WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden strode into the White House four years ago with a foreign policy agenda that put repairing alliances strained by four years of Republican Donald Trump’s “America First” worldview front and center.
The one-term Democrat took office in the throes of the worst global pandemic in a century and his plans were quickly stress-tested by a series of complicated international crises: the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and Hamas’ brutal 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the ongoing war in the Middle East.
As Biden prepares to leave office, he remains insistent that his one-term presidency has made strides in restoring American credibility on the world stage and has proven the U.S. remains an indispensable partner around the globe. That message will be at the center of an address he will deliver Monday afternoon on his foreign policy legacy.
Yet Biden’s case for foreign policy achievements will be shadowed and shaped, at least in the near term, by the messy counterfactual that American voters are returning the country’s stewardship to Trump and his protectionist worldview.
“The real question is: Does the rest of the world today believe 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 capacity to attract investment, our capacity to attract talent?” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in an Associated Press interview. “When we took office, a lot of people probably would have said China. … Nobody’s saying that anymore.”
After a turbulent four years around the globe, the Democratic administration argues that Biden provided the world a steady hand and left the United States and its allies on a stronger footing.
But Biden, from the outset of his presidency, in which he frequently spoke of his desire to demonstrate that “America’s back,” was tested by war, calamity and miscalculation.
With the U.S. completing its 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden fulfilled a campaign promise to wind down America’s longest war.
But the 20-year conflict came to an end in disquieting fashion: The U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed, a grisly bombing killed 13 U.S. troops and 170 others, and thousands of desperate Afghans descended on Kabul’s airport in search of a way out before the final U.S. aircraft departed over the Hindu Kush.
The Afghanistan debacle was a major setback just eight months into Biden’s presidency that he struggled to recover from.
Biden’s Republican detractors, including Trump, cast 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 horrible embarrassment, most embarrassing moment in the history of our country,” Trump said in his lone 2024 presidential debate with Biden, just weeks before the Democrat announced he was ending his reelection campaign.
With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Biden rallied allies in Europe and beyond to provide Ukraine with billions in military and economic assistance — including more than $100 billion from the U.S. alone. That allowed Kyiv to stay in the fight with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s vastly bigger 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 prosecuting its war.
But Biden has faced criticism that he’s been too cautious throughout the war about providing the Ukrainians with certain advanced lethal weaponry in a timely matter and setting restrictions on how they’re used —initially resisting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s requests 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 balked, before eventually relenting, out of a concern that it was necessary to hold the line against escalation that he worried could draw the U.S. and other NATO members into direct conflict with nuclear-armed Russia.
Trump, for his part, has criticized the cost of the war to U.S. taxpayers and vowed to bring the conflict to a quick end.
Biden said Friday he remains hopeful that the U.S. will continue to aid Ukraine after he leaves office.
“I know that there are a significant number of Democrats and Republicans on the Hill who think we should continue to support Ukraine,” Biden said. “It is my hope and expectation they will speak up … if Trump decides to cut off funding for Ukraine.”
Daniel Fried, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland and adviser to Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, said Biden’s Ukraine legacy now will largely be shaped by Trump.
He added that Trump just may succeed in bringing what many Americans can accept as “a decent end” to the Ukraine war.
“That’s not necessarily going to happen, but it could,” Fried said. “And if he does, then the criticism of Biden will be that he acted to help Ukraine, but hesitated, dithered, did a lot of hand wringing, and it took Trump to actually bring about a fair settlement.”
Sullivan makes the case that Trump, a billionaire real estate developer, should consider the backing of Ukraine through the prism of a dealmaker.
“Donald Trump has built his identity around making deals, and the way you make a good deal is with leverage,” Sullivan said. “Our case publicly and privately to the incoming team is build the leverage, show the staying power, back Ukraine, and it is down that path that lies a good deal.”
In the Middle East, Biden has stood by Israel as it has worked to root out Hamas from Gaza. That war spawned another in Lebanon, where Israel has mauled Iran’s most powerful ally, Hezbollah, even as Israel has launched successful airstrikes openly inside of Iran for the first time.
The degradation of Hezbollah in turn played a role when Islamist-led rebels last month ousted longtime Syrian leader Bashar Assad, a brutal fixture of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance.”
Biden’s relationship with Israel’s conservative leader Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been strained by the enormous Palestinian death toll in the fighting —now standing at more than 46,000 dead — and Israel’s blockade of the territory that has left much of Gaza a hellscape where access to food and basic health care is severely limited.
Pro-Palestinian activists have demanded an arms embargo against Israel, but U.S. policy has largely remained unchanged. The State Department in recent days informed Congress of a planned $8 billion weapons sale to Israel.
Aaron David Miller, a former State Department Middle East negotiator, said the approach has put Iran on its heels, but Biden will pay a reputational cost for the devastation of Gaza.
“The administration was either unable or unwilling to create any sort of restraint that normal humans would regard as significant pressure,” Miller said. “It was beyond Joe Biden’s emotional and political bandwidth to impose the kinds of sustained or significant pressures that might have led to a change in Israeli tactics.”
More than 15 months after the Hamas-led attack that prompted the war, around 98 hostages remain in Gaza. More than a third of those are presumed dead by Israeli authorities.
Biden’s Middle East adviser Brett McGurk is in the Middle East, looking to complete an elusive hostage and ceasefire deal as time runs out in the presidency. Trump, for his part, is warning that “all hell” will be unleashed on Hamas if the hostages aren’t freed by Inauguration Day.
Sullivan declined to comment on Trump’s threats to Hamas, but offered that the two sides are in agreement about the most important thing: getting a deal done.
“Having alignment of the outgoing and incoming administration that a hostage deal at the earliest possible opportunity is in the American national interest,” he said. “Having unity of message on that is a good thing, and we have closely coordinated with the incoming team to this effect.”
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