The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has suggested that Joe Biden’s relationship with Europe has “turned sour”, indicating that the elderly Democrat is losing the devotion of the international media as well as world leaders post-Afghanistan.
While the publicly-funded BBC is officially an impartial news outlet — indeed, it is supposed to be legally required to be so by its charter — it is widely regarded as having an institutional left-liberal bias not only by Brexiteers and conservatives but by some of its own longest-serving broadcasters, and its content was biased against Donald Trump by its own admission on occasion.
However, a recent analysis piece suggesting the end is here for Europe’s love-in with President Biden, who did not challenge EU member-states’ “delinquent” NATO payments or unfair trade policy the way his predecessor did, may signal that they too will no stick to the alleged pro-Biden bias of old post-Afghanistan.
“[I]n capitals across Europe, from London to Berlin, Afghanistan has soured the sweetness of Joe Biden’s honeymoon,” the BBC reported, noting that it was “not the fact of the withdrawal itself that has rankled” but the Biden administration’s “lack of coordination with allies, particularly since the NATO mission at the time of the drawdown comprised troops from 36 countries, three-quarters of whom were non-American” — a perhaps especially painful observation for President Biden, who has tried to shift the blame for the botched withdrawal onto President Trump by seeking to emphasise the fact that he pushed for it over the inept way a Democrat-run government executed it.
The BBC did not shy away from highlighting some of the scathing remarks that have been levelled at Biden in the wake of the Afghan fiasco, such as Czech president Milos Zeman branding it an episode of “cowardice” and lamenting that “the Americans have lost the prestige of a global leader”.
Even dyed-in-the-wool globalists such as Carl Bildt, the former Prime Minister of Sweden, EU envoy, UN Secretary-General envoy, and current WHO special envoy, would not give the British broadcaster a positive review of the 78-year-old American leader.
“[Biden’s] ‘America is back’ suggested a golden age in our relations. But it didn’t happen and there’s been a shift in a fairly short period of time. The complete lack of consultations over the withdrawal has left a scar,” he said.
“Expectations for a revival of the transatlantic relationship have been deflated,” he added.
Biden losing his cheerleaders among Europe’s liberal “centrist” establishment are compounded by the fact that he came into office having already thoroughly alienated conservative-led NATO allies such as Poland and Hungary, of course, not least due to his having branded them “totalitarian regimes” like Belarus, led by the quasi-Stalinist Alexander Lukashenko.
The Hungarian government, in particular, hit back at “the continuous lecturing, accusations and attacks” of Democrat administrations over the years, with the country’s foreign minister saying that “It would be great if Joe Biden could tell us why he put pressure on the Ukrainian government to fire its chief prosecutor, and how all of this related to the investigation into his son’s Ukrainian energy deals grinding to a halt” in a stunning public rebuke.