NEW YORK (GZERO MEDIA) - World leaders at the annual Munich Security Conference on Friday (Feb 19) welcomed United States President Joe Biden's message that "America is back".

In his address at the virtual conference, Mr Biden reassured allies that the US will once again embrace multilateralism, and work with partners on a host of issues like pandemic response and vaccine distribution, as well as climate change. He also described the struggle between democracy and the forces of autocracy around the world.

American political scientist Ian Bremmer said there was a sense of enthusiasm for Mr Biden's message from the leaders who were speaking, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

But despite the sense of relief among those leaders, Mr Bremmer said there is still lingering mistrust.

"The reality is that there is near-term relief from everybody appearing (at the conference), but also a lot of long-term mistrust, at least unease and still not an awful lot of real policy alignment," he said.

For example, just before his speech, Mr Biden announced tougher "buy American" clauses, a policy that is more unilateral than multilateral, noted Mr Bremmer.

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