With the Biden-Blinken foreign policy regime coming to a close, a clear-eyed analysis of this legacy is required. Pushing past partisan rhetoric and independent of the potential policy wins in a second Trump term, Joe Biden and Anthony Blinken were unqualifiedly terrible for American foreign policy, both from neo-conservative and realist perspectives.
A good argument can be made that Washington shouldn’t be involved overseas. I would agree, but the Biden administration not only further involved America overseas and attempted to utilize American power towards diplomacy, but failed to do so spectacularly.
A relatively small, but meaningful, mistake took place when Biden agreed to send American troops to Haiti in July of 2021 after the Haitian president was assassinated. There is no sizable American presence currently, but the United States supports the Kenyan-led peacekeeping mission, which has been disastrous thus far. The American-backed government coalition has been plagued with corruption, gang violence, and poverty are still rampant. At the same time, Kenyan soldiers have previously been found to commit human rights violations in Kenya and other missions. Biden has ensured continued American involvement in Haiti after the US co-sponsored and co-funded this new UN mission.
A serious blunder was seen in August of 2021 when Biden led the American withdrawal from Afghanistan. To be clear, American troops belong nowhere near Afghanistan, and Biden should be commended for the withdrawal, but only partially. President Trump had begun the withdrawal process before he left office, and Biden allowed it to continue. The failure was in the execution. We saw billions of dollars of American equipment left in the country, as well as a chaotic scramble to escort civilians and allies out before the last American soldiers were gone. Given the untenable nature of America’s coalition government in Kabul, it was likely that the Taliban would have taken over again either way. Still, a gradual, but not drawn-out, removal would have likely allowed for the military to remove more equipment and for more innocents to escape the impending Taliban return to power.
President Biden was helpless to stop Putin’s invasion of Ukraine while half-heartedly attempting to participate in diplomatic talks. He never met in person with Putin following the increased Russian campaign in February 2022 and has expressed an unwillingness to do so multiple times. The Biden administration placed sanctions on Russia in 2022 and gave over $113 billion to Ukraine, all while ignoring Russian red lines, which could realistically push the world closer to a more significant conflict. Moreover, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Newland has made it almost explicit that Western powers pushed Ukraine not to accept a peace deal from Moscow in 2022. Ukrainian and Israeli officials have confirmed this story. Now, despite the $113 billion that Washington has given Ukraine, Russia is seeing consistent battlefield victories. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has signaled that he will accept a land-for-peace deal.
When it comes to Iran, Biden criticized Trump’s maximum pressure strategy on Iran—a strategy that was certainly unwarranted and counterproductive—but he was helpless to re-engage the Iranians meaningfully and regularly ceded to Israeli wishes rather than Iranian concerns. Biden and Secretary of State Blinken attempted to reach a new nuclear deal with Iran but failed. He also continued Trump’s extreme sanction regime on Iran. When attacks between Iranian and Israeli factions heated up, Biden deferred to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s talking points
rather than recognizing that both sides had serious grievances.
Biden kept the American presence in Syria, even increasing the troop count. The reason for an American presence is dubious, with Washington giving various excuses for our continued activity in the country. Unquestionably, Washington wished to counter Russian-ally Assad with the hope that he would eventually be deposed, as President Obama had tried to do in 2015. Washington’s wish was granted in late 2024, as al Qaeda-connected rebel groups that America had previously supported overthrew the Assad regime, leading to more uncertainty for Syrians.
The Biden administration continued hawkish pressure on China, and Blinken pushed the United States away from strategic ambiguity surrounding Taiwan. Through sanctions, continued tariffs, rhetoric, and defense agreements with other South-Asian countries, Americans have seen an increase in aggressive posturing between Beijing and Washington. The strategic ambiguity policy that America has historically taken toward Taiwan was also challenged when, in 2022, Biden explicitly promised to defend the island against a hypothetical Chinese invasion and continued arms sales to Taiwan as recently as 2024.
Perhaps the Biden administration’s largest foreign policy failure has been its inability to temper Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, strikes in Lebanon, and expansionist activities in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. President Donald Trump was almost historically supportive of Netanyahu, recognizing Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights, Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, and crafting the Abraham Accords, which began a normalization process between Israel and several Muslim-majority countries. Biden continued this unprecedented support as Netanyahu directed the slaughter of tens of thousands of people in Gaza while also crippling its already fragile civilian infrastructure. Any American president would have supported Israel’s right to retaliate against acts of terror, but Biden has given Israel record amounts of aid and weapons as Gazan civilians are bombed.
This isn’t to say that the Biden administration didn’t make any correct decisions during his tenure. As previously stated, he followed through with the American withdrawal from Afghanistan; he ended American support for the Saudi-led genocide in Yemen; and supported the end of the problematic British control over the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean. Unfortunately, these policy wins are meager when compared to his failures. Biden should be remembered for pushing Russia and China closer, further alienating an increasingly desperate Iran, enabling the continuing conflict between Ukraine and Russia, and bank-rolling Israel’s destruction of Gaza.
