Trump’s behavior on the world stage was always one of my greatest worries when he was president. National security and foreign policy is where most of the real power in the presidency lies and his clear, obvious, overwhelming ignorance of the world and the way it works was terrifying. You could have plucked anyone off the street in downtown LA and he or she would probably have had a better instinctive understanding of the issues than he did.
And it’s not that I think our “standing” and “prestige” is all important or that the system doesn’t need reforming or even, dare I say it, “disruption.” It probably does. But for better or worse (probably worse) the US is the greatest military power on the planet and when it acts irrationally it destabilizes the whole world. And in the nuclear age that is extremely dangerous. If we are to “disrupt” the system in some way in order to reset the world order we’d damn well better have a strategy and a well thought out goal because if things go sideways that could be the end of it all.
I don’t know if Joe Biden’s worldview is the best we can hope for in this situation but it’s damned sure better than what we had before. If nothing else we can breathe a sigh of relief that the Orange Ignoramus isn’t traipsing around the world representing the country any longer.