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| President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken before remarks on reaching a ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas on Wednesday. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post) |
| When President Joe Biden took office four years ago, he and his allies cast their return as a restoration. America was “back” after the disruptions and uncertainties provoked by former president Donald Trump’s first term. The United States would lead again, Biden promised, and U.S. allies would be able to depend upon that leadership as Washington led the world out of the grips of the pandemic. But with Trump returning to the White House next week, Biden’s tenure seems but an interregnum in an age of intensifying nationalism. The confidence and bravura that once underscored Biden’s international agenda gave way to an administration that wasn’t allowed to keep its eye on the prize — namely, an embrace of industrial policy and targeted high-tech mercantilism to revitalize U.S. manufacturing and boost U.S. competition with China — and found itself reacting to a rolling series of crises, especially the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
In speeches and interviews reflecting on their time in office, Biden and his top aides have stuck to a shared script. Under their stewardship, the United States shored up its partnerships and alliances around the world. They point to strengthening ties in Asia — under rubrics such as the “Quad,” which stitches the United States together with Japan, India and Australia — and the central role the Biden administration played in leading the defense of Ukraine. During an address at the State Department earlier this week, Biden said he had “reinvigorated people’s faith in the United States as a true partner.” He said legislation — including the mammoth Inflation Reduction Act — had made “our sources of national power far stronger.” And he said his administration had managed competition with China “responsibly” alongside regional partners, “rather than going it alone” — a jab at the hectoring and unpredictability of Trump’s first term. “My administration is leaving the next administration with a very strong hand to play,” Biden said. “And we’re leaving them an America with more friends and stronger alliances, whose adversaries are weak and under pressure — an America who once again is leading.”
That’s a justifiable view. The U.S. economy is by many indicators in rude health, certainly when compared to major Western allies. Foes in Russia and Iran are more depleted and weak than they have been in years. In the wake of the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Biden administration was instrumental in rallying and coordinating transatlantic support for Kyiv. Its efforts seemed to galvanize the geopolitical West, even as countries in the Global South sought to distance themselves from taking sides in the war.
“We worked at every stage of this war to put the tools in the hands of brave Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines to be able to defend their country and to try to advance in the face of the Russian defenses,” Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, told PBS. “And we believe that, in doing so, we helped save this country and thwart Russia’s ambition to wipe it off the map.” But some hawkish critics lament the slow drip of aid that the Biden administration delivered to Ukraine, arguing that it was never enough to turn the tide of the war. Trump, a skeptic of an open-ended support to Kyiv, may push for a status quo that forces Ukraine into territorial concessions it doesn’t want to make. On other fronts, there are more brickbats out for Biden and his team. The United States’ fitful efforts in backing Ukraine helped overshadow the earlier debacle that followed the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, where years of failed U.S. state-building efforts were wiped away by the resurgence of the Taliban. In Latin America, the United States struggled to deal with the flow of migrants from Central America or do much to counteract or rival the vast inroads made by China in the region. In Africa, Biden unveiled a major infrastructure initiative — a railroad project linking Congolese minerals to Angola’s ports — but only in the last months of his presidency. It’s in the Middle East where Biden’s legacy is most controversial. He came into office vowing to pursue a foreign policy that once more focused on human rights — a promise that followed the Saudi monarchy’s abduction and murder of prominent critic and journalist (and Washington Post contributor) Jamal Khashoggi. But that rhetoric was swiftly shelved in favor of pragmatic realpolitik, with the Biden administration seeing in Riyadh a crucial strategic partner.
At his final public events in his role, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was hounded by pro-Palestinian protesters for the United States’ perceived complicity in the devastation of Gaza. Biden and Blinken remain staunch in their support of Israel and the prosecution of its war against Hamas, which orchestrated the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack across southern Israel, as well as Israel’s broader efforts against Iran and its proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon. Even as war crimes investigations into Israeli conduct in Gaza continue at the world’s highest courts, the Biden administration shielded the right-wing Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and exerted little leverage to restrain Israeli strikes on civilian areas or push back against Israel’s documented restrictions on humanitarian aid. And Netanyahu, at every turn, stirred anger at Biden for supposedly not doing enough to back Israel’s war aims. “Biden’s team took on the thankless job of mediation, seeking a hostage-release deal in Gaza and, more successfully, a ceasefire in Lebanon. U.S. military power backed Israel as it remade the Middle East,” wrote Post columnist David Ignatius. “But Biden got little credit. … Netanyahu, far from grateful, treated him like a political punching bag.” Instead, what has followed the war in Gaza is a profound cynicism about the liberal international values that Biden once preached. In his defense of Ukraine, Biden called on other states to recognize that the “rules-based order” would be at risk if Russia was allowed to get its way. But, when it came to Israel, his administration opted to not enforce U.S. laws conditioning the provision of military aid to foreign countries and rejected the workings of key institutions of the rules-based order itself, including the International Court of Justice, the U.N.’s highest court. “When the United States selectively applies internationally accepted rules, it undermines its credibility and loses influence in the rest of the world,” wrote Sarah Yager, Washington director of Human Rights Watch. “And because Washington has been the architect of the modern global order, its behavior carries extra weight. If the United States flouts the rules, authoritarians and other illiberal leaders need no further excuse to break them at will, inflicting horror on their own people and inciting instability beyond their borders.” Biden’s foreign policy record, ultimately, may hinge on his administration’s rejection at home by voters. Ravi Agrawal, editor in chief of Foreign Policy magazine, discussed in a letter to readers a conversation he had with a frustrated Biden administration official, who regretted the extent to which the Biden White House had tried to appeal to Trump’s base with a set of policies motivated more by politics than ideological conviction. “These policies included keeping in place tariffs against China even though they knew they weren’t working; allowing the United States to become more protectionist not because of a strong conviction in its merits but out of a sense that it would be popular; and calling a climate change bill the Inflation Reduction Act and directing most of its subsidies to red states,” Agrawal noted. “In other words, there was a degree of fear and insincerity in their policymaking, and voters inevitably saw through it—or so this official thought. In trying to please too many constituencies, perhaps, the White House disappointed everyone.” | ||||||||||||||||||||