What Joe Biden’s Phone Calls Tell Us About His Foreign Policy

US President Joe Biden

Some time in 2012, social media did what social media does best — parodied and memed then President Barack Obama’s rendition of Carly Rae Jensen’s “Call Me Maybe

The song was a pop sensation with prosaic lyrics, but kept regurgitating the title of the song, “call me, maybe” — clearly a phone call meant a lot.

Dating to 2021 (no pun intended), but just like the millennial protagonist in the song, waiting for a call from a heartthrob, geopolitically all world leaders wait with equal anxiety and a sense of nervous optimism for the call from the Oval office, especially after a new President has been inaugurated.

President Joe Biden fielded congratulatory phone calls since November, post the elections, however a sense of schizophrenia ensued from some world leaders exacerbated by Donald Trump’s refusal to concede.

Come late January, that was a different story. President Biden reached out to his counterparts across the globe. Traditionally, the first calls do go to the closest allies, despite Biden’s predecessor making an unusual list of choices (breaking protocol and reaching out to Taiwan).

For Tel Aviv, or Jerusalem if you’re in the Knesset, that call didn’t come as expected. Instead, President Biden’s calls went along Trans-Atlantic lines to Canada, Mexico, the UK, France, Germany and even Russia.