I'm Suzanne Kianpore, the BBC's Washington reporter and you're listening to

Biden's world on the BBC World Service.

America is back.

Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy.

President Biden plans to shape a new world order.

We will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again,

not to meet yesterday's challenges, but today's and tomorrow's. The world greets a very different

leader from the American president it met four years ago. From this day forward

a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward it's going to

be only America first America first.

And President Biden confronts a starkly different world too.

Climate change has taken on new urgency and the world

grapples with a global pandemic that knows no borders. Over the next half hour I'll be asking from a distinctly American perspective.

First, what are the new president's toughest challenges around the globe?

Next, we meet the key individuals in Biden's administration who face those challenges.

And finally, I'll ask how those individuals plan to address America's most difficult problems.

First, what are America's toughest challenges around the globe.

American power and engagement in the world matter. Take Lebanon, a nation often caught in the crossfire of Middle Eastern rivalries.

The Port Explosion in Beirut in 2020. Government corruption and negligence

festered in Lebanon unchecked by the international community. With fatal

consequences, more than 200 people died in the blast.

Former BBC journalist and author of Black Wave, Kim Hatas spent a decade covering foreign policy from Washington and is now based in Beirut.

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