At the recent Munich Security Conference, President Joe Biden reaffirmed his commitment to the Transatlantic partnership.
This year´s Munich Security Conference took place virtually on the 19th of February. This was the 57th time this event has been organized. Many world leaders took part in the event, including French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Joe Biden, and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Out of the named politicians, Joe Biden was the first to give a speech about the new transatlantic agenda, and immediately started it with “America is back, the transatlantic alliance is back”.
Biden proclaimed that America is fully committed to NATO. After four years of Trump's administration Biden chooses a more supportive way as a member of NATO. Trump had chosen not to cut American military spending, while simultaneously calling on other member states to increase their military funding to match NATO’s suggested budget amount of 2% of each nation’s GDP to go towards defense.
It was not Biden's first Munich Security Conference, as he has been a regular guest of its previous events, three times as Vice President of the United States. In 2019, he said “We will be back” in Munich, promising to restore the relationship and alliance between the USA, the European Union, and other NATO States. At this year's conference, he has just done that with paraphrasing Article 5 of the NATO Agreement in his speech by saying “An attack on one is an attack on all”.
Among other agendas, Biden´s focus also turned to current global problems, like the coronavirus pandemic and climate change. A few steps have already been made by the 46th President of the United States to move towards the direction of resolving these challenges by re-joining the Paris Agreement and the World Health Organization (WHO).
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