WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden vowed in office in his early days a dramatic realignment of US foreign policy from his predecessor. But on some of the toughest issues, he has shown a preference for using the scalpel over the sledgehammer while implementing his own agenda and trying to distance himself from Trumpism.
The early preference for caution and incrementalism is because Biden has repeatedly stated that “America is back.” But in the early tests of foreign policy, Biden, as many of his predecessors have experienced, has shown that a disgust for the previous commander in chief’s policies is easier said than done.
“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 matter of how long it takes for reality to splash them with cold water.”
As a candidate, Biden called Saudi Arabia a ‘pariah’. He promised to crack down on Russian autocrat Vladimir PutinAnd he promised to approach China radically differently from Trump.
But early in his presidency, Biden’s foreign policy decisions often reflected more realism than optimism: a commander-in-chief who approaches the world as it is versus the candidate who spoke with idealism about using American power to reshape the world.
To be sure, Biden has started living up to his campaign promises by working to rebuild coalitions with allies often neglected by Donald Trump – especially when it comes to dealing with China – and by championing democracy, said Green, a senior vice. Chair for Asia and Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
He sent Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to meet with the allies of the Pacific, Japan and South Korea for four days. that started Monday. Austin then heads to India to meet with his colleague, while Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan meet senior Chinese officials in Anchorage on Thursday.
Biden also rejoined the Paris climate accord, giving Iran a sign of readiness to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal, both pacts 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 a US-based Saudi journalist. And while his government recently imposed sanctions on top Russian officials for the poisoning and imprisonment of an opposition leader, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say they want him to take tougher action against officials closer to Putin’s innermost circle.
He has also notably refused to withdraw hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs imposed on China by Trump or to show interest in derailing Trump’s efforts to remove Chinese telecommunications companies from the New York Stock Exchange, or to remove it. Trump ban on Chinese apps.
Sullivan opposes the idea that Biden’s approach to foreign policy is adapted to his candidacy. He noted that Biden has recalibrated relations with the Saudis by ending US support for the five-year Saudi-led military offensive in Yemen. Biden has also confronted Russia with the imprisonment of opposition leader Alexi Navalny, Russia’s alleged involvement in a large-scale cyber-espionage campaign, and reports of Russian bounties on US forces in Afghanistan.
“The president is the ultimate optimist,” Sullivan told reporters shortly after Biden met with other leaders in the Indo-Pacific-focused “Quad” group that includes Australia, India and Japan almost Friday. Sullivan added, “At the end of the day, his measure is what will advance American interests and values.”
Still, the dilemma between realistic and optimistic facing Biden is remarkable.
During the campaign trail, Biden spoke of making Saudi Arabia “pay the price” for human rights violations and “basically making them the pariah that they are.”
A recently released, unclassified US intelligence report determined that the Saudi Crown Prince likely approved the gruesome murder of US resident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But Biden refused to take action against the prince, or he would alienate the man expected to one day rule the kingdom that the US sees as a crucial counterbalance to Iran’s region.
Human rights activist Bill Browder said Biden’s decision not to strike the Crown Prince with the Magnitsky Act – Obama-era legislation that empowers the U.S. administration to punish those it considers human rights violators, freeze their assets, and ban them from entering the U.S. – sent the wrong message not only to the Saudis, but to autocrats around the world.
“I cannot think of a self-defeating, 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.
Biden described Russia during the campaign as the “greatest threat” to US security and alliances, and despised Trump for his convivial relationship with Putin.
But when the Treasury Department earlier this month ordered sanctions against several senior Russian officials and a government research institute and added 13 companies to the US list for export restrictions related to Navalny’s poisoning and incarceration, even some allies suggested that Biden should go further.
“Much work remains to be done to limit the ability of corrupt Russian actors to continue to access the US financial system, and I expect the government will take additional steps to strengthen our financial defenses against dirty Russian money”, said Senator Robert Menendez, the Democratic chairman. of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Republicans have scolded that Biden is not doing enough to stop a gas pipeline to Europe that many believe will give Russia a tool for political influence over energy-dependent Central and Eastern European countries. They note that Biden has not taken steps beyond what the Trump administration took in the waning months to try to thwart the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Northern Russia to Germany, led by Russian state gas company Gazprom.
“We are deeply concerned that the government’s strong statements against the pipeline will not be matched by equally strong actions,” said Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, the Republican who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
But with Biden looking to mend the US-German relationship, which is under pressure from Trump, it can be hard to push too hard on the pipeline.
As for China, Biden was clear about seeing Beijing as the United States’ main competitor.
Last month, he announced a review of the Pentagon’s national security strategy for China as part of its effort to rethink America’s approach with Beijing.
In nearly every one of his calls to fellow heads of state, Biden has inevitably voiced concern about China as a competitor and called for coalition building to counter Beijing’s growing economic power.
He has promised a different approach from Trump, who regularly blamed China for the virus and mocked it in xenophobic language. But Biden notably has stuck to the former Republican president’s tariffs on Chinese aluminum and other goods, at least for now.
Green said the harsh campaign rhetoric against adversaries, such as China and Russia, and complicated allies, such as Saudi Arabia, followed by a measured approach once in office, may have been “a little calculated” and could benefit Biden in the long run. .
“I think if you campaign with harsh poetry, the prose of governing becomes easier in practice,” Green said. “You want to have these hard relationships with China, with Russia, Iran and with the Saudis, which sound a little scary, are a little tough.”