US President Joe Biden has promised a clear break from Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ doctrine and transactional approach to foreign policy. During his inauguration speech, Biden assured allies that Washington will re-emerge on the world stage as a ‘strong and trusted power for peace, progress, and security’. 

Many allies of the US have welcomed the return of a more predictable and cooperative administration in Washington. For instance, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU Commission, said that, ‘Europe is ready for a new start with our oldest and most trusted partner’.

Biden’s rhetoric promises a return to the American-led multilateralism of the pre-Trump years. The new administration has already set out to re-join international organisations and treaties which Trump abandoned in favour of a more unilateral approach. Biden’s commitment to American participation and defence of the liberal rules-based order will mark the most striking difference between his administration and Trump’s. 

However, a lot has changed since Biden served as vice president during Obama’s tenure. If the new administration is betting on a simple reset to the Obama years, they will be sorely disappointed.  Trump’s electoral success in 2016 was in part built upon the dissatisfaction millions of Americans felt towards the liberal order, rapidly accelerating globalisation, free trade, and a series of interventionist misadventures by the US in the Middle East.

Moreover, the US now faces the return of great power competition posed by China and the erosion of its status as global hegemon. Washington’s approach to the US-China balance of power will have consequences which are felt beyond the Asia-Pacific region.

The Biden administration will also have to grapple with emerging regional powers who have demonstrated increasingly sophisticated approaches to diplomacy, hybrid warfare, and long-term strategy. So far, this has not played out well. Other actors, like Turkey and Russia, have successively exploited the strategic space vacated by the US in the Middle East, North Africa, and elsewhere.

Although the Biden administration is keen to extend a more cooperative hand towards American allies, the general direction of US foreign policy towards its adversaries will largely remain unchanged. The means and ways may vary, but the ends will be essentially the same.

The Return of Multilateralism

Antony Blinken, the new secretary of state, has outlined a commitment to steering the US in the opposite direction of Trump’s America First foreign policy and restoring multilateralism as a key tool in American diplomacy.

Veteran diplomat Richard N. Haass described Trump’s foreign policy doctrine as the ‘Withdrawal Doctrine’. Indeed, the Trump administration withdrew, or threatened to withdraw the US from several international institutions and treaties including the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the World Health Organisation (WHO), the UN Human Rights Council, the Paris Agreement, and more.

The Biden administration already has plans for the US to re-enter treaties and organisations that were abandoned by Trump. One of its first moves will be to re-join the Paris climate accord which sets global standards for emissions reductions amongst the 189 countries who are party to the agreement. This is in keeping with Biden’s pledge to prioritise climate issues in foreign and domestic policy.

The new administration will also reverse Trump’s decision to withdraw from the WHO, which would have come into effect this year. Trump clashed with the WHO on its handling of COVID-19 and accused the organisation of becoming ‘a puppet of China’ and providing ‘terrible advice’. 

Ironically, the US may find that it has become a second-rate player to China and other states who have filled the strategic space left by the US withdrawal from the WHO and other UN bodies. Reasserting American influence in international organisations will be a time consuming and delicate process. Anthony Blinken’s announcement that the US will join the Covax initiative to rollout COVID-19 vaccines globally may help smoothen the rough relationship with the WHO, which is linked to the Covax initiative. Over the long term, Washington will have to demonstrate a sustained commitment to the international organisations it once championed.

Trump’s transactional approach to alliances, international organisations, and treaty commitments failed to recognise the more subtle benefits these constructs confer on American interests.  Trump undermined the norms and values which uphold the American-led order, draining the US of its soft power in favour of short-term gains. By measuring diplomatic effectiveness akin to a business expenses sheet, the Trump administration ignored the nuances of international relations, in which gains and losses can rarely be measured quantitatively.

Nevertheless, the Trump administration did introduce dynamics that the new administration would do well to learn from. Chief among them is the realist insight that international institutions can be a field for competition. The previous administration recognised that rival actors could position themselves within international organisations to subvert US interests whilst advancing their own. Trump’s approach to this reality was blunt and tactless, but the basic assumption that the anarchic state of international relations persists within global organisations remains valid. This is a lesson that Biden’s foreign policy team should not forget, especially in its dealing with China.

Restoring American Soft Power

In International Relations theory, soft power refers to the ability of a state to influence the behaviour of other states through appeal and attraction, rather than coercion and force (hard power). Soft power is a combination of cultural, economic, and political pull factors which enhance a state’s influence. 

The Biden administration will have to grapple with a diminished reserve of American soft power. The assault on Capitol Hill by Trump supporters this January has seriously dented positive perceptions of the US as a stable and functioning democracy. Washington’s ability to uphold and project the values of the American-led order abroad have been undermined by an inability to preserve these norms at home.

Nevertheless, the US retains a strong base of soft power. The worldwide ubiquity of American film, television, and entertainment helps project US soft power in a way politics never could. The cultural pull of the US will remain intact. Meanwhile however, it is essential that the Biden administration addresses the deep divide paralysing US politics at home whilst taking the necessary steps to repair relations abroad.

China

In all likelihood, the US’s relationship with China will be the most crucial aspect of Biden’s foreign policy. The key question of early 21^st century power politics will be whether Washington can continue to lead the liberal world order or if Beijing will surpass the US as global hegemon.  Such a question will not be answered in a single presidential term, but the Biden administration’s approach to China will be immensely important.

Before Trump’s presidency, there was still debate in Washington as to how the US should perceive China. Obama’s ‘pivot to East Asia’, which involved a significant reshuffle of military focus on the region, started to acknowledge China as a strategic competitor. However, it was during Trump’s term that the paradigm shifted and there was bipartisan recognition in Washington that China should be approached as an adversary. The new administration does not intend to challenge this paradigm shift.

The Biden administration will continue to treat Beijing as a strategic competitor. During an interview with the New York Times in December last year, Biden said that he had no immediate intentions to lift tariffs on China put in place by the Trump administration. In the future, Washington may try to ply open the state-dominated Chinese economy or hold Beijing more accountable for malign trading practices and intellectual property theft. In the meantime, however, Biden will have his hands full addressing the fallout from domestic unrest in the US.

Among the most immediate concerns posed by China are human rights abuses in Hong Kong and Beijing’s mistreatment of the Uyghur Muslim minority who reside primarily in China’s north-western Xinjiang province. Several Trump-era policymakers were recently sanctioned by China after outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Beijing of committing genocide against the Uyghurs in so-called ‘re-education’ camps. 

On Wednesday, the new US secretary of state, Anthony Blinken supported his predecessor, saying: ‘My judgment remains that genocide is committed against the Uighurs, and that hasn't changed’.  The Biden administration will uphold their predecessor’s determination that China is committing a genocide, but it remains to be seen what actions Blinken and other US officials will take in terms of policy approaches to this pressing issue.

Biden’s administration is expected to rely more heavily on allies when confronting Beijing. In a recent phone call President Biden reassured Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga that the US will continue to meet its security commitments in the Pacific theatre.  According to a statement by the White House, ‘President Biden reaffirmed to the Prime Minister his commitment to provide extended deterrence to Japan.’ Japan will continue to receive protection from the US nuclear umbrella and Biden has promised to support Japan in defending the Senkaku islands against possible Chinese incursions.

A further option would be for the US to deepen security ties with Japan, Australia, and India via the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the ‘Quad’). After skirmishes in the Himalayas between Chinese and Indian troops, India may be especially receptive to this idea.  Australia has also experienced a cooling of relations with China due to a recent trade disagreement and security concerns regarding Chines espionage.  The Biden administration may leverage these tensions to bolster cooperation between members of the Quad. However, US policy makers should tread carefully to avoid ruffling too many feathers in Beijing if they feel relations are still salvageable.



Russia

The Kremlin have posed a foreign policy headache for the US in several domains. War has waged on NATO’s eastern flank between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces in Ukraine’s Donbass region since 2014. That same year Russia annexed Crimea and has since increased its naval power projection over the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. In 2015 and 2016, the Kremlin significantly bolstered its support for President Bashar al-Assad by deploying military forces to Syria, thwarting any hopes that the Obama administration had for regime change. 

More recently, Russia is believed to have been behind the massive SolarWinds cyberattack which targeted several branches of the US government and military. The Kremlin has also been accused of tampering with the 2016 and 2020 US presidential elections.

Russia does not present the same magnitude of existential threat posed by the USSR during the Cold War, but President Vladimir Putin and his inner circle of policy, military and intelligence elites have proven extremely adept in their abilities to exploit US vulnerabilities. For instance, the Kremlin has exploited US foreign policy failures to position itself as an alternative power broker in North Africa and the Middle East. Meanwhile in Eastern Europe, Russia has leveraged its understanding of hybrid warfare to destabilise former members of the Soviet bloc.

The Biden administration is set to maintain a similar posture towards Russia as the previous administration. The Trump administration made countermoves against the Kremlin with tariffs and the sale of anti-tank weapons to Ukrainian forces fighting in Donbass. However, these efforts were contradicted by Trump’s personal hesitancy to take a tough stance on Russia, exemplified when he dismissed the advice of American intelligence agencies in favour of Putin’s assurances that Russia had not meddled in the 2016 election when the two met at Helsinki in 2018. In 2020, Trump again tried to deflect blame on the Kremlin for the SolarWinds hack by suggesting that the hackers might have been instructed by Beijing. With a new president sitting in the Oval Office, Washington’s approach to Russia is expected to be far more consistent. To that end, Biden has already ordered a comprehensive intelligence review of the SolarWinds hack.

An immediate concern for the new president and his team will be the imminent expiry of the US-Russia nuclear arms control treaty known as New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty). New START is set to expire on 5 February, this year. Although Russo-American relations remain poor, the US and Russia have expressed a willingness to extend the treaty following a remote discussion between both heads of state which took place this month.

Another issue demanding immediate attention is the domestic unrest in Russia sparked by the alleged poisoning and detention of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny at the behest of the incumbent government. US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has called Navalny’s treatment a ‘violation of human rights’ and ‘an affront to the Russian people’. 

However, the US have few policy options regarding Navalny beyond open criticism. The US could impose sanctions but is likely to do so anyway in continuation of the Trump administration’s efforts to discourage Russia and Germany from completing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The US can do little to influence Russian domestic politics, contrary to the Kremlin’s accusations of American meddling.

More broadly, the US-Russia relationship is set to remain mostly adversarial. Trump-era policies like sanctions will likely carry over in some form to the new administration’s approach to Russia but the contradictions raised by Trump’s personal approach will cease to be an issue. There will be several issues on which the US will have to come to agreement on with Russia. The latter is too great a player in international power politics for Washington to brush aside when there is a disagreement. However, the biggest questions concerning Russia will have to do with countering the Kremlin’s efforts to subvert American influence on the world stage. For now, the answers to those questions are likely to be hawkish in nature.

Iran and the JCPOA

Biden has outlined American re-entry into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as one of the first foreign policy priorities of his administration. The JCPOA, or ‘Iran nuclear deal’, is an agreement that was signed between Iran and the P5 + 1 (five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany) in 2015 and came into action the following year. According to the terms of the JCPOA, Iran would comply with restrictions on its capacity to construct nuclear weapons. In return for compliance, the P5 + 1 nations agreed to lift sanctions, arms embargoes and unfreeze funds in return for continued compliance with the agreement.

In May 2018, Trump officially withdrew the US from the JCPOA and reinstated more severe sanctions on Tehran. Now, Biden wants to reverse that decision and offer Iran a ‘credible path back to diplomacy’ by reviving American participation in the JCPOA. 

Doing so may prove a difficult process. The US could lose credibility if it is perceived to be flip-flopping between opposite foreign policies and Iran may have emerged in a stronger position to negotiate from now that Tehran has enriched uranium up to 20% and stockpiled more than 12 times the allowed limit of uranium. Blinken has said that sanctions will remain on Iran until the latter starts to comply with the original terms of the 2015 deal.

Israel

The Abraham Accords stand out as a significant achievement of the Trump administration’s foreign policy. The Abraham Accords which were initially presented as a joint statement between Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the US and have since come to refer to a series of treaties, which have opened the door to normalised relations between Israel and the Arab states. Since the initial joint statement made on 13 August 2020, Israel has signed the Israel–United Arab Emirates normalization agreement with the UAE and the Bahrain–Israel normalization agreement with Bahrain. 

In October last year, Sudan also agreed to formally normalise relations with Israel. Morocco followed suit in December. 

Blinken has already signalled the Biden administration’s eagerness to build further on the Abraham Accords. Washington favours the US-Israel alliance because the latter is seen as an effective bulwark against threats to American interests such as political Islam, terrorism, and a revisionist Iran. A normalisation of Israeli-Arab relations presents an opportunity for strategic realignment in the Middle East that would finally limit tensions between Washington’s Arab allies and long-term partner Israel. This would strengthen the US’s position when dealing with Iran or facing strategic competitors like Russia and Turkey.

According to Blinken, the Biden administration have no plans to reverse Trump’s controversial decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the US embassy there. This will anger progressives in the Democrat party who have long championed the Palestinian cause, but any fallout abroad, like a worsening of relations between the US and Arab states, would have happened in December 2017 when the decision was finalised. Realpolitik will therefore triumph over any moral sentiment felt by progressive Democrats on this issue.

The Biden administration will however make a U-turn on Trump’s approach to the Palestinian issue. Washington will resume contact with Palestinian leaders and reverse Trump’s decision to axe aid which was provided to Palestinians via the UN. Richard Mills, the US Deputy Ambassador to the UN, has said that the US favours a two-state solution for the Israel-Palestine problem. The Biden administration will likely resume the traditional US stance of insisting that the two parties attempt to resolve their protracted conflict via diplomacy and deliberation. Washington will likely take the safest option and try to maintain some semblance of stability with the status quo, but it is also possible that the new administration will take a more proactive approach to mediating between Israelis and Palestinians.

Latin America

The Biden administration will extend a multilateral approach to the US’s southern neighbours on a range of challenges, including COVID-19, environmental issues, and trade. Although less pressing than Asia, the Middle East and Europe, Washington will also have to safeguard its interests in Latin America against strategic competitors like Beijing and Moscow.

Biden can make immediate gains with a more tactful approach to Latin America. Trump’s rhetoric regarding Mexico for instance, was especially abrasive and did little to enhance relations between the two countries. Despite these blunders, Washington did strengthen commercial relations with Mexico and Brazil during Trump’s time as president. At the same time, the US Development Finance Corporation largely succeeded in promoting private sector development in Central America and Colombia. Biden could build on these activities to promote US economic influence in the region.

Biden’s more open approach to immigration from Latin American countries may also improve relations. On his first day of office Biden signed an executive order to halt construction of the US-Mexico border wall which was designed to limit illegal immigration across the US’s southern border. More broadly, the new administration has plans to liberalise the immigration process and implement an eight-year pathway to citizenship which will apply to the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants who reside in the US, many of whom originate from Latin American countries. 

Although the general theme of foreign policy directed towards Latin America will be to improve relations, one country with whom the US will not be warming relations with is Venezuela. For now, the Biden administration is set to continue Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and will continue to recognise opposition leader Juan Guaido as president. Blinken has said that the US will ‘more effectively target’ Maduro’s regime with sanctions but may also consider increasing aid. 

Venezuela’s socioeconomic and political troubles, which are fuelled by hyperinflation, economic collapse, and diplomatic isolation, have opened the backdoor to China and Russia. Both countries have lent substantial figures to keep Maduro’s regime afloat in return for political influence and access to Venezuelan oil and energy. Washington can be somewhat reassured that Venezuela’s neighbours regard the failing state as a regional pariah, but US policy makers will be anxious to prevent Chinese and Russian influence growing elsewhere.

Tackling the political mess at home will weigh more heavily as a priority for US policymakers but the Biden administration should make plans to enhance its soft power reach and economic ties in Latin America to counter growing Chinese and Russian influence. Both countries find it easier to expand their influence over states weakened by social and economic unrest, as well as those with an obvious deficit in democracy, so Washington should explore ways to help its partners address these vulnerabilities.

The Future of US Foreign Policy

Predicting foreign policy is tricky. Any number of surprises, shocks, or black swan events can drastically alter the course of an otherwise predictable administration’s approaches to foreign policy. 

Nevertheless, several broad trends of the new administration’s foreign policy can be identified. Namely, multilateralism is back. Observers can expect to see Biden’s team engaging with allies and international organisations in a way that is more reminiscent of the pre-Trump era.

However, the strategic shifts which have taken place during Trump’s presidency cannot be undone. Most importantly, Beijing is now firmly an adversary of the US. How the Biden administration approach this reality is open ended, but it will have to acknowledge the competition for power which is now playing out between both countries.

The Biden administration must also recognise that on the long term, US hegemony is not assured, a reality which was only becoming apparent in the later years of the Obama presidency. This will affect how Washington performs foreign policy in regions like the Middle East, Africa and Asia, where other actors have moved into the strategic spaces which were once fully filled by the US.