JERUSALEM — This is what international diplomacy has come to in the era of President Biden, otherwise known as POTUS.
A few months ago he traveled to Asia where, after leaving the TPP, he tried to form the IPEF and also met the Quad. After returning home, he traveled to Los Angeles to co-chair the SOA with the OAS. Then he went to Europe, where he met the G7 and NATO.
Now on his first trip as president to the Middle East, he seeks to reassure Israel about Iran’s talks with the P5+1 (aka the EC+3) and discusses the formation of a MEAD to defend against UAVs. for the first time a virtual meeting with the I2U2. And finally, he goes to Saudi Arabia to meet with the GCC+3, while quietly trying to get some more cooperation from OPEC Plus.
The alphabet soup of modern diplomacy has long needed a menu to keep track of its ingredients. But even though Washington tries to stop the spread of nuclear weapons around the world, it does nothing to stop the spread of new clusters of different countries and their associated abbreviations. Indeed, while Mr. Biden didn’t invent international relations jargon, he adds a decent clip to it.
Take the IPEF. That stands for the Indo-Pacific Economic Frameworka new trading bloc with a dozen countries with which he kicked off during his May trip to South Korea and Japana recognition that it would be politically untenable to rejoin the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a more comprehensive but controversial trade deal negotiated by President Barack Obama when Mr. Biden was vice president. Mr. Biden did not establish the SOA, or Summit of the Americas, a gathering of countries of the OAS or the Organization of American States, but he was the first president to organize it in nearly three decades.
In the Middle East, he is leading a new alignment between Israel and its Arab neighbors called the Middle East Air Defense Alliance, or MEADwhich would synchronize the various systems to defend against Iranian missiles, missiles and, yes, UAVs or unmanned aerial vehicles (read: drones).
And on Thursday, he will host the opening meeting of a new alliance of sorts, the I2U2, which may sound like a “Star Wars” droid but is in reality Israel, India, the United Arab Emirates and the United States. (Two is and two ounces, get it?)
Mr Biden arrived in Saudi Arabia on Friday, the most politically unstable moment of the trip. It won’t be a TGIF for him.