Assessing Biden's foreign policy legacy: Four years later, a much more dangerous world | News explained

By evaluating the American foreign policy under President BidenWhile it's hard to find positives, critics ironically list a whole list of “accomplishments”:

unite China and Russia like never before; unite Hamas and Hezbollah; the worsening of the confrontation between the South and the West; and so on.

Biden helped bring China and Russia closer together

Arguably, the relative decline of American power since the early 1990s, and the simultaneous rise of China on the one hand and the hardening of the illiberal bloc of countries informally led by Russia on the other, have created an opportunity for China and Russia to unite. against the Western geopolitical order led by the United States. According to John Feffer, director of the think tank Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF), this implies a debilitating anxiety among the globalist elite in Washington about the ability of the United States to remain primus inter pares (first among equals). within the country. liberal international order.

This is what led successive American administrations, from the presidency of Barack Obama to the Trump era through the four years of Biden, to try to contain the Chinese dragon through trade and tariff wars, and to slow down the Russia through NATO's expansion to the East.

Trump, while in office, followed policies consistent with those of his predecessors. However, his rhetoric is clearly “America First”, in which he places little value on the perceived role of the United States as a global policeman of liberal ideals. As the recent election campaign has shown, Trump's approach to many international conflicts is that the United States has no dog in this fight.

In his characteristic bragging style, Trump told a large audience during a live interview on October 31: “It was Biden who united them. [Russia and China]. I want to break them. I have the ability to break them.

Larry C Johnson, CEO and co-founder of the American business firm Berg Associates and an international relations expert, said: Before the Russian special military operation began, no one really thought that Russia and China would work together in a meaningful way. such an intense way. them!

Bloodshed in the Middle East

It was Biden's misguided strategy in Israel that emboldened Benjamin Netanyahu to carry out the bloodshed in Gaza, many believe. If Biden had a plan to rein in the Israeli prime minister, it completely failed, and Secretary of State Anthony Blinkens' frequent visits to Israel definitely made Washington look complicit. In fact, the joke in elite Washington political circles is that the only success of Biden's diplomacy lies in the frequent flyer miles earned by Blinken.

On a more serious note, experts conclude that, ironically, the greatest threat to US strategy in the Middle East comes not from Iran, but from its closest ally, Israel.

On a different but related note, the result of American bungling in the Middle East has been a historic unity of the Sunni and Shiite communities. Larry Johnson, cited above, who is also a former CIA analyst, pointed out: “Biden helped eliminate the divide between Sunnis and Shiites. Biden brought Hamas and Hezbollah together to oppose Israel.

Meanwhile, Trump reportedly told Netanyahu, as reported by the Times of Israel, that he wants the war in Gaza to be over by the time he takes office.

NATO and China

In July 2023, the 75th NATO Leaders' Summit was hailed as Biden's landmark achievement on two counts: for the powerful resurgence and expansion of the alliance since Russia's invasion of Ukraine (Finland and Sweden became two new members); and Biden is leading the alliance in responding quickly and comprehensively to the war in Ukraine, without entering into direct conflict with Russia.

However, a year later, critics point out that NATO's expansion has made the world far more unstable and may have crossed a red line for Russia. Some even say that relations between the United States and Russia may never recover.

Trump, for his part, said he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, although he did not specify how.

When Biden took office, some sections of China called him a Cold War warrior. As he admits, he seems to have proven this nickname to be correct. In the four and a half decades since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States, he remains the first American president not to have been welcomed by Beijing.

Hemant Adlakha teaches Chinese at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. He is also the Vice-President and Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS), Delhi.