President Joe Biden headed to the airport for his four-day trip to Asia today, right after his short ceremony with the President of Finland and Prime Minister of Sweden, welcoming those two nations’ formal application to join NATO.
In a press briefing the day before, his National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, hyped these two back-to-back events as displaying the United States as a king-of-the-world wannabee:
The President’s first trip “to the Indo-Pacific,” following upon the “historic … watershed moment in European security” represented by “two nations with a long tradition of neutrality … joining the world’s most powerful defensive [sic] alliance … comes [at] a pivotal moment. President Biden has rallied the free world in defense of Ukraine and in opposition to Russian aggression. He remains focused on ensuring that our efforts in those missions are successful. But he also intends to seize this moment — this pivotal moment — to assert bold and confident American leadership in another vital region of the world: the Indo-Pacific….
“While he’s in Tokyo, President Biden will also launch a new, ambitious economic initiative for the region: the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework…. We think this trip is going to put on full display President Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy and that it will show, in living color, that the United States can at once lead the free world in responding to Russia’s war in Ukraine and at the same time chart a course for effective, principled American leadership and engagement in a region that will define much of the future of the 21st century….
