by P. Michael McKinley
In the waning days of the Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security adviser Jake Sullivan highlighted the foreign policy achievements of the previous four years including marshaling support for Ukraine, preventing a wider war in the Middle East, and galvanizing Indo-Pacific ties. The outgoing president himself gave a spirited defense of his accomplishments just days before he left office. As a reelected President Trump takes over, however, it seems fair to ask just how sustainable the efforts to “reenergize alliances and partnerships” and America’s global leadership actually were.
And in at least one crucial respect, the Biden administration’s “Foreign Policy for the Middle Class” turned out to be more continuity than a break with President Trump’s “America First:” a protectionist national economic security doctrine now appears to be a centerpiece of American foreign policy.
The swan song of a certain kind of American internationalism seems at hand, as the incoming administration signals policies which, reflecting the national mood, will prioritize a more unilateralist approach to the outside world.
The Context in 2021
This moment seems a long way off from when President Biden took office with the goal of reconnecting the United States to the world as the country emerged from the pandemic, a polarizing national election, and an unprecedented economic downturn.
The daunting international and domestic environment limited and conditioned the sweeping agenda the Biden White House set itself. As I have written elsewhere, the shift away from post-Cold War certainties continued, and the legacy of the Trump administration’s economic nationalism, rejection of multilateralism, and questioning of allies was hard to shake off.
There was to be no return to the pre-Trump world with a simple assertion of “America is back.” As Ben Rhodes has written, the Biden administration was operating in a vastly different landscape: the definitive emergence of a multipolar world, the rise of more powerful adversaries, deepening polarization at home, and the primacy of domestic policy concerns inside the United States after the 2020 pandemic. It is no surprise that the articulation of “A Foreign Policy for the Middle Class” by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, placed the priority on rebuilding capacity, resiliency, and innovation inside the United States.
The Biden Reset
Any US president would have found this difficult terrain to navigate. While confirming some Trump administration policies, Biden nonetheless sought to carry out an ambitious range of initiatives to meet transnational challenges and rebuild alliances.
Under Biden, the multilateralism largely abandoned under President Trump was restored. The United States rejoined UNESCO, the UN Human Rights Council, the Paris Climate Accord, and the World Health Organization. The White House hosted a Leaders’ Summit on Climate Change and launched the Democracy Summit initiative as a response to the growing challenge of authoritarian states internationally.
On the economic front, Washington was once again a more active partner through the G-7 and G-20 and launched a US-EU Trade and Technology Council. While there was no return to a free trade agenda, and the emphasis on national resiliency was deepened, there were initiatives in East Asia (the India-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity) and with Latin America (Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity) to promote economic cooperation, as well as efforts to reduce trade tensions with Europe.
Biden also reinforced key security alliances of the United States. The first NATO Summit of his administration, where Biden proclaimed, “America is back,” was seen as turning the page on the turbulent years of the Trump administration when the pressures on burden-sharing and threats to abandon allies shook European confidence. US leadership in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine galvanized NATO and Europe into displaying a unity of purpose not seen for a generation. Ukraine was saved as a state; NATO’s rationale was revitalized as Finland and Sweden joined the alliance and hundreds of billions of dollars flowed to Ukraine; and most member-states met the NATO target of spending 2% of GDP on defense.
The expansion of stronger security cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region was also significant, building on initial steps by Trump in his first term. Steps included the revitalized Quad format of dialogue between Japan, Australia, India, and the US, and the AUKUS security alliance between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the US, with cooperation from Japan, focused on naval and nuclear cooperation. Europeans and Americans followed Australia’s lead in strengthening ties with Pacific Island nations. On China, seen by both Republicans and Democrats as the principal strategic competitor of the United States, there was largely bipartisan continuity, with the Biden administration adding sanctions and restrictions on trade and investment with China.
In the Middle East, the Biden administration helped deepen the Trump-negotiated Abraham Accords between Israel and Middle Eastern nations. In the aftermath of October 7, diplomacy involving continuous travel to the region by the secretaries of state and defense, and the CIA director, helped sustain the accords and prevented a wider conflict. When Iran did strike at Israel, Arab and western states assisted Israel in intercepting the missile attack. The Houthis’ attack on shipping in the Red Sea was contained. US diplomacy with Qatar and Egypt brokered ceasefires and hostage exchanges with Hezbollah and Hamas.
More, broadly, Washington supported negotiations to end conflicts in Yemen, Ethiopia, and Sudan, and quietly worked to support democratic transitions in Guatemala and Brazil after polarizing elections in those countries. There was outreach to Africa and Latin America with leaders’ summits hosted by President Biden.
Towards the end of his presidency, the argument was also being made that the new “axis of evil” of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea had weakened. Russia had not succeeded in Ukraine; China’s economy was faltering; and Iran had suffered defeat in Lebanon, Gaza, and Syria.
Still Less than Meets the Eye
It remains unclear whether the administration’s objective of creating new foundations for America’s global engagement in the coming decade was met. It is also questionable whether the United States would have had quite the same profile internationally as it did during the Biden presidency without Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel.
Allies in Europe certainly doubted the staying power of Biden’s efforts to restore the broader transatlantic relationship. Critically, American defense expenditures never rose enough above the inflation rate to meet the growing demands of global tensions and alliances as the bipartisan Commission on National Defense Strategy made clear. On Ukraine, and following the initial success in pushing back Russia’s invading troops, Washington delayed sending weapons systems that could have made a difference on the battlefield, failed to impose broader sanctions on Russia from the start that could have added to the pressures on Moscow’s war effort, openly questioned President Zelensky’s decision-making, and never fully explained to Americans what was at stake – President Biden did not make an Oval Office speech specifically on Ukraine as the United States expended over $100 billion supporting the country. Washington could have outlined a multi-year US commitment to revamping NATO across the decade but did not. The lapse is likely to carry costs as weaker governments in France and Germany, and a new one in the US, seem likely to pull back on defense commitments.
Elsewhere, US influence, let alone leadership, was not in fact so easily restored. The Summit of the Americas in June 2022 laid bare Washington’s divide with Latin American countries on a host of issues and Biden’s end-of-term stops in Peru and Brazil in December 2024 were more a product of the APEC and G-20 summits than of South America’s growing centrality to the global economy. The visit to the Amazon rather than highlight American commitment to combating climate change, was a symbol of lost opportunities. Development assistance for Latin America and the Caribbean was at less than $3 billion in FY 2023 when support for Ukraine was in the tens of billions. Dictatorships in Nicaragua and Venezuela consolidated, and a concern with rising migration across the border with Mexico obscured other important bilateral issues affecting trade and cooperation in law enforcement.
In the Middle East, and before the war in Gaza, the concern in Washington had been more about the waning influence of the United States in the region, to include the weakening ties with Gulf states. Once the conflict began, the destruction and civilian death toll in Gaza, in which Washington was seen complicit, also had a negative impact on its image and influence regionally. And key allies there continued to pursue closer ties with Russia, China, and Iran.
In East and South Asia, the focus on China notwithstanding (which the US National Security Strategy framed as “the contest for the future of the world”), Washington found key friends and allies wary about too openly taking sides. India, while continuing to deepen ties with the United States, resolutely maintained a multi-aligned foreign policy. Southeast Asian allies, whose trade with China mushroomed after the pandemic, also sought balance in their ties with the United States. And yet American foreign policy continued to define world challenges through the prism of two competing world views, which may have been accurate but needed to adapt to a more complex world environment.
As the administration drew to a close, President Biden’s visit in November 2024 to only one country (Angola) in Africa, underscored the changing dynamics of world politics for the United States. Washington’s focus on the challenge from China, already evident at the US-Africa Leaders’ Summit in December 2022, obscured the broader opportunities for cooperation with the continent. African countries, like those in South America, increasingly defined their futures independently of American policy considerations.
It is important to address the import of what was seen as the single biggest debacle of the Biden presidency: the decision to accelerate the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan negotiated by President Trump with the Taliban. As I have suggested elsewhere, the criticism of the timing and manner of the pullout may be warranted, but the wider policy impact proved marginal, and the US was able to focus on more serious crises around the world.
And Then There was Trade
Given the incoming Trump administration priorities, the most consequential of the Biden administration policies may have been on trade, which in many ways represented continuity with his predecessor’s approach to the global economy. While it is true that, as the world emerged from the pandemic, the American economy again proved both its resilience and innovative capacity to race ahead of much of the rest of the world, the fact is that what remained of a global consensus on rules of the game continued to weaken. Institutions like the World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund needed reform but were neglected. The White House instead focused on domestic industrial policy to strengthen the US economy. It criticized the post WWII economic order which had ushered in the period of greatest prosperity the world had seen as not fit for purpose in the twenty-first century. US Trade Representative Catherine Tai’s end-of-term defense of the policies the administration followed only underscored how pervasive this view was under President Biden.
Most regions of the world, in contrast, were revamping globalism with more localized trade agreements, developing new institutions, eliminating trade barriers, challenging the dollar (ineffectively), and even tentatively working on common regulatory frameworks. China’s agreements with and exports to the rest of the world continued to grow.
American initiatives like the Inflation Reduction Act and Chips and Science Act were seen by Europeans as protectionist and focused on developing domestic capacity with subsidies. British efforts to explore a trade agreement with the US were rebuffed, despite the deep synergies of both countries. In East Asia, the IPEF initiative was seen as little more than rhetoric, with few concessions on access to the American market. APEP for Latin America was even emptier, as Washington did little to pursue bilateral trade agreements. The Biden administration passed on the opportunity to rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s successor (the CPTPP), perhaps the single most important step the United States could have taken to strengthen strategic ties with East Asian economies.
The new protectionism did not help with building alliances to meet China’s challenge and sidelined the interests of other countries the United States depended on. Former World Bank President Robert Zoellick and former Treasury Secretary Summers have highlighted the damage Biden’s trade policy did to American interests in different ways. The outgoing White House decision on January 3 to block on national security grounds the sale of US Steel to a flagship corporation of one of our closest allies (Japan) seemed a fitting coda to the administration’s inward-looking international economic policy.
In Trump’s Hands
The early signs suggest a reelected President Trump will prioritize a protectionist trade agenda, immigration, withdrawing from multilateralism and engagement in international conflicts. Whatever direction his administration takes, it is difficult not to conclude that American foreign policy is already increasingly nationalistic; it remains to be seen what kind of hybrid emerges in the coming years as events beyond our borders inevitably draw us back into the wider world.
Ambassador P. Michael McKinley (ret.) is a non-resident senior adviser at CSIS. Across a 37-year career at the Department of State, he served as the US ambassador to Peru, Colombia, Brazil, and Afghanistan, and as senior adviser to the secretary of state. His articles on foreign policy have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, Politico, and other publications.