They want American globalism shored up

This is about Europeans nervous about America's commitments to its alliances, restoring its uses of soft power, and continued leadership.

This is about reversing the erosion of US internationalism under Trump.

And this is about avoiding such isolationist tendencies as can be seen in others among the Democratic throng.

World leaders tell Biden: We need you

Biden’s 2020 intentions were the talk of the conference.

When Armenian President Armen Sarkissian ran into him in a hallway, a TV camera captured him asking Biden: “Are you going to run?” 

(Biden whispered an inaudible answer.)

And in several conversations with European leaders in Munich, Biden heard a repeated refrain, according to a conference attendee familiar with the conversations: The world needs you.

Citing Biden’s long foreign policy track record and longtime commitment to the trans-Atlantic alliance, some of the leaders — echoing views from across the continent — told Biden that his return to the White House would be a sure way to restore western alliances that President Donald Trump has dramatically fractured.

. . . .

These nudges from abroad are a reminder of the heavyweight foreign policy credentials Biden would bring to a Democratic field in which they are currently in short supply. 

None of Biden’s prospective rivals have the global experience or relationships with foreign leaders that Biden enjoys. 

But neither do they carry the baggage that comes with decades of involvement in controversial U.S. foreign policy decisions.

. . . .

As vice president, Biden was Obama’s ever-present adviser on world affairs and played a leading role in their adminstration's Iraq and Ukraine policies.

Even some prominent conservatives concede that Biden would bring to the campaign a formidable depth of knowledge of global events, especially compared to his would-be Democratic rivals.

“If you look at this field, Biden is a giant in terms of his actual foreign policy experience. 

They have nowhere near the hands-on experience that he’s had,” said Ken Weinstein, president of the conservative Hudson Institute. 

“He spent decades talking to world leaders and in that sense, he’s got far deeper contacts.”

. . . .

In a February Gallup poll, only 5 percent of Americans ranked foreign policy or national security-related issues as the country’s top problem.

But on the other hand . . .

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates [Republican and Bush appointee], who served in the first two and a half years of the Obama administration alongside Biden, wrote in his memoir that the vice president had been wrong on “nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

Biden’s primary rivals might attack him for his support of George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. 

And Trump might savage Biden’s risk-averse counsel when Obama was weighing the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden.