After four years of Trump’s turbulence, America’s friends and foes now have to work with a Biden presidency

World leaders are scrambling to prepare for a Joe Biden presidency as the Democratic Party candidate finally clinched victory over President Donald Trump.

After Mr Biden’s confirmation as the president- elect on Saturday, it is already clear his approach will differ vastly from his predecessor.

Mr Biden has said returning to the Paris climate accord, restoring funding to the World Health Organisation withdrawn by Mr Trump amidst the global coronavirus pandemic, and rejoining the Iran nuclear deal would be among his first priorities.

He will also seek to bolster frayed relations with longtime allies and possibly draw new lines in the sand for other regional powers that have exploited the chaos of the Trump years.

In his official policy declarations, Biden has promised to “elevate” diplomacy over military power, restore relations “with democratic partners” across the world and reinvigorate multilateral efforts at arms control.  

“A Biden presidency would instantly restore both credibility and deterrence, especially in pushing back against the overtures of notorious dictators like North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin,” the Soufan Group, a consultancy founded by former FBI investigator Ali Soufan, said in a note.

“For the past four years, Donald Trump has cozied up to strongmen, praising human rights violators like Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan,” the note said. “By pursuing a transactional approach to foreign policy, Trump has devalued essential alliances like Nato while deferring to authoritarians like China’s Xi Jinping.”

A presidency under Mr Biden and his vice-president Kamala Harris will likely mean a return to some of the principles that guided the administration of Barack Obama, a relief to longtime US partners in Europe, Australia, Canada, and Asia.  

Prime Minister Boris Johnson may consider the defeat of a fellow rightwing populist as a blow, especially for those in his party who want a No Deal Brexit. But most senior officials serving in the UK foreign policy and security establishment are elated over a Biden win, which will likely mean a return to multilateral cooperation.  

“We certainly need to quickly ensure that the West again plays as a team.” German foreign minister Heiko Maas said in an interview published Friday. “We cannot allow ourselves the luxury of a wait-and-see approach when it comes to many international crises.”

He added, “The world needs the United States as a global force for order and not as a source of chaos.”

European leaders were being urged to seize the initiative and approach Mr Biden right away, said Tara Varma, of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “They need to go to him with an offer he can’t refuse on trade, digital technology, China, Russia, and security,” she said. “There is a sense of a restoration of values and a sense of a revived liberal international order that Europeans would welcome and could share with Americans.”

But for a number of key countries, Mr Trump’s apparent impending defeat, though long predicted in polls, will prompt readjustments and course corrections. Already, Egypt’s Mr Sisi, described by Mr Trump as his “favourite dictator,” has reportedly released hundreds of political prisoners in a move likely meant to curry favour with a new president who will be sworn in on 20 January.  

Turkey’s Mr Erdogan enjoyed strong relations with Mr Trump that will not carry over to a Biden administration. Ankara is facing possible sanctions over the involvement of a Turkish bank in money laundering deals with Iran as well as the purchase of Russian missile defence system that military experts worry could undermine Nato capabilities.  

“The bilateral relationship between the Turkish president and Trump acted as an insurance policy against some escalation scenarios that would have involved US sanctions against Turkey,” Sinan Ulgen, a Turkey specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said in an interview. “Turkey will have to revise its engagement strategy with the U.S. leadership, but because so much was invested in the relationship with Trump that revision may be more difficult to achieve than many other countries around the world.”

Mr Biden’s ascent will also likely be viewed negatively in Saudi Arabia, which had close ties to the Trump White House, and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman “could find himself marginalized as Washington takes stock of the pros and cons of its relationship with Riyadh,” said the Soufan Group.  

Mr Biden himself said he would “reassess” relations with Saudi Arabia if he were to be made president, halt US support for the Kingdom’s ruinous war in Yemen and hinted arms sales may be curtailed in a statement he released to mark the anniversary of the murder of Saudi dissident, and US resident, Jamal Khashoggi.  

It would mark a significant change from Mr Trump, who reportedly boasted to writer Bob Woodward that he “saved [MBS’s] ass” from Congress over FBI allegations the crown prince ordered the murder.  

Saudi experts were eager to downplay the change. Ali Shihabi, a Saudi analyst who is on the advisory board for MBS’s megacity project NEOM, spoke about “the perceived” closeness between Mr Trump and the crown prince as being a “double-edged sword” and insisted that Mr Biden “may find a meeting of minds with Saudi leaders that many may not be expecting.”

Israel will likely have to rein in some of its excesses, including chomping away at land internationally recognised as part of a future Palestinian state.  

Mr Biden and Ms Harris have made it clear they would “reverse” Trump’s steps supporting imminent annexation of swathes of the occupied West Bank and have slammed settlement activity as “choking off any hopes of peace”.  

In a move that will likely irritate Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu the former VP has pledged to rebuild relations with the Palestinian leadership by reinstating funding that Mr Trump cut off, re-opening the US consulate in East Jerusalem and working to open the offices of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in Washington.  

“I am sure we would see a different approach, but we dealt with that in the past and we can handle it in the future,” Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations told The Independent. Israel, he said would work to build bridges towards the new administration.  

“However, the main issue is Iran,” he added.  

Iranian officials have said it makes no difference to them which candidate wins the election. But clearly many in Tehran favour Mr Biden, who has promised to resume participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal that gave Iran sanctions relief in exchange for maintaining limits on its nuclear technology programme.  

Danon said a resurrection of the Iran deal would force Israel to “re-calculate its position on Iran”.

“We will have to think about other approaches to block Iran from the nuclear race. We have all options on the table, “ he added declining to go into further details.  

Meanwhile, Iranian officials were openly gloating about Trump's impending loss and what it will mean to their adversaries.

“If Trump loses, the Saudis will become orphans, particularly because [Joe Biden] has talked about stopping the war in Yemen," Iran's new ambassador to Yemen, Hassan Irloo, said in a television interview on Thursday.  

But less clear is how Biden will position itself in ongoing military engagements in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq -- and to a lesser extent in the horn of Africa and Yemen. Thousands of US troops remain deployed in conflict zones. On his website, Biden says “he will end the forever wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East” and “bring the vast majority of our troops home.” But armed groups such as the Taliban, al Qaeda and Isis could be emboldened by even talk of a US departure. `

Foggy also is how Mr Biden will grapple with country’s led by Trumpian leaders like India’s Narendra Modi, Brazil’s Javier Bolsonaro, and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, far-right populists accused of human rights violations and undemocratic tendencies. All enjoyed strong relations with Trump and will likely have to either change their ways or find some means of accommodation.  

Many of Mr Biden’s biggest foreign policy challenges will have no easy solutions and have perplexed US  leaders and policymakers for decades. Mr Biden has been vague on how he plans to address the rising challenge of China, which is making financial and diplomatic inroads across the world while seemingly attempting to encourage its model of authoritarian surveillance state across the world.  

Chinese leaders are hoping that a Biden win will restore some semblance of calm to trade relations that have been racked by tariff wars under Trump, but have publicly stayed silent about their preferences and have hinted at no policy shifts or potential olive branches to a new administration in the White House.

Russia, whose leader Vladimir Putin is admired by Mr Trump, will also have to shift gears and may not have the same leeway under a Biden administration, say western diplomats in Moscow. Still, a Biden presidency may break the logjam on arms control negotiations and spur Moscow to contribute more robustly to climate change talks lest it become an outlier.  

To Russia, Mr Biden is a known adversary who has been part of the Washington foreign policy establishment for decades, first as a senator and vice-president, and that may make the “reset” in relations that three different US presidents from both political parties have sought more difficult.  

“There is poisonous personal chemistry between Putin and Biden,” said Vladimir Frolov, a former Russian diplomat. “I see no changes in Russian behaviour whatsoever. Only one man can change it, and he has no reason to try.”