nations.

On the policy front, the Biden administration has used this approach to rally support for a package targeting Russia and, more recently, Iran; tariffs and export restrictions on China, with which the United States recently overtook Germany in trading partners; and hundreds of billions of dollars for infrastructure and, in effect, to create a counter-weight to Beijing’s soft power in Africa and southeast Asia.

The practical work of these efforts has been helpful in solidifying partnerships – but not overcoming foes. Atlantic Council’s CEO Fred Kempe believes that Biden did not go far enough to prevent a new axis of evil from emerging in response to the Western democracies.

“However, it is this very caution that still promotes further Russian, Chinese, North Korean and Iranian misbehavior according to Kempe.” “So far, the US and allied response to the growing integration of these countries has not measured up to activities that would impede their goal.”

‘America is back … but for how long?’

As he enters what amounts to a farewell tour given the historical preparedness of Biden’s presidency to decline in its second term or remain at best stagnant, Germany is one of those countries where the president remains popular due to his polices.

Gallup International polling of views toward Biden in 34 countries revealed that 63% of the Germans have confidence in Biden. In Poland – another country where aides have discussed bringing Biden in to promote Ukraine support – approval is through roof at 70%.

In Kenya and the Philippines, the two countries where the administration has intensified efforts engaging and supportive of infrastructure projects to compete with that of China, the confidence level, according to Pew is at 75% and 77% respectively.

In other parts of the world, however, Biden has seen his approval rating decline, mainly because of his management of Middle East unrest after October 7.

“And it seems the perception on how he is handling that conflict is the reason for the surge seen between 2023 and 2024,” Richard Wike, the director of Global Attitudes Research at Pew. “But overall, he still tends to score better than Trump.”

With less than three weeks to the US elections, Trump will be the elephant in every room where Biden is meeting with leaders. Some viewers stated that they felt relieved backstage multiple times after Biden’s victory in 2020. Biden frequently recounts the response from another head of state at his first G7 summit when he proclaimed that “America is back:”: “But for how long?”

And as CNN has said, some overseas envoys had concerns behind the scenes after Biden stammered during a debate which seemed to give Trump another lead in the polls.

Now, as they contemplate how the war that has smoldered in Ukraine to threaten Europe for years slowly escalates, allies have to face the question of whether to support even more active actions to end the war faster, as Zelensky did here, in vain.

The deliberations come at much more delicate period than when President Barack Obama was reassuring friends in Germany and Greece during his last overseas trip that Trump, elected as the president only one week before, will not abandon them. Speaking alongside Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras at a news conference Obama attempted to point to some of the forces that made the voters on both sides of the Atlantic to seek change – but could only paint a picture of what was to come.

“We are going to have to guard against a rise in a crude sort of nationalism of ethnic identity or tribalism,” Obama told reported Thursday from Athens, the birthplace of democracy. “The future of the world is going to be shaped by how are we similar rather than on the basis of how are we different and how therefore we proceed to kill one other.”