KRÜN, Germany — When President Joe Biden returns to Europe this weekend for six days of economic and national security meetings, he’ll do so as the leader of reinvigorated Western alliances, resolute in responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and recommitted to defending democracy.
But he will also arrive as a fundamentally weaker political figure than he was a year ago. Bogged down at home by frustrations over inflation, the president is bracing for November elections that could see Republicans take control of Congress.
And he is hardly alone among the leaders of the world’s preeminent democracies, all of whom are strenuously navigating the economic and political shockwaves from the protracted conflict in Ukraine while also facing domestic pressures that could imperil their broader collective ambitions.
