How Cities Can Help Biden Repair American Diplomacy
The president-elect can build on the alliances and networks forged by cities and mayors over the last four years to restore U.S. relationships globally.
The global alliances and networks forged by major cities like New York can help President-elect Joe Biden repair America’s damaged international relationships.
Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg
One day after the U.S. presidential election, as Americans waited to see if Joe Biden had succeeded in his bid to defeat an incumbent president, the United States formally left the Paris Agreement on climate change. It is hardly the only international agreement or partnership that the outgoing administration exited, weakened or ignored. Over four chaotic years, the current administration undermined ongoing international climate negotiations, ignored the U.S. commitment to the United Nations 2030 Agenda of Sustainable Development, and cast doubt on long-standing alliances, such as NATO. It’s no wonder that the U.S. image — as an asset and a component of so-called soft power — is at a nadir.
But President Donald Trump did not succeed entirely in destroying the U.S. commitment to the Paris Agreement: In 2017, more than 300 U.S. cities pledged to uphold the climate pact at the local level. Similarly, many cities have been engaging in a variety of efforts that have helped to preserve, or to build anew, transnational relationships that the White House seemed determined to shred. While the administration attacked the United Nations at nearly every turn, New York City has driven the voluntary local review movement for the Sustainable Development Goals. And the City of Los Angeles built new and stronger relationships with Mexico, the U.S.’s second-largest trading partner, even as that White House vilified the country and its people. So-called “anarchist jurisdictions” turn out to be capable of making coherent, mature foreign policy.