What Joe Biden’s Global Legacy Might Be

For the past 16 years, we in Europe have witnessed the Merkelization of the continent: Resentments bubble away; crises are managed, not resolved; time is played for; reform is incremental and then, suddenly, unilateral; and, in the end, stasis reigns. After a largely uneventful G20 summit in Rome, and with world leaders settling into their hotels in Scotland for the UN Climate Change Conference known as COP26, it looks like we are beginning to see the Merkelization of the world, as well.

For outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel, such a scenario would be a fitting end to her time in power. Since the onset of the eurozone crisis in 2011, Merkel, thanks to German economic power, has stood alone as the decisive actor in Europe. She has held the continent together—weathering the storms of Donald Trump’s presidency, Brexit, and Vladimir Putin’s aggression—while protecting and enhancing German wealth and power. After 2011, Merkel and Germany have been too strong not to lead, yet they have also been reluctant leaders, preferring to react, preserve, and buy time, rather than pay the costs of strategic reforms.

In a globalized world, this kind of provincialism and incrementalism has merit. The unipolar world of American leadership that came before, where crises were dealt with, was hardly a model of good governance, calm, and strategic thinking. That world—the one that came into being with the collapse of the Soviet Union—gave us the rise of an authoritarian China, the reemergence of an expansionist Russia, a rolling calamity in the Middle East, the great financial crisis, and Trump.

The problem is that the new world—one with an array of powers, each pursuing narrow advantage and lacking a sense of grander strategy—creates a kind of double inaction. In the case of Europe, Merkel’s Germany has, for the most part, not been prepared to act until it has little choice, but neither has it been prepared to deal with the consequences of its inaction: emerging crises, regional imbalance and grievance. Outside Europe, Merkel’s Germany has also resisted making choices between its security and economic interests, and resents pressure from Washington that it must. “Both of the heads on Germany’s double-headed eagle are supposed to look out to the world,” Tom Tugendhat, a member of Britain’s Conservative Party and the chair of Parliament’s foreign-affairs committee, told me. “Today, the reality is both are facing in.”

Isn’t that where we now are with the United States and the rest of the West?

Over the course of this year, U.S. President Joe Biden has traveled to the G7, the G20, and now, COP26. At each conference, he has sought to mend fences smashed by the previous occupant of the White House, promising that under his administration American leadership is back, but also that American respect for its allies is back too. And although there has been a collective sigh of relief from Biden’s fellow leaders, the sense that remains…