When US President Joe Biden took office a year ago promising to focus on the domestic crisis of that moment, the COVID-19 pandemic that was killing tens of thousands of Americans each week, confining millions to their homes and hobbling the world's largest economy.
Ron says implicit in that promise was the unavoidable corollary: American involvement in other parts of the world would have to take a back seat to the domestic crisis at hand.
That is, until the reckoning in Afghanistan intruded, and before the Russians massed hundreds of thousands of troops on their border with Ukraine.
He discusses US foreign policy.
US President Joe Biden speaks on the phone to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on diplomatic solutions to soaring Russia-West tensions over Ukraine Photo: WHITE HOUSE/AFP
Ron Elving is a Senior Editor and Correspondent, Washington Desk for NPR news
