By Joe Barnes
Bonner Means Baker Fellow
A year after President Joe Biden’s inauguration, the general outlines of his foreign policy are becoming clear. Taken as a whole, the record holds no huge surprises. After 50 years in politics, including over 30 years as U.S. senator and eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president, Biden is one of the most known of known quantities in American public life. Indeed, the general sense that he possessed “safe hands” surely played a part in his defeat of erratic incumbent Donald Trump in 2020. For millions of Americans, a ballot cast for Biden was a vote for a return to “normalcy.” In many ways, Biden has fulfilled this expectation in foreign policy. His general approach is very similar to that of President Obama — particularly that of Obama’s second term, when the latter’s earlier idealism had been chastened by cruel experience in the Middle East and Ukraine. At a minimum, Biden has assuredly restored a semblance of order to the Trump administration’s often chaotic foreign policy making apparatus.
Biden’s rhetoric on democracy and human rights is more straightforward (and believable) than Trump’s. And he has, in fulfillment of a campaign promise, convened a Summit for Democracy. But his actions, in his policy toward important partners like Saudi Arabia and powerful challengers like China, have been hedged by geopolitical realities. For instance, the Biden administration has explicitly called Beijing’s treatment of its Uyghur minority “genocide.” But it has hedged when it comes to U.S. participation in China’s Winter Olympics. Biden has opted for a mild “diplomatic boycott,” rather than the more substantial — and more provocative — step of withdrawing U.S. athletes from competition. His approach to Saudi Arabia — which he said he would make a “pariah” during the campaign — has been similarly measured. Human rights advocacy and democracy promotion have a place in Biden’s foreign policy, but they hold far from the central role that Biden himself has claimed.
This realism colors much of Biden’s foreign policy. It is perhaps most dramatic in his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Here Biden’s calculation was ruthless: He decided that the continuing survival of the Afghan government was not worth continuing U.S. involvement. While he might have hoped for that survival, Biden surely did not consider it a vital national interest.
Afghanistan is an example of Biden moving more decisively than Trump, though both shared the same goal: ending our 20 year-long war in Afghanistan. There is more continuity between the two administrations than partisans of either would like to admit. Biden is, in many ways, a mix of Obama 2.0 and a kinder, gentler Trumpian “America First.”
Policy toward China is an important case in point. Biden has kept most of Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods in place. And policy toward Taiwan has continued its shift towards a more assertive U.S. position. More generally, Biden has bolstered U.S. efforts to counter rising Chinese power. The announcement of AUKUS — a security group containing Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States — is only one example. While the Biden administration has assiduously avoided calling China an enemy, its policies are clearly focused on a) containing China militarily in the Asia-Pacific and b) limiting its influence elsewhere. Indeed, Biden and his supporters have routinely invoked China’s economic challenge in support of the president’s domestic economic agenda.
Biden promised to cultivate closer relationships with allies, a criticism of Trump’s often rancorous approach. Biden has fulfilled this pledge — up to a point. In both the Afghan withdrawal and AUKUS, his administration has been criticized for insufficient consultation with allies. The announcement of AUKUS in particular led to an ugly, if short-lived, rift with France that included the first withdrawal of a French ambassador to the United States in over 200 years. Like Biden’s claims on human rights promotion, his pledge to consult more closely with allies is limited by narrower concerns about national interest.
There are of course sharp and important breaks with Trump’s policy. One has to do with climate change. Biden has reversed Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Accords. The United States was a leading participant in 2021’s United Nations Climate Change Conference. Biden has also made addressing climate change a central plank of his proposed Build Back Better legislation. This is an area where Biden has put (proposed) money where his mouth is.
Another sharp divergence from Trump is Biden’s approach to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the Iran nuclear deal. Trump pulled the United States out of the arrangement in 2018 and launched a campaign of “maximum pressure” against Tehran. That campaign failed. Indeed, Iran in fact expanded its enrichment activities well beyond the limits it agreed to under the nuclear deal. Since Biden became president, the United States has embarked on an effort to revive the agreement (or something close to it). Talks have been troubled thus far. With a new and more hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi, Iran has proven to be a tougher nut to crack than the Biden administration anticipated.
Like many presidents before him, Biden would no doubt prefer to focus on domestic affairs. He still has an ambitious legislative agenda. Rising inflation has diminished what is otherwise a robust economic recovery. A resurgence of Covid-19 has stymied the Biden administration’s drive to control the virus. Midterm elections are later this year. Their outcome will be critical in determining Biden’s success in pushing through his preferred policies. His own approval ratings are in the doldrums.
2022 will offer no respite for Biden in foreign policy. There is a nasty confrontation with Russia over Ukraine. Taiwan remains a flashpoint in our relations with China. And the Middle East retains its perennial ability to produce unpleasant surprises. We can expect Biden, whatever his rhetoric, to take a hard-to-pigeonhole, pragmatic approach.