It’s safe to say that, on domestic policy, Joe Biden has surprised everybody. While still falling short of meeting what the current moment demands — instantly surrendering on the $15 minimum wage, slow-walking his already tepid debt forgiveness proposal, pushing an infrastructure bill smaller than what his most conservative party member floated, to name just a few — he’s at least partially renounced his penny-pinching ways, given the cold shoulder to bipartisanship, and generally been more ambitious than anyone familiar with his career would have expected.

But on foreign policy, it’s been an entirely different story.

Establishment media coverage of the Biden administration’s actions on the world stage has tended to cast them as a sharp break from the last four years. It signals a return to “normal” and a re-embracing of multilateralism, international cooperation and alliances, and human rights as the guiding lights of US foreign policy.