In Biden-Trump handoff, a foreign policy shift for a changed world?
-
Howard LaFranchi Staff writer
As President Joe Biden emphasized in a farewell foreign policy speech Monday, his guiding principle has been advancement of America’s power and interests through U.S.-led alliances.
He cited examples, such as rallying NATO and other international partners in defense of Ukraine, and creating new Indo-Pacific partnerships to confront China.
Why We Wrote This
President Joe Biden’s final foreign policy speech and Donald Trump’s previews of his priorities underscore a tectonic shift in how America projects global power, from relying on alliances to taking a more imperial approach. Does that fit the times?
That sounds nothing like the president-elect. In the run-up to his return to the White House, Donald Trump has listed objectives – such as buying Greenland and seizing the Panama Canal – that treat friendly nations as weak interlocutors and impediments to be subdued.
In the eyes of some analysts, such pronouncements are a throwback to a long-gone century. But for others, a confrontational and unilateral approach to foreign policy may actually be more suited to new big-power competition.
One example some promoters of this view cite is the role they say the president-elect’s demands have played in bringing a Gaza ceasefire closer than at any point over months of the Biden administration’s shuttle diplomacy.
In his speech Monday, President Biden hailed the tireless diplomatic efforts. Yet others say it is more than anything Mr. Trump’s fiery threat, to both Hamas and Israel, of “all hell to pay” that has focused everyone’s attention.
For Joe Biden, it’s been “America is back!”
For Donald Trump, “America First!”
The catch phrases that the departing and once-and-future presidents have used to describe their foreign policies don’t on their own suggest such very different approaches to the United States’ engagement with the world.
Why We Wrote This
President Joe Biden’s final foreign policy speech and Donald Trump’s previews of his priorities underscore a tectonic shift in how America projects global power, from relying on alliances to taking a more imperial approach. Does that fit the times?
But as President Biden emphasized in a farewell foreign policy speech at the State Department Monday, his guiding principle of global engagement – not only as president but over a long political career – has been advancement of America’s power and interests through U.S.-led alliances.
He cited examples of how his administration rallied NATO and other international partners in defense of Ukraine, created new diplomatic and military partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region to confront China, and returned the United States to a leadership role facing the global climate challenge.
“Compared to four years ago, America is stronger, our alliances are stronger, our adversaries and competitors are weaker,” Mr. Biden said.
That reliance on alliances for power and policy projection sounds nothing like the president-elect. In the run-up to his return to the White House next Monday, Mr. Trump has rattled the world, and America’s neighborhood in particular, with a list of objectives – buying Greenland, seizing the Panama Canal, making Canada the 51st state – that treat friendly nations as weak interlocutors and impediments to be subdued.
And like Canada, as subordinate economies that warrant debilitating tariffs instead of symbiotic trade relations.
U.S. allies and partners might understandably experience whiplash as they observe the split screen of Mr. Biden’s ode to alliances juxtaposed with Mr. Trump’s vision of an expansionist America acting unilaterally.
In the eyes of some diplomats and foreign-policy analysts, the president-elect’s jarring pronouncements are a throwback to a long-gone century when a newly muscled adolescent America could more easily impose its will on the weaklings around it.
It’s the “Donroe Doctrine,” as the New York Post cheekily put it last week, a reference to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine that declared the Western Hemisphere America’s domain and off-limits to European powers.
But for others, Mr. Trump’s confrontational and unilateral approach to foreign policy may actually be more suited to an era of big-power competition and waning prospects for international cooperation and global integration.
As evidence, some point to the role they say the president-elect’s threatening demands have played in bringing the Gaza war closer to a ceasefire and hostage release deal than at any point in months of the Biden administration’s shuttle diplomacy.
In his speech Monday, President Biden hailed his administration’s tireless diplomatic efforts and noted that the ceasefire deal that appears to be within hours of final approval is very close to what the U.S. has been promoting for almost eight months.
Yet others say that it is more Mr. Trump’s fiery threats of “all hell to pay” if a deal is not reached by Inauguration Day that have focused everyone’s attention.
Moreover, they say the Trump threats have not been aimed solely at an adversary like Hamas, but have also placed a level of pressure on ally Israel that President Biden ultimately seemed unwilling to apply. Israeli sources say Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, real estate developer and golf buddy Steve Witkoff, made it very clear to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the “hell to pay” if no deal is signed by Jan. 20 applied to him as well.
For critics of Mr. Trump’s hardball diplomacy, the incoming president’s promise of an imperial foreign policy not only threatens to stoke conflicts, but it also risks putting the U.S. on a par with other expansionist big powers – namely China and Russia. What happens to America’s moral authority to check China’s ambitions vis-à-vis Taiwan, for example, or to challenge Russia’s revanchist playbook for Central and Eastern Europe?
Some of the president-elect’s allies roll their eyes at such hand-wringing and advise the worry warts to instead consider Mr. Trump’s history, including as a businessman before entering politics, of taking maximalist and attention-focusing positions at the outset of negotiations.
“The United States is not going to invade another country,” Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma said Sunday on “Meet the Press” when pressed on Mr. Trump’s string of hostile musings. Even when he threatens military force, he said, the president-elect is simply making characteristically “bold” statements aimed at bringing “everyone to the table.”
In his State Department speech, President Biden also spoke of the negotiating table, and of his administration’s enhancement of America’s unique ability to bring countries together to reach shared objectives – at NATO, for example, or at international climate talks.
Critics counter that Mr. Biden’s paean to his administration’s vision of strength through alliances involves a bit of whitewashing. America’s partners in Afghanistan, including NATO allies, were bitterly left in the cold when the U.S. abruptly withdrew its troops in August 2021. European partners felt jilted by the Biden administration’s very America-first infrastructure legislation.
Still, to illustrate his theme, Mr. Biden told a story of how members of the Quad grouping of Asian-Pacific countries requested that their first meeting as an enhanced regional organization be held at his home in Delaware. When he asked why, the response was “that way people will know we are truly friends.”
Well, yes and no.
In the weeks before he takes office, the president-elect has also been receiving a steady stream of foreign leaders at his house at Mar-a-Lago. And while some of them have indeed come to the Florida table to express ideological kinship – like Argentina’s President Javier Milei – others have made the trek to gauge warily the implications of the imminent return of a confrontational America-first foreign policy.
Take Canadian Premier Justin Trudeau, who resigned last week. No one suspects he flew down to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago table in December to show the world how much the two leaders are true friends.
