Back in business, but with new management

FOR much of the recent election campaign President-elect Joe Biden has criticised President Trump's foreign policy and pledged to reverse course.

Hence in an essay in the March/April 2020 edition of Foreign Affairs magazine, the former vice-president insisted that he would "undo" the global strategy (or more correctly the lack of a strategy) that guided the Trump presidency, and return to the principles that had driven America's approach to the world under his former boss, President Barack Obama.

Indeed, if you have paid attention to the assessments made by members of the foreign policy establishment in Washington, Democrats as well as Republicans, President Trump, a proclaimed nationalist and protectionist, has tried to eviscerate the foundations of the post-1945 liberal international order established by the United States, challenging the traditional internationalist foreign policy doctrine, together with the traditional support for a multilateral trade system, embraced by all Democrat and Republican presidents, including presidents Obama and George W Bush.