WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden entered the White House four years ago with a foreign policy agenda that focused on repairing alliances strained by four years of Republican Donald Trump’s “America First” worldview.
The one-term Democrat took office amid the worst global pandemic in a century, and his plans were quickly tested by a series of complicated international crises: the disordered U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the Hamas invasion. brutal attack on Israel in 2023 that sparked the ongoing war in the Middle East.
As Biden prepares to leave office, he continues to insist that his one-term presidency has made progress in restoring America’s credibility on the world stage and proving that the U.S. remains an indispensable partner around the globe . That message will be the focus of a speech he will give on Monday afternoon about his foreign policy legacy.
But Biden’s arguments for foreign policy success will be overshadowed and shaped, at least in the miniature term, by the messy counterfactual assumption that American voters will hand responsibility for the country back to Trump and his protectionist worldview.
“The real question is: Does the rest of the world believe today that the United States is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world when it comes to our reservoir of national strength, our economy, our innovation base, our ability to attract investment, our…” ability, “To attract talent?” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in an interview with the Associated Press. “When we took office, many would probably have said China. … Nobody says that anymore.”
After a tumultuous four years around the globe, the Democratic administration argues that Biden has given the world a steady hand and given the United States and its allies a stronger foundation.
But Biden has been tested by war, misfortune and miscalculation from the start of his presidency, during which he spoke frequently of his desire to show that “America has his back.”
The disordered US withdrawal from Afghanistan was an early setback for Biden
By completing the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Biden fulfilled his campaign promise to end America’s longest war.
But the 20-year conflict ended in disturbing fashion: the U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed, a gruesome bombing killed 13 U.S. soldiers and 170 others, and thousands of desperate Afghans flocked to Kabul airport for a way out find The last US planes took off over the Hindu Kush.
The Afghanistan debacle was a major setback just eight months into Biden’s presidency from which he has struggled to recover.
Biden’s Republican critics, including Trump, saw it as a signal moment in a failed presidency.
“I’ll tell you what happened, he was so bad with Afghanistan, it was such a terrible embarrassment, the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country,” Trump said in his only 2024 presidential debate with Biden, just weeks before the Democrat quit announced that he would end his re-election campaign.
Biden’s legacy in Ukraine may depend on Trump’s future actions
With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Biden rallied allies in Europe and beyond to provide billions of dollars in military and economic aid to Ukraine – including more than $100 billion from the United States alone. This allowed Kiev to stay in the fight with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s far larger and better-equipped military. Biden’s team also coordinated with allies to hit Russia with a steady stream of sanctions aimed at isolating the Kremlin and making Moscow pay an economic price for continuing its war.
However, Biden has been criticized for being too cautious throughout the war in providing the Ukrainians with certain state-of-the-art lethal weapons in a timely manner and setting limits on their apply. He initially resisted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s calls to fire long-range ATACMS missiles deep into Russian territory, as well as requests for Abrams tanks, F-16 fighter jets and other systems.
Biden often hesitated before finally conceding, fearing the need to hold a line against escalation that he feared could bring the U.S. and other NATO members into direct conflict with nuclear-armed Russia .
Trump, in turn, criticized the cost of the war to US taxpayers and promised to quickly end the conflict.
Biden said Friday he remains confident the U.S. will continue to support Ukraine even after he leaves office.
“I know there are a significant number of Democrats and Republicans on the Hill who think we should continue to support Ukraine,” Biden said. “I hope and expect that they will speak out … if Trump decides to stop funding Ukraine.”
Daniel Fried, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland and an adviser to Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, said Biden’s legacy in Ukraine will now be largely shaped by Trump.
He added that Trump may well succeed in bringing what many Americans accept as a “decent end” to the Ukraine war.
“It won’t necessarily happen, but it could,” Fried said. “And if he does that, then the criticism of Biden will be that he acted to help Ukraine but hesitated, hesitated, did a lot of hand-wringing and it took Trump to actually bring about a fair solution.”
Sullivan argues that Trump, a billionaire real estate developer, should view support for Ukraine from a dealmaker’s perspective.
“Donald Trump has built his identity on doing business, and the way you do a good business is through leverage,” Sullivan said. “Our concern with the new team, publicly and privately, is to build leverage, show resilience and support Ukraine, and there is good business in that path.”
Biden’s Middle East diplomacy is overshadowed by the destruction of Gaza
In the Middle East, Biden stood by Israel in driving Hamas out of Gaza. That war sparked another war in Lebanon, where Israel has mauled Iran’s most powerful ally, Hezbollah, while Israel has successfully carried out overt airstrikes inside Iran for the first time.
Hezbollah’s degradation, in turn, played a role in Islamist-led rebels last month toppling longtime Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, a brutal component of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance.”
Biden’s relationship with Israel’s conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been complicated by the enormous Palestinian death toll in the fighting – currently at over 46,000 dead – and Israel’s blockade of the territory, which has turned vast parts of the Gaza Strip into a hellscape in which the Access to food and nutrition is circumscribed, strains Basic medical care is severely circumscribed.
Pro-Palestinian activists called for an arms embargo on Israel, but U.S. policy remained largely unchanged. The State Department has notified Congress in recent days of a planned $8 billion arms sale to Israel.
Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. State Department Middle East negotiator, said the crackdown had cornered Iran but that Biden would pay a reputational cost for the devastation in Gaza.
“The government has been either unable or unwilling to create any kind of restraint that ordinary people would view as significant pressure,” Miller said. “It was beyond Joe Biden’s emotional and political range to exert sustained or significant pressure that could have led to a change in Israeli tactics.”
More than 15 months after the Hamas-led attack that sparked the war, around 98 hostages remain in the Gaza Strip. More than a third of them are considered dead by Israeli authorities.
Biden’s Middle East adviser Brett McGurk is in the Middle East trying to secure an elusive hostage-taking and ceasefire deal as time runs out on his presidency. Trump, for his part, warns that “all hell” will fall on Hamas if the hostages are not released by Inauguration Day.
Sullivan declined to comment on Trump’s threats to Hamas, but said both sides agreed on the most vital thing: making a deal.
“The outgoing and incoming administrations agree that a hostage deal is in the U.S. national interest at the earliest opportunity,” he said. “It is a good thing to have a consistent message on this and we have coordinated closely with the new team to this end.”
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