Witness a world at war: Russia renewing its assault against civilians in Ukraine; battles raging in Sudan despite an American-negotiated ceasefire; Iran seizing oil tankers in the Gulf; Communist China blocking a ship’s passage near the Phillipines. 

As the 2024 presidential campaign heats up with this week’s re-election announcement by President Biden, world peace, or the lack thereof, is trending. In 2020, he was a Senate veteran and a former vice president long steeped in global affairs, which seemed like an asset for a presidential candidate. Now, a world in turmoil is emerging as a major liability for the president. 

On Friday, Russia’s bombardment of Ukrainian cities included a salvo comprising two killer drones and 20 cruise missiles that killed at least 23 people. Beyond Kyiv, most of the damage was at Uman, a city that has no military value.

Followers of the Rabbi Nachman of Breslov travel annually to worship at the 18th century chasidic sect founder’s Uman gravesite. Israeli chasidim have been making the pilgrimage despite the war that tore Ukraine apart. Other than that peculiarity, the town seems to have no military or symbolic reason to attack it. Russia’s hit was designed mostly to terrorize Ukrainian civilians.  

In Sudan, meanwhile, the Rapid Support Forces shot at a Turkish plane attempting to evacuate civilians in distress on Friday. The attack was an escalation of violations of an American-backed 72-hour ceasefire reached earlier this week. On Thursday the warring sides agreed to extend the truce; in reality, the ceasefire never took root. 

The battle between the army, headed by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF and its leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo, known as Hemedti, has created a huge humanitarian crisis in Sudan. Turkey, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, South Sudan, Israel, and others have tried to mediate between the two warlords vying to rule the vast, geostrategically important country in the Horn of Africa.   

Washington touted its ceasefire mediation as successful American diplomacy, yet it hardly impressed most Sudanese, who remain ensconced in their homes for fear of street gunbattles, with no access to food, medicine, electricity, cash, or any other life necessity.

As the BBC put it on Friday, “the ceasefire is mostly being observed, and that is the good news. The bad news is that battles continue to rage, mostly in Khartoum and Darfur.”

Washington’s lack of influence is increasingly being felt in every corner of the globe. At the end of the post-Cold War era, America is no longer even leading from behind, as President Obama liked to define our role. Now America is just behind. 

“America is back. Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy,” Mr. Biden said in a February 2021 speech at the Department of State that was designed to lay out principles for the country’s “place in the world” and the new president’s global doctrine. Mr. Biden stressed “democratic values” and spoke of tackling top issues “from the pandemic to the climate crisis to nuclear proliferation.” 

The word “war” was mentioned several times, but only in the context of Yemen, where a Saudi-backed government is battling the Houthis, which are financed and armed by Iran. Two and a half years later, a slight movement away from that war is now afoot. Yet, even that tentative ray of hope is not a result of American diplomacy but of a Beijing-chaperoned rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran. 

In contrast, America’s Mideast diplomacy has to date fallen flat. Washington denigrated and alienated Saudi Arabia as it courted Iran, resulting in a jump in oil prices at home and an Islamic Republic that is one step away from a nuclear bomb.

As America’s military budgets nominally shrink in favor of ever-fattening social programs, Communist China is beefing its muscle and gearing the People’s Liberation Army toward a futuristic war theater. More countries are heeding Beijing as they scoff at Washington. 

In his rosy state department speech, Mr. Biden predicted a world safe for asylum seekers, “LGBTQI refugees,” and Muslims suffering from discrimination. He touted his success in extending the Start nuclear treaty with Russia — which Moscow dropped soon after its Ukraine invasion. Mostly, he stressed the virtues of diplomacy, while ignoring America’s more muscular assets.   

Then came the haphazard evacuation of troops from Afghanistan, which made even Mr. Biden’s top global admirers recalculate. Far from being “back,” America all of a sudden looked weak, incompetent, and unable to care for its own, let alone look after the interests of allies around the world. 

Following Afghanistan, “Putin looked at Ukraine and Xi is looking at Taiwan. That is when everything changed. Afghanistan was a turning point,” the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, Michael McCaul, said in a March interview on Fox News. “When you project weakness, you invite aggression and war. When you project strength, like Reagan talked about, you invite peace.”

The world is at war and there isn’t much America can — nor, it seems at times, wants — to do about it.