President Joe Biden has promised a clean sweep of the Trump years on U.S. foreign policy. According to recent statements from Biden’s future foreign minister and other top officials, there is likely to be more continuity than change, at least for a while.
It is only three days after the new government, but Biden’s team members have already indicated that they intend to continue the policies pursued by President Donald Trump during his presidency, from Venezuela to Ukraine to Israel and even China. .
Many of these details about Biden’s foreign policy plans came to light during Antony Blinken’s confirmation hearing on Tuesday, one day before Biden was sworn in as president.
Blinken said the US would continue to recognize Juan Guaidó as the interim president of Venezuela, a decision taken by the Trump administration in January 2019 as part of his attempt to oust the country’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro . Blinken added that the new team also continues to punish Maduro and his government, but only “more effectively”.
Blinken also said that Biden’s government would continue training and sending deadly weapons to the Ukrainian army, while trying to repel Russian forces in the east of the country. Trump approved the sale of anti-tank weapons to Ukraine in 2017, a move the Obama administration refused to take and that some feared would escalate the seven-year conflict.
The incoming top diplomat said Biden would oppose the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Germany and Russia. The Trump administration approved Russia in 2019 over the plan, claiming that the $ 11 billion oil delivery system would make the heart of Europe more dependent on Moscow. Biden, who according to officials will soon not be planning any kind of ‘restoration’ of relations with Russia, seems to agree.
Biden’s pipeline opposition could cause a conflict with Germany, and Chancellor Angela Merkel has already said she wants to discuss the issue with the new US president. “My basic attitude has not yet changed to the point where I say the project should not exist,” she told a news conference Thursday, noting how critical many people in the U.S. and Europe view Nord Stream 2.
Blinken told lawmakers that he and the Biden government consider Jerusalem the capital of Israel and are committed to keeping the US embassy there. Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the embassy there from its previous location in Tel Aviv in 2018, a move that has increased decades of U.S. diplomacy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that some worry widespread violence in the region would cause. This violence has not materialized, and it now appears that the status quo is just that – the status quo.
Blinken also praised Trump for “rightly taking a tougher approach to China” and said the Trump administration’s decision to label Beijing’s treatment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang as a ‘genocide’. Biden’s assistant was clear that the tactics of the new team towards China would differ from the Trump team, but the general thrust of US policy towards the country – confrontation – would remain the same.
Finally, on the campaign, Biden promised to rejoin the nuclear deal in Iran, as long as Tehran is back in line by lowering uranium enrichment levels. But Blinken, along with Biden’s director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, and White House press secretary Jen Psaki, have made it clear over the past few days that any return to the agreement could take a while and maybe not even at all. does not happen.
“I honestly think we’re still a long way from there,” Haines said during her own Tuesday confirmation hearing.
This is not the change in foreign policy that many expected, given how often Biden Trump’s handling of foreign affairs exploded during the campaign. But some critics, including progressives, are not surprised.
“Joe Biden has never promised to be a revolutionary or to bring about radical change. What we have seen so far, in terms of staff and policy, should not come as much of a surprise,” said Stephen Miles, chief executive. of the advocacy group Win Without said. War. “Given how broken our current foreign policy is, any transition will therefore start far from where progressive people want to be.”
Is Biden’s foreign policy Trump 2.0? Not quite.
None of this means that Biden intends to manage America’s foreign policy in the same way that Trump did.
Biden has been in the White House for less than a week, and it is common for new presidents to continue many of their predecessors’ foreign policies, even though they may not completely agree with them, because they can not find a way to do so quickly times, or easily. Presidents Obama and Trump, for example, both wanted out of the war in Afghanistan, but it did not end, despite 12 years of joint efforts.
On top of that, Trump did some good things on the world stage so that Biden did not want to delete any of his moves.
“Biden is right to maintain continuity on some foreign policy issues as well,” said Jordan Tama, a U.S. university expert on U.S. foreign policy. “Not every action of the Trump administration abroad was wrong, and unnecessary movements to reverse every Trump decision would cause a kind of whiplash that makes the U.S. look like an unreliable partner.”
But it’s extremely clear that Biden’s tenure will not reflect Trump’s. There will clearly be big differences, and we’ve seen it before.
Biden rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization after Trump withdrew from the US. He recalled the travel ban on Muslim-majority countries and promised that America would participate in Covax, the global initiative to develop and equitably distribute vaccine doses worldwide. More than 170 countries are members of the initiative, although the Trump administration did not want to join – an outlier with Russia.
“These early foreign policy steps show a commitment to international cooperation, equity and basic rights – as well as a willingness to resist opponents – which Trump’s foreign policy is sorely lacking,” Tama told me.
And perhaps the biggest change so far is Blinken’s confirmation that Biden will do quickly support for an end to the Saudi-led war in Yemen. “This is one of the highest human rights and progressive priorities,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), a leading proponent of a more left-wing foreign policy, told me.
These are significant interruptions, and it’s clear that US foreign policy will change quite a bit during Biden’s four years in office. But those hoping Biden will immediately leave behind Trump’s legacy may be disappointed by some of the government’s early signals.