However, it is not easy for America to fulfill this hope. We should not forget that more 70 million Americans still voted for Trump, almost half of all eligible voters. The election was not just about Trump or Biden; more importantly, it was about America and what the country has become. The fact that the majority of Americans chose decency this time does not mean that the country will automatically return to normalcy overnight.

It could take years, even decades, for the US to restore its credibility as a beacon of democracy and a benign hegemon. It will take the US decades to restore its moral credibility and authority. It is true that the foundations of America’s global leadership have been undermined by President Trump.

But the level of support that President Trump has received from the American public and from political elite within the Republican Party also suggests that Trumpism is rather widespread in the US. Therefore, it is not unconceivable for the American public to once again choose another “Trump” as their president one day.

This means that the greatest challenge a Biden presidency will face in foreign affairs is to regain the trust of many countries, including its allies. For one, it is not easy to trust a country whose citizens easily chose a leader like Trump; neither is it easy to have faith in a country that can easily reverse its position and commitments on many important issues, such as climate change, democracy, global health and human rights.

Even though the US might eventually rejoin the Paris Agreement or the World Health Organization (WHO), there is no guarantee that a Trump-like president will not come along in the future to again reverse the US position.

Restoring the trust and respect among its allies is likely to be relatively easy, as most of America’s allies in the West tend to defer to any US government, as evidenced in their attitudes toward the US under President Trump. Most Western leaders and politicians, with a few exceptions, were careful not to offend President Trump and therefore rarely condemned his policies.

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