Spain and the United States have signed a new joint declaration where they commit to deepen bilateral relations in the most diverse areas, replacing the agreement signed in 2001 by the governments of José María Aznar and George W. Bush. Pedro Sánchez's team has been working stealthily on this document for months in order to show it off as a diplomatic triumph in the day before the start of the NATO summit. In exchange, the Spanish government accepts the U.S. request to increase the presence of American destroyers at the Rota naval base. Sánchez was "especially satisfied" in his appearance alongside the US President, Joe Biden, although he probably did not expect that the Melilla tragedy would overshadow this diplomatic success.

Tension is growing in Eastern Europe: President Joe Biden has formally approved the deployment of more U.S. military personnel to the area due to tensions with Russia. Some 2,000 troops will go to Poland and Germany, and a thousand will be stationed in Romania. The moves will take place, according to U.S. officials, "in the next few days."

The president of the United States, Joe Biden, has backed down after the ultimatum launched by the Taliban to keep 31 August as the last day of foreign military presence in the country, and has renounced to postponing the date of the withdrawal to facilitate the evacuation of the civilian population. This is Washington's umpteenth concession to the fundamentalists, who are proving that they have the upper hand on the ground. The American president is ready to comply with the withdrawal agreed by Donald Trump with the Taliban in an agreement which has never been made public (and which he partly hid from Biden), even if this means closing his eyes to the tragedy which is approaching and which has already begun to be denounced by the United Nations.

Minimal agreements, crossed reproaches but a timid hope on the improvement of the relations between the United States and Russia. This is the balance of the summit that the Presidents of the two countries, Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin, have held this Wednesday in Geneva, in an attempt to redirect relations that are at their worst moment since the end of the Cold War. And, to say the least, both agreed that the meeting was positive. Putin described it as "constructive" and "pragmatic" and said he saw "a spark of hope" for the recovery of mutual trust. Biden specified that the issue was not trust but the defense of "their own interests", but affirmed that there is "a genuine perspective on a significant improvement" in relations.

It has been a long time since a summit between the presidents of the United States and Russia has been preceded by so much tension between the two leaders. We must remember that Joe Biden called Vladimir Putin a "killer" last March in the wake of the Navalny affair, and the two countries recalled their respective ambassadors for consultations. And it was not even 24 hours before that NATO had described Russia as a "threat". Against this background, there was much expectation for the meeting between the two presidents in Geneva and the truth is that it did not disappoint. The two were pragmatic and decided to give themselves a margin to redirect their bilateral relations, and show that diplomatic apparatuses of the two powers know very well that they have nothing to gain from the crisis.

Police and helicopters have been circling the Belgian capital of the European institutions since Sunday afternoon, in line with the media expectation of the arrival of US President Joe Biden. It is a protocol to which this small European city is accustomed, but which Covid had interrupted. So, just as Brussels has experienced a return to normality these days in the form of streets cut off and uniforms on the various corners of the European quarter and around the American embassy, NATO and the European Union are also celebrating the "reunion" with the United States. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said as he arrived at the summit: "I am delighted to have a US President who is extremely committed to NATO, and of course this is a good message for the allies".

There has been no meeting. The expectation that had been generated by what was supposed to be the first official meeting between the President of the United States Joe Biden and the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was shattered in the little more than thirty second the two presidents waked side by side after the group photo at to the NATO summit in Brussels on Monday. The meeting, in the midst of the diplomatic crisis with Morocco, was this: less than a minute of standing, with masks on and little conversation.

The Spanish President, Pedro Sánchez, will have a brief meeting with the American President, Joe Biden, this Monday in Brussels, at the NATO summit. It will be the first contact between the two, much awaited by the Moncloa, which had already received criticism from the PP for losing international space. The Democrat has been in the White House since 20 January and so far had not found time to talk to Madrid. Sánchez's chief of staff, Ivan Redondo, contacted his American counterpart, Ronald Klain, on 7 June to arrange the meeting, which only became known when Biden had already begun his European tour, which has started in the United Kingdom.

If Joe Biden's main objective at home is to "heal the soul of the nation" after four years of exacerbating differences, the international soul does not seem to be far behind. The American president landed this Wednesday in the United Kingdom in what is his first trip abroad, with the central objective of healing the wounds and mistrust that was sowed during the four years of trumpism amongst America's traditional allies.

In his inauguration speech, US President Joe Biden warned that "the United States is back", a declaration of intent of the turn to the isolationist and nationalist policy practiced by his predecessor in office, Donald Trump. One of Trump's obsessions was the abandonment of multilateralism, of major international agreements and participation in global organisations, to return to bilateralism, a strategy that allowed him to take advantage of his strength to impose his conditions on different countries. The price he paid, however, was that of losing diplomatic influence in the world, abandoning the role of leader of the Western world that this country has had since the Second World War. Biden wants to regain a certain leadership, and that is why he has chosen Europe as the destination for his first major international tour.

The seemingly impossible is just around the corner. The group of the world's most developed economies, the G7, announced on Saturday a "historic" agreement on reforming the global tax system, according to British chancellor Rishi Sunak. The ministers of the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada, Italy and Japan have agreed to commit to at least a 15% minimum corporate tax rate. The agreement will also require multinational tech giants to make their tax contribution, he added in a statement posted on Twitter.

The ceasefire in Gaza still seems a distant option. Despite the growing pressure from the international community for Israel to stop its offensive on the Strip, the acting prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has assured that he is "willing to continue this operation until the objective is achieved". Netanyahu has expressed this position in a statement issued on Wednesday afternoon, hours after U.S. President Joe Biden told him that he expected "a significant de-escalation today on the road to a cease-fire". The Israeli leader thanked Biden for his support but added that he will not stop until he manages to return "calm and security" to the citizens of Israel.

Two weeks ago he said the opposite, but he has finally backed down. Joe Biden announced early this morning that he will raise to 62,500 people the admission cap for refugees in the United States, after criticism rained down on him for having said he would keep the cap at 15,000, the historic minimum that Donald Trump had set. It was one of his campaign promises and, in the wake of the earthquake within and outside the ranks of the Democratic Party, and the accusation that he was betraying the migrants who helped him win the election, Biden has ended up taking back the pledge, even though he has watered it down.

Fighting the pandemic with mass vaccination - 220 million doses administered - and strong Keynesian economic stimuli. More taxes on the rich as a way to make equality of opportunity more real. Injection of public investment for infrastructure and creation of green economy jobs. Commitment to education from childhood to university, with direct aid to families. All this, which is no small thing, on the inside. And on the outside, multilateralism, the fight against climate change and the defence of human rights and democracy in the face of China's rise and the global autocratic danger it represents.

For the first time in the history of the United States, two women flanked the president of the country from the podium of the hemicycle. It was Joe Biden's first address to both houses of Congress. The speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and the vice president of the country, Kamala Harris, presided over an atypical session, with half of the seats empty due to covid-19 restrictions, in which President Biden presented his plans to invest up to 4 trillion dollars, "a once-in-a-generation investment", to create new jobs, build infrastructure and help families.

It's been almost a year since Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron revived the EU's Franco-German engine to propose a recovery fund against the coronavirus pandemic with common debt. But the energy generated from Berlin and Paris still circulates through the gears of the European Union without combustion. The money hasn't arrived, hasn't even begun to be issued, and meanwhile the United States already has a new president who has launched an unprecedented economic recovery plan. "We have to be clear, we were very efficient last year in adopting the European recovery plan and the decision to issue common debt. But since then, we have lost too much time, China has regained its growth and the United States is already bouncing back", French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire acknowledged on Tuesday.

The new president of the United States, Joe Biden, announced yesterday the return of his country to "diplomacy", a new step to undo the legacy of Trumpism in the international arena, which was marked by a mixture of nationalist isolationism and unilateralism. In fact, Biden himself already anticipated Washington's return to multilateralism by signing the return to the Paris Agreement against the climate crisis and to bodies such as the World Health Organization. Now, however, comes the moment of truth, and it is when the new administration has to redefine its position, for example in the Middle East and in the relations it wants to establish with the European Union (with whom Trump has maintained a distant and problematic relationship), Russia and China.