Joe Biden: His Foreign Policy Challenges and Priorities
President Trump will give Joe Biden the difficult task of cleaning up US relations with many countries. But he may not need much for Biden to lift his spirits.
Relations between the United States and China are the worst since the countries normalized ties four decades ago. America's allies in Europe are alienated. The most important treaty against nuclear proliferation with Russia is about to expire. Iran accumulates enriched nuclear fuel again, and North Korea brandishes its atomic arsenal.
Not to mention global warming, refugee crises and looming famines in some of the poorest places on earth, all amplified by the pandemic.
President-elect Joe Biden inherits a landscape full of challenges and ill will toward the United States in countries hostile to President Donald Trump's mantra, "America first," its unpredictability, its welcoming of autocratic leaders, and its resistance to international cooperation. Biden could also have a difficult time dealing with governments awaiting Trump's re-election, particularly Israel and Saudi Arabia, who share the president's deep antipathy toward Iran.
But Biden's past as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as vice president of the Obama administration has given him a familiarity with international affairs that could work in his favor, foreign policy experts in the know say.
"President Trump has lowered the bar so much that it wouldn't take much for Biden to drastically change perception," said Robert Malley, executive director of the International Crisis Group and a former White House adviser to Obama. "Saying some of the things that Trump hasn't said - rewinding the tape on multilateralism, climate change, human rights - will resonate in a very strong and meaningful way."
Here are the most pressing foreign policy areas facing the Biden administration.
The challenge of US-China relations
Nothing is more urgent, in the eyes of many experts, than reversing the downward trajectory of relations with China, the economic superpower and geopolitical rival that Trump has engaged in what many call a new Cold War. Disputes over trade, the South China Sea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and technology have metastasized during Trump's tenure, according to his critics, compounded by the president's racist remarks that China has infected the world with the coronavirus and that must be held accountable.
"China is kind of the radioactive hub of foreign policy affairs in the United States," said Orville Schell, director of the Asian Society's Center for US-China Relations.
Biden hasn't necessarily helped himself with his own negative representation of China and of his authoritarian leader, President Xi Jinping, during the 2020 campaign. The two were once considered to have developed a friendly relationship over the years. of Obama. But Biden, perhaps acting in part to counter Trump's accusations that he would be lenient on China, has recently called Xi a "bully."
Middle East: changes in Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran?
Biden has vowed to reverse what he called the "dangerous failure" of Trump's Iran policy, which repudiated the 2015 nuclear deal and replaced it with tougher sanctions that have caused profound economic damage in Iran and left The United States is very isolated on this issue.
Biden has offered to re-adhere to the agreement, which restricts Iran's nuclear capability if Tehran agrees to its provisions and agrees to continue negotiating. He has also vowed to immediately overturn Trump's travel ban that affects Iran and several other Muslim-majority countries.
It is unclear whether Iran's hierarchy will accept Biden's approach. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, has said that the United States - regardless of who is in the White House - is not trustworthy. At the same time, "Iran is desperate for a deal," said Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy.
Still, Kupchan said, Biden will face enormous difficulties in any negotiations with Iran that seek to tighten restrictions on its nuclear activities, weaknesses that Trump had cited to justify waiving the nuclear deal.
"The substance will be hard, we already saw this movie and it is not easy," Kupchan said. "I think Biden's challenge is that he doesn't end up blowing up in his face."
Biden's policy on Iran could alienate Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who took advantage of Trump's confrontational approach to help strengthen Israel's relations with the Arab Gulf countries, punctuated by the normalization of diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. How Biden handles relations with Saudi Arabia, which views Iran as an enemy, will also be a challenge.
"It's very difficult to square this circle," Kupchan said.
Trump's extremely favorable treatment of Israel in the protracted conflict with the Palestinians could also prove unnerving when Biden navigates a different path in the Middle East. He has criticized the construction of Israeli settlements on occupied lands that the Palestinians want for a future state. And he is likely to reestablish contacts with Palestinian leaders.
"Benjamin Netanyahu can expect an uncomfortable period of adjustment," an Israeli columnist, Yossi Verter, wrote in the Haaretz newspaper on Friday.
At the same time, Biden also has a history of cordial relations with Netanyahu. Biden has said that he will not reverse Trump's move from the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, a move that deeply angered Palestinians.
Repair relations with Europe and get around Brexit
While Trump has often discredited the European Union and strongly encouraged Britain's departure from the bloc, Biden has expressed a contrary position. Like former President Barack Obama, he supported the United States' close relations with the bloc's leaders and opposed Brexit.
Biden's rise could prove especially uncomfortable for Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had embraced Trump and was counting on striking a trade deal with the United States before his country's divorce from the bloc took full effect. Biden may not be in a rush to complete such an agreement.
While many Europeans will be happy to see Trump leave, the damage they say he has done to America's reliability will not be easily erased.
"We had differences, but there was never a basic mistrust about having common views of the world," former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland told The New York Times last month. In the last four years, he said, European leaders have learned that they "can no longer take for granted that they can trust the United States even on basic things."
Confronting the North Korean nuclear threat
Trump has described his friendship and his three meetings with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, as a success that averted war with the hermetic nuclear-armed country. But critics say that Trump's approach not only failed to persuade Kim to give up his arsenal of nuclear weapons and missiles, but that he bought him time to strengthen them. Last month, North Korea unveiled what appeared to be the largest ICBM in its history.
"During Trump's tenure, North Korea's nuclear weapons program has grown rapidly, its missile capacity has expanded, and Pyongyang can now target the United States with an ICBM," said Evans J.R. Revere, a former State Department official and North Korea expert. "That is the legacy that Trump will soon pass on to Biden, and it will be a huge burden."
Biden, who has been described by North Korea's official news agency as a mad dog that "must be beaten to death with a stick," has criticized Trump's approach as appeasing a dictator. Biden has said that he would push for denuclearization and "support South Korea," but he has not specified how he would deal with North Korean belligerence.
A rapprochement with Russia and Putin perhaps more severe
Biden has long claimed that he would take a much harsher line with Russia than Trump, who questioned the usefulness of NATO, doubted intelligence warnings about Russia's interference in US elections, flattered the president. Vladimir V. Putin and said that improving US relations with the Kremlin would benefit everyone. Biden, who as vice president pushed for sanctions against Russia for its annexation of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 - the largest illegal land seizure in Europe since World War II - could try to extend those sanctions and take other punitive measures.
While tensions with Russia are likely to rise, gun control is an area in which Biden and Putin share a desire for progress. Biden will be sworn in a few weeks before the expected expiration of the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) of 2010. He has said that he wants to negotiate an extension of the treaty without preconditions.
A return to the Paris Agreement and international commitments
Biden has said that one of his first acts as president will be to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement to limit global warming, which the United States officially abandoned under Trump on Wednesday. Biden has also said that he will restore America's membership in the World Health Organization, which Trump repudiated amid the coronavirus pandemic, describing the World Health Organization as China's lackey.
More broadly, Biden is expected to reverse many of the isolationist and anti-immigrant measures adopted during the Trump administration, which Trump critics generally see as shameful stains on America's position in the world. Biden has said that he will dissolve Trump's immigration restrictions, stop construction of his border wall with Mexico, expand resources for immigrants and provide a path to citizenship for people living in the United States without documents.
Still, many of Trump's policies have considerable support in the United States, and how quickly or effectively Biden can change them remains to be seen. The upheavals that have rocked American democracy and divisive elections have also cast doubt on Biden's ability to deliver on his promises.
"There is relief in the return to some kind of normalcy, but at the same time, history cannot be erased," said Jean-Marie Guehenno, a French diplomat who is a fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution and a former Under Secretary General of peacekeeping operations at the United Nations. "The kind of soft power that the United States has enjoyed in the past has largely evaporated."
