LONDON, June 10 (NNN-AGENCIES) — U.S. President Joe Biden arrived in Britain Wednesday evening, kicking off his first official overseas trip since his election victory.
The U.S. president touched down at the U.S. airbase at Royal Air Force Mildenhall in Suffolk in eastern England. He is expected to meet British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday ahead of the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Britain’s southwestern resort of Carbis Bay in Cornwall.
Leaders from Britain, the United States, Canada, Japan, Germany, France and Italy, plus the European Union, will gather Friday for the first in-person G7 summit in almost two years.
Britain, which holds the rotating G7 presidency, also invited Australia, India, the Republic of Korea and South Africa as guest countries to the three-day meeting. Economic recovery, global COVID-19 vaccine rollout and climate change are expected to be discussed during the meeting.
After the summit, Biden and his wife Jill Biden are set to meet British Queen Elizabeth II before heading to Brussels for NATO and EU-U.S. summits. He will then fly to Geneva to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
After touching down in the United Kingdom, at Royal Air Force Base Mildenhall, Biden delivered a fiery speech to American service members stationed there, telling them he was going to Geneva “to meet with Mister Putin to let him know what I want him to know.”
“I’ll travel to Geneva to sit down with a man I’ve spent time with before, President Vladimir Putin,” Biden said to cheers from many of the 1,000 airmen, their spouses and children in the audience. “We are not seeking conflict with Russia. We want a stable, predictable relationship. Our two nations share incredible responsibilities and, among them, ensuring strategic stability and upholding arms control agreements.”
It was Biden’s first stop on his trip to Europe, and he laid out many of the large themes of his trip: America’s return to the world stage, reaffirming support for NATO, and celebrating multilateralism to address the world’s greatest challenges — from the pandemic to global warming, from Russia to China.
“At every point along the way,” Biden said, “we’re going to make it clear that the United States is back and democracies of the world are standing together to tackle the toughest challenges and the issues that matter most to our future, that we’re committed to leading with strength, defending our values, and delivering for our people.”
His serious tone was in contrast to a joking moment Biden had with reporters before boarding Air Force One in Maryland. “Watch out for cicadas,” Biden warned them, saying he had to brush one off his neck. “I just got one, it got me.”
(A White House press charter was delayed late Monday due to cicadas disabling the plane’s auxiliary power unit, a Delta spokesperson said.)
The White House previewed his trip Tuesday.
The climax of the trip will be his first meeting as president with Russian Putin next Wednesday in Geneva. There, Biden will be forced to walk a fine line. He plans to deliver a strong warning that malign attacks in the cybersecurity, military and political spheres will no longer be tolerated, while avoiding any escalation in the already-tense relationship, seeking to restore “predictability” and “stability,” the White House has said.
Leading into that summit, Biden hopes to shore up the backing of long-term U.S. allies at the G-7 summit in the United Kingdom and at a NATO summit in Brussels. Wary after the shock of the Trump era, European allies will be looking to Biden to assure them the political upheaval of the past four years was more a blip than a true sea change, and that there’s substance behind Biden’s “America is Back” catchphrase.
“This is a defining question of our time: Can democracies come together to deliver real results for our people in a rapidly changing world? Will the democratic alliances and institutions that shaped so much of the last century prove their capacity against modern-day threats and adversaries? I believe the answer is yes. And this week in Europe, we have the chance to prove it,” Biden wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post Sunday.
Along the way, Biden will try to frame it all in a way that appeals to Americans at home. He’ll address a gamut of issues with world leaders, from climate change to taxes, from defense to trade, and work to persuade Americans that it’s all in service of his “Build Back Better” agenda; the push to recover equitably from the economic downturn of the pandemic.
“At the same time, I have also imposed meaningful consequences for behaviors that violate U.S. sovereignty, including interference in our democratic elections. And President Putin knows that I will not hesitate to respond to future harmful activities. When we meet, I will again underscore the commitment of the United States, Europe and like-minded democracies to stand up for human rights and dignity,” he continued. — NNN-AGENCIES
