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Biden’s first 100 days of foreign policy hampered by Trump’s last 100

 


As Biden marks his first 100 days as president later this week, some of his foreign policy goals are proving more difficult to achieve in part due to actions taken by Trump, many of which have taken place in recent days. of the outgoing administration. As a result, Trump has succeeded in hampering the new president on several fronts, from Cuban politics to refugee admissions to negotiations with Iran.

Trump is not the first president to try to cement his legacy with a wave of last-minute actions. Yet when a president tries to handcuff his successor, it can fuel the idea that U.S. foreign policy is inherently unstable, damaging the Americas’ global reputation in the long run, say former U.S. officials and analysts.

This perceived instability or evolving US foreign policy from one administration to another means that foreign countries, including allies, feel compelled to disregard US policies and promises and to hedge their bets on the United States, said Michael Singh, a former George W. Bush administration official now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. And the more politically polarized we are at home, the more this trend develops abroad, and its reversal is difficult and costly.

Many decisions made by the Trump administration, such as stepping up pressure on Iran or China, have been made publicly, with Trump aides insisting the reasons were purely in the national interest. . As a result, officials in the Biden administration braced themselves for a tough obstacle course.

Yet many of those same officials say privately that they have been surprised by the number and spread of political landmines Trump left behind. Trump’s moves have made it much harder for Biden and his team, as they say, to rebuild better.

Earlier this month, the Biden administration was affected by public relations when it determined the number of refugees it would admit to the United States. The administration, which earlier pledged to admit up to 62,500 refugees this fiscal year with the goal of eventually reaching an annual cap of 125,000, said it would stick to the target of 15,000. of the Trump era, before a backlash from the progressives forced it to reverse itself. and promise a higher figure yet to be revealed.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki blamed the confusion in part on the decimated refugee admissions program we inherited from Trump.

Campaigners wonder if Trump is directly responsible for the refugee ceiling chosen by the Biden administration. The White House, after all, was also concerned about the political outlook for welcoming refugees as it struggles to deal with growing numbers of asylum seekers at the U.S. border with Mexico, even though the programs of refugees and asylum are different.

But no doubt the refugee admissions system has been essentially leveled under Trump, leaving Biden’s aides with a Herculean rebuilding task. It’s a mission that will cover everything from hiring new employees to finding new locations for offices closed under Trump to tackling the root causes of migration from places like Central America. .

The reality, many activists agree, is that regardless of the target refugee admissions figure, it will be a long time before the Biden administration can admit that many people.

It will certainly take more than 100 days, said Becca Heller, executive director of the International Refugee Assistance Project. She added that rebuilding the reputation of the Americas as a beacon for other countries on what meaningful refugee protection looks like might be the most difficult task of all for Biden given the oft-bogus claims Trump has made about the dangers that refugees posed.

Progressive activists in particular have been unhappy with Bidens’ inability to join the Iran nuclear deal in those first three months. To some extent, however, the Trump administration has complicated Bidens’ plans.

Trump campaigned on the idea that the nuclear deal with Iran was bad news, and he abandoned it in 2018. In doing so, he reimposed the nuclear-related sanctions against Iran that had been lifted. by agreement. But he also added numerous new economic sanctions against Iran, many of which have been classified as targeting Iran for issues unrelated to its nuclear program, such as its support for terrorism or human rights violations. . In his final months on the job, Pompeo seemed to be delighted to announce new sanctions against the Iranian Islamist regime.

As negotiators in the Biden administration seek ways to reach the deal, the outcome of this thicket of sanctions is proving a major stumbling block.

Iranian officials have argued that all Trump-era sanctions must be lifted. U.S. officials say that won’t happen because many have been legitimately imposed on concerns unrelated to Iran’s nuclear program.

However, Biden’s team suspects that Trump’s aides have misled certain sanctions to make it more difficult for them to be lifted and thus prevent a return to the deal. (Some former Trump administration officials have taken to Twitter and other forums to deny that any of the sanctions were inappropriately categorized.)

A senior State Department official recently told reporters that trying to determine the origin and intent of every sanction imposed during the Trump years was hard work.

It’s not as if when the old administration reimposed the sanctions, it labeled them: These are sanctions that are consistent with the [Iran deal], and these are the types of sanctions that are not compatible with the [deal], the official said.

The Florida Factor

People who have worked with Biden say he has always listened to the politics of the decisions he makes and that has not changed since he became president. Many of the decisions he made, or not, partly reflect his awareness of how they would play out politically and his feeling that other issues need to be prioritized.

Given that it faces the coronavirus pandemic, the resulting economic damage, and the challenge posed by the rise of China itself a major and very complicated foreign policy legacy, other issues may not appear to be worth the immediate outlays of political capital. The fact that the Senate is split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats also remains with him to some extent.

Combine these factors with the political hurdles left by the Trump team, and Biden seems far from ready to take major action on issues like Cuba.

It was during Barack Obama’s presidency, when Biden was vice president, that the United States reestablished diplomatic relations with Cuba after a hiatus of more than 50 years. Obama removed Cuba from the list of terrorist sponsors and took many other steps to increase trade and travel with the communist-ruled country.

Trump has reversed almost everything Obama has done and has gone even further than many of his White House predecessors in cracking down on Cuba, although he has not severed diplomatic ties. A decision by Trump on the eve of the November 2020 presidential election severely restricted the ability of members of the Cuban diaspora to send money to loved ones on the island, known as transfers of funds.

Supporters of the regime’s Havana engagement said Trump’s measures, including post-election ones such as returning Cuba to the list of sponsor states for terrorism, were actually about US policy, not politics. foreign. Cuba-related issues particularly resonate in Florida, a swing state that is home to many Cuban exiles with radical views on the Cuban regime. Trump won Florida in 2020, and Republicans hope to turn it solid red in the years to come.

There was no factual basis to deserve the (terrorism) designation that the public is aware of, said Ricardo Herrero, executive director of the Cuba Study Group. It was designed to cripple the Biden administration and set the stage for the next Florida election.

Cuban observers in contact with the Biden administration say they were told that Cuban policy was under review but that other issues were simply more important at the moment. Wait too long to take significant Cuba-related action, however, and Biden’s team will embark on the 2022 midterm election season, with Republicans keen to paint the president and other Democrats as gentle on communism. and socialism.

I don’t know when they’re going to have a good time in Cuba, John Kavulich, president of the non-partisan United States-Cuba Economic and Trade Council, said of Biden and his associates. I don’t think they know it, and I don’t think anybody knows it and anyone that says they know doesn’t know.

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