Biden, Diplomacy and the U.S. Place in the World
A Q&A with Robert B. Zoellick on Henry Kissinger, Vannevar Bush and the meaning of power.
Bob Zoellick and one of his good friends named Bush.
Photographer: Ron Sachs/Getty Images
“The world is watching today,” President Joe Biden announced proudly at Wednesday’s inaugural. “We will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again. … We will lead not merely by the example of our power but by the power of our example.” Hopeful words, but let's also hope the new president understands that simply removing Donald Trump from the equation will not repair those frayed alliances or restore American power.
It helps to look at these things through the long arc of history. And, being clever, I found someone to do that for me: Robert B. Zoellick, one of the most important foreign-policy thinkers and doers of the last four decades. He has been a top aide to Secretary of State James Baker in President George H.W. Bush’s administration, U.S. trade representative and deputy secretary of state under President George W. Bush, and from 2009 to 2012 was president of World Bank. In other words, he’s been at the red-hot center of things from the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union to the darkest days of the Iraq war and the global economic meltdown.