Biden’s international approval depends 1 year in office, experts warn ‘opponents’ seeing

President Biden entered the White House a year ago with the promise to strengthen geopolitical relations and reaffirm US commitments as a world leader.

During his inaugural address to a global audience, he said, “America is back,” but after occupying the executive post for a year, major geopolitical challenges remain.

“I think there was a great sigh of relief from the American allies,” Kori Schake, a senior fellow and director of foreign policy and defense studies at the American Enterprise Institute, told Fox News Digital, referring to the departure of the administration. Trump.

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“But I think the Biden administration and the president himself very quickly started to stay,” added the foreign policy expert who served on the White House National Security Council (NSC) during the George W. Bush administration. “It raised expectations that the administration would be different and better, not just than the Trump administration, but that other recent US administrations, and I think that was an arrogant mistake.”

Bidens’s domestic approval rating stood in the mid-1950s during his first six months in the White House. But the presidents’ numbers began to fall in August, following Biden’s much-criticized treatment of riots. US withdrawal from Afghanistan and after an increase in COVID-19 cases this summer in mostly unvaccinated persons. By mid-November, Biden approval had dropped below 40% in two nationally recognized polls by ABC News / Washington Post and Quinnipiac University.

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Republicans in Hill have criticized the president for perceived foreign policy “failures” during his first year in office, and many describe Bidens’ tactics in opposing Russia as “weak.”

The United States has been embroiled in tense talks with the Kremlin for months as Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to amass nearly 100,000 troops along the Ukrainian border, threatening to invade the former Soviet nation.

“Weakness really fosters aggression,” House Foreign Affairs Committee member Michael McCaul said during a phone call with Republicans in the House of Representatives on Friday. “This threat to national security is the worst I have ever seen in my life.”

McCaul predicted that Russia would invade Ukraine within the next month.

Republican Conference Speaker Elise Stefanik, NY, echoed his comments, saying, “This president has brought us to the brink of war because of weakness.”

But Schake, who worked for the Department of Defense at the Joint Staff on NATO issues involving German-Soviet relations during the end of the Cold War, disagreed with the GOP criticism.

“I think they are doing a good job of unraveling the Russian threat to Ukraine,” she said, welcoming the action taken by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

“I do not share the premise that the administration has not taken any preemptive action,” Schake added, pointing to US arms deliveries to Kiev, early intelligence sharing over the action of Russian troops and the administration ‘s efforts to strengthen unity. NATO.

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Biden caused international confusion this week when he suggested that the size of a Russian invasion could dictate how the US and NATO would respond. The White House issued a statement almost immediately after the presidents commented that the United States and NATO would respond to “any” military invasion of Ukraine.

But Republicans have argued that action must be taken before Putin invades, and have called for sanctions against the Kremlin as a warning.

“Have we not learned our lessons from Afghanistan?” Senator Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, asked after the presidents’ speech this week. “Putin does not take this president, they do not take his threats and they certainly do not take his leadership seriously.”

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Republicans have argued that the Biden administration must act decisively in an effort to repair its image following the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“I think there has been a decline in international approval for the way he is doing,” Schake told Fox News Digital. The humiliating spectacle of the US abandonment of Afghanistan, especially when the Biden administration was not open to Allied concerns about either politics or its execution, really shocked the Allies.

The Biden administration has claimed that the Trump administration was handed a bad card after it forged an agreement with the Taliban that said the US would withdraw from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021. Biden’s White House postponed the withdrawal date to the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, but experts argued he should have renegotiated the terms entirely to avoid the collapse of the Afghan government.

“I think our opponents will test the United States and its friends because of the Biden administration’s lack of determination on Afghanistan,” Schake said.

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Lawmakers have expressed similar concerns and suggested that major US enemies like China, North Korea and Iran will look at how the administration handles one of the biggest geopolitical challenges since the Cold War.

“There is no doubt that weakness or the perception of weakness is a provocation to authoritarian figures like Vladimir Putin or President Xi,” Senator John Cornyn suggested during a news conference this week, referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“And you can bet that Xi is looking at what is happening in Ukraine and calculating what the United States’ response would be if they invaded Taiwan.”

The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Gregory Meeks, DN.Y., and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Robert Menendez, DN.J. did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News.

Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.