President Joe Biden promised an end to the Trump years in U.S. foreign policy. But, according to recent statements by Biden’s new secretary of state and other senior officials, there is likely to be more continuity than change, at least for a while.
The new government is only three days away, but Biden’s team members have already signaled that they intend to continue with several of the policies that President Donald Trump followed during his presidency, from Venezuela to Ukraine, Israel and even China.
Many of these details about Biden’s foreign policy plans emerged during the confirmation hearing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday, the day before Biden took office as president.
Blinken said the U.S. will continue to recognize Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president, a decision the Trump administration made in January 2019 as part of its effort to oust the country’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro. Blinken added that the new team would also continue to punish Maduro and his government, only “most effectively”.
Blinken also said that the Biden government will continue to train and send lethal weapons to the Ukrainian military 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 which some feared would increase the seven-year conflict.
The new diplomat said Biden is opposed to the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Germany and Russia. The Trump administration sanctioned Russia against the plan in 2019, claiming that the $ 11 billion oil delivery system would make Europe’s heart more dependent on Moscow. Biden, who officials say is not planning any kind of “reinitialization” of relations with Russia anytime soon, seems to agree.
Opposition to the Biden gas pipeline could create a conflict with Germany, and Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she wants to discuss the matter with the new American president. “My basic attitude has not yet changed to the point that the project shouldn’t exist,” she said at a news conference on Thursday, noting how critically many in the United States and Europe view Nord Stream 2.
Blinken told lawmakers that he and the Biden government consider Jerusalem the capital of Israel and have pledged to keep the US embassy there. Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the embassy from its previous location in Tel Aviv in 2018, a move that brought down decades of U.S. diplomacy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that some feared would engender widespread violence in the region. This violence has not materialized, and it now appears that the status quo is just that – the status quo.
Blinken also praised Trump for being “right to take a tougher approach to China” and said the Trump administration’s decision to label Beijing’s treatment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang as “genocide” was correct. Biden’s aide made it clear that the new team’s tactics towards China would be different from those of the Trump team, but the general thrust of U.S. policy toward the country – confrontation – would remain the same.
Finally, Biden pledged during the campaign to join the nuclear deal with Iran, as long as Tehran complied again, reducing its levels of uranium enrichment. But Blinken, along with Biden’s Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, and White House press secretary Jen Psaki, have made it clear in the past few days that any return to the deal may take a while and may not even happen.
“I think, quite frankly, that we are a long way from that,” said Haines during his own confirmation hearing on Tuesday.
This is not the radical change in foreign policy that many expected, considering the frequency with which Biden criticized the way Trump handled foreign affairs during the campaign. But some critics, including progressives, are not surprised.
“Joe Biden never promised to be a revolutionary or to make a radical change, so what we’ve seen so far, both in terms of personnel and politics, shouldn’t be exactly surprising,” said Stephen Miles, executive director of the defense group Win Without Guerra . “Given how broken our current foreign policy is, any transition will start far from where progressives want to be.”
Is Biden’s foreign policy Trump 2.0? Not exactly.
None of this means that Biden plans to conduct 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 with many of their predecessors’ foreign policies, even if they do not fully agree with them because they cannot find a way to reverse them quickly or easily. Presidents Obama and Trump wanted to get out of the Afghan War, for example, but none of them ended it despite a combined 12 years of attempts.
In addition, Trump did some good things on the world stage, so Biden would not want to dismiss every move.
“Biden is right to maintain continuity on some foreign policy issues,” said Jordan Tama of American University, an expert on US foreign policy. “Not all of the Trump administration’s foreign policy actions were wrong, and hasty moves to reverse all Trump decisions would generate a kind of lash that would make the United States look like an unreliable partner.”
But it is extremely clear that Biden’s tenure will not be equal to that of Trump. Clearly there will be major differences and we have already seen some.
Biden rejoined the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization after Trump withdrew the U.S. from them. He lifted the travel ban in Muslim-majority countries and promised that the United States would participate in Covax, the global initiative to develop and distribute doses of vaccines equitably around the world. More than 170 countries are members of the initiative, although the Trump administration has refused to join – an exception, along with Russia.
“These early stages of foreign policy demonstrate a commitment to international cooperation, equity and basic rights – as well as a willingness to face opponents – that was deeply lacking in Trump’s foreign policy,” Tama told me.
And perhaps the biggest change so far is Blinken’s confirmation that Biden will quickly end support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. “This is one of the highest priorities for human and progressive rights,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), one of the main defenders of a left-wing foreign policy, told me.
These are significant disruptions, and it is clear that US foreign policy will change significantly during Biden’s four years in office. But those who expect Biden to leave Trump’s legacy behind immediately may be disappointed by some of the government’s first signs.