Vaccine diplomacy : the best first move for the Biden administration to reset relationships

Abstract

As the Biden transition team plots out how best to rebuild the alliances and international cooperation mechanisms that were so badly eroded during the Trump presidency, one early proposal floated by some of Biden’s key advisors seems likely to rise to the fore, and could even serve as the centerpiece of a new “Biden Doctrine” in the first 100 days. According to Jake Sullivan, a top Obama era official routinely mentioned as a possible National Security Advisor, Biden should, “put values and democracy back at the center of US foreign policy… Rally[ing] like-minded free democratic nations in common purpose to both push back against authoritarian competitors and also construct and build the kind of long-term durable solutions for the challenges that afflict us all.” Concretely, this may manifest itself in a US-convened global “summit of democracies” possibly based on the D-10 model, the world’s 10 largest democracies, a concept the Atlantic Council has advanced through the work of its Scowcroft Center.