THE world has had enough of Donald Trump. He and his four years of "America First" and everything else last were too divisive for America and the world. President Joe Biden, it thought, will be a great change.
No, Biden isn't. If his first 100 days that ended on Thursday and his speech to Congress to mark the occasion are anything to go by, Biden appears to be just another version of Trump. For Trump's every "America First", we get Biden's "America is back".
If Trump's policy slogan was deceivingly domestic, Biden's is aggressively geopolitical. Like Trump, Biden has China and a few others on his mind.
West versus East is back with unexpected vengeance. We are glad that there wasn't a war in the first 103 days of Biden's presidency. With 1,257 days to go, just one slip will lead the world to war. Most wars are caused by missteps.
Biden's America is back, as harmless as it may sound, has the seeds of danger buried in it. Just like Herman Melville's messianic belief: "We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people — the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world."
No America, you do not "bear the ark of the liberties of the world". The United States isn't a redeeming state. It has much redeeming to do for itself to begin with.
Former president George W. Bush was Melvillesque, too. Look at the destruction he caused in Iraq and elsewhere bearing the so-called ark. The world doesn't want Biden to go to Congress to declare a war as some of his predecessors had done. He must go there to celebrate peace with China, Iran, Afghanistan and the Middle East.
True, it takes two to tango but America, which has had boot prints in most of the places, should take the initiative. One term may not be enough to end wars, but it is sure enough to make peace happen.
Take China. The US-China tense standoff isn't working for either. What's worse, it harms much of the world, most certainly Southeast Asian nations. Perhaps a Beijing Communique similar to the Shanghai Communique that the late former US president Richard Nixon signed with the late Chinese prime minister Zhou Enlai in 1972 may be a place to start.
China, too, must promise a peaceful rise. Sending aircraft carriers and fully-armed coast guard vessels into disputed waters is hardly a peaceful rise.
Next Iran. If Biden desires decent US-Iran relations, he must stop seeing the Persian regime through Israel's eyes. Consider the nuclear arms deal.
If Iran is the rogue state that the US thinks it is, it would have torn up the agreement that it signed in 2015. It didn't; Trump did. Yet the US has imposed sanctions upon sanctions on Iran, causing terrible harm to ordinary Iranians.
Now the Iranians are in Austria negotiating another deal six years later, and the US hasn't lifted any sanctions. The US and its allies invasion of Iraq has shown Iran that it would be better off having nuclear weapons.
At least, the US and allies will think twice before dropping the regime change bombs. With a few changes here and there, the story is the same for Afghanistan and the Middle East. Biden must end America's Melvillesque messianic mission. Otherwise, his power of example will be a lie.