WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden promised in his early tenure a dramatic re-arrangement of his predecessor’s U.S. foreign policy. But on some of the most difficult issues, he has preferred to use the scalpel over the sledgehammer while implementing his own agenda and trying to move away from Trumpism.
The early preference for caution and incrementalism comes because Biden has repeatedly stated that ‘America is back’. But in the early tests of foreign policy, Biden showed, as many of his predecessors had experienced, that it was easier said than done to push the policies of the previous commander-in-chief away.
“President X is almost always different from candidate X,” said Michael Green, who served as a senior National Security Council official in the George W. Bush administration. “It’s just a question of how long it will take before reality splashes them with cold water.”
As a candidate, Biden calls Saudi Arabia a ‘pariah’. He promised to make Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin tough. And he promised to follow a radically different approach to China than Trump.
But at the beginning of his presidency, Biden’s decisions on foreign policy often reflected more realism than optimism: a commander-in-chief approaching the world as it is versus the candidate who spoke with idealism about using American power to reform the world. .
To be sure, Biden began to live up to his campaign promises by rebuilding coalitions with allies often neglected by Donald Trump – especially when it comes to China – as well as campaigning for democracy, said Green, a senior vice president. chair of the chair of Asia and Japan at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
He sent Foreign Minister Antony Blinken and Defense Minister Lloyd Austin to meet with Pacific allies Japan and South Korea for four days of talks it started Monday. Austin then left for India to meet with his counterpart, while Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met with Chinese officials in Anchorage on Thursday.
Biden’s has also rejoined the Paris climate deal, giving Iran the wisdom to reintroduce the 2015 nuclear deal, both treaties scrapped by Trump.
But critics – and some allies – point to his decision to refuse to punish Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman., for the murder of an American Saudi journalist. And although his government has recently imposed sanctions on top Russian officials for poisoning and jailing an opposition leader, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say they want him to take tougher action against officials closer to Putin’s inner circle.
He also refused to revoke the hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs imposed by Trump on China or to show interest in Trump’s efforts to withdraw Chinese telecommunications companies from the New York Stock Exchange, derail them or lift Trump’s ban on Chinese programs. hef.
Sullivan advocates for the idea that Biden’s foreign policy approach was modulated by his candidacy. He noted that Biden had recalibrated relations with the Saudis by ending US support for the five-year military offensive in Yemen by Saudi Arabia. Biden also confronted Russia over the jail term of opposition leader Alexi Navalny, Russia’s alleged involvement in a massive cyber-espionage campaign and reports of Russian abundance on US troops in Afghanistan.
“The president is the best optimist,” Sullivan told reporters shortly after Biden met with other leaders in the Indo-Pacific-focused “Quad” group that includes Australia, India and Japan. Sullivan added: “At the end of the day, his benchmark is what will advance American interests and values.”
Yet the realistic versus optimistic problem Biden faced is remarkable.
On the campaign trail, Biden spoke of Saudi Arabia ‘paying the price’ for human rights violations and ‘actually making them the pariah they are’.
A recently released unclassified U.S. intelligence report has determined that the Saudi crown prince is likely to approve of the gruesome assassination of U.S. resident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But Biden did not want to take action against the prince so that he did not alienate the man who is expected to one day rule the kingdom that the US considers a critical counterweight in the region with Iran.
Human rights activist Bill Browder said Biden’s decision not to hit the crown prince with the Magnitsky Act – legislation from the Obama era that empowers the US government to punish those he considers human rights violators their assets freeze and ban them from entering the US – sent the wrong message not only to the Saudis but also to autocrats around the world.
“I can not think of a more self-destructive, greater failure of a foreign policy test for the Biden government than this first test,” said Browder, who was a key champion in passing the Magnitsky legislation. .
During the campaign, Biden described Russia as the “biggest threat” to US security and alliances, and disrespected Trump over his friendly relationship with Putin.
But when the Treasury Department earlier this month ordered sanctions against several Russian officials and added one government research institute and 13 businesses to the U.S. list for export restrictions on Navalny’s poisoning and imprisonment, even allies suggested Biden go further.
“There is still a lot of work to be done to restrict corrupt Russian actors’ access to the US financial system, and I expect the government to take additional measures to supplement our financial defense against dirty Russian money,” said Senator Robert Menendez. , the Democratic chairman, said. of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Republicans have said Biden is not doing enough to stop a gas pipeline to Europe that many believe would give Russia a tool for political influence over the energy-dependent Central and Eastern European countries. They note that Biden has taken no steps other than the Trump administration’s in its dwindling months to thwart northern Russia’s North Germany’s North North 2 pipeline, led by Russian state gas company Gazprom.
“We are deeply concerned that the government’s strong statements against the pipeline are not linked to equally strong action,” he said. Michael McCaul, Texas, the top Republican on the foreign affairs committee, said.
But while Biden wants to restore the US-German relationship, one that is being tested by Trump, it can be difficult to push the pipeline.
As for China, Biden is clearly seeing Beijing as the main competitor of the United States.
Last month, he announced a Pentagon review of China’s national security strategy as part of his push to recalibrate the US approach with Beijing.
In almost every one of his calls for co-heads of state, Biden inevitably raised his concerns about China as a competitor and called for the coalition to be built to prevent Beijing’s growing economic influence.
He promised a different approach than Trump, who regularly accused the virus of China and mockingly referred to it with xenophobic language. But Biden in particular has kept the former Republican president’s tariffs on Chinese aluminum and other goods at least for the time being.
Green said the tough campaign rhetoric against opponents, such as China and Russia, and complex allies, such as Saudi Arabia, followed by a moderate approach once in office, might have been ‘a bit calculated’ and that it could have biden Biden in the long run. benefit.
“I think as a practical matter, if you fight hard poetry, government prose becomes easier,” Green said. “You want to enter into these tough relations with China, Russia, Iran and the Saudis, a little scary and a little tough.”