Biden Fought for Justice in the Balkans. He Must Do it Again | Opinion Ivan Sascha Sheehan , Executive Director, School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Baltimore On 3/4/21 at 8:00 AM EST At last month's Munich Security Conference, President Joe Biden reassured European allies that America is back. "Our interests will not always converge. ... But we have a broad, common, good basis," Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkelcautioned. Her declaration acknowledged a salient truth easily lost in the meeting's bonhomie: strains in the transatlantic relationship festered long before former President Donald Trump. This is natural. Interests do diverge. But in the Western Balkans, these differences have grown into something contradictory and unsustainable.