GEOPOLITICS Biden Foreign Policy Faces Hard Realities Copyright © 2024 Energy Intelligence Group Published: Thu, Mar 14, 2024 Author Chase Winter, Washington Editor Jill Junnola

GEOPOLITICS

Biden Foreign Policy Faces Hard Realities

Copyright © 2024 Energy Intelligence Group

Published:  Thu, Mar 14, 2024

Author  Chase Winter, Washington

Editor   Jill Junnola

Joe Biden entered office as a foreign policy president intent on repairing the damaged US reputation abroad. Under the slogan “America is back,” he pushed a foreign policy with alliances, diplomacy and democratic values at its center. While he has strengthened relations with allies and partners, Biden has struggled to manage and contain multiple conflicts, underscoring growing challenges to US leadership in an increasingly fragmented global order. If re-elected, Biden would face multiple challenges from the war in Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war and its regional fallout, and managing relations with China.

Biden wants competition with China, not conflict — but it’s a fine line.  

The president has sought to stabilize the US-China relationship over the past year, after ties had reached a nadir and guardrails were at risk of coming off. Fundamentally, however, US-China relations are unstable and structural issues remain unaddressed, said Yun Sun, of the Stimson Center. “The contest and the competition will continue,” she said. Biden has hewed to former President Donald Trump’s trade policy on China as part of a strategy to derisk the US economy from China. In a second term, those policies — ranging from export controls on sensitive technologies and restrictions on investments to tariffs — are likely to gain momentum with broad bipartisan support. But they are also likely to complicate Biden’s desire to move fast on his climate agenda as it heads into the implementation and buildout phase in any second term, given China’s advanced role in green supply chains.

Territorial disputes between Beijing and its neighbors in the South China Sea and tensions over Taiwan remain major flashpoints. Biden has effectively dropped strategic ambiguity in favor of pledging US support for Taiwan if China invades. The competition for influence between the US and China is likely to intensify in a Global South increasingly at odds with Biden’s policies toward the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

The Biden administration is committed to supporting Ukraine, which it links to thwarting further Russian aggression.

Biden put support for Ukraine at the heart of his State of the Union address last week, opening with a call for Congress to pass stalled Ukraine aid, describing Ukraine as a bulwark for freedom and democracy, and making the case that the war’s outcome is critical to US and global security. “If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you, he will not,” Biden told Congress, reflecting a concern shared by European allies.

Senior US intelligence officials said this week that with additional aid, Ukraine would be able to hold the line this year and possibly go on the offensive in 2025. Kyiv could “exact costs against Russia,” putting it in a stronger position to negotiate with Moscow, CIA chief William Burns told a Senate hearing Monday — although neither Moscow, Kyiv nor Washington have yet signaled a genuine desire for talks or a cease-fire. Absent fresh funds, Ukraine would struggle to hold territory as it runs low on soldiers and materiel. “That would be a massive and historic mistake for the United States,” Burns said.

Failure to support Ukraine would also raise doubts among allies and partners about US leadership and “stoke the ambitions of the Chinese leadership in contingencies ranging from Taiwan to the South China Sea,” Burns said. In the eyes of the Biden administration, the Ukraine war is part and parcel of the strategic competition among major powers, and it has vowed to keep squeezing the sanctions vice on Russia as part of an economic war of attrition.

The Israel-Hamas war is a growing liability for Biden at home and abroad, and there are no quick fixes.

Despite international criticism and growing dissent within the Democratic party over Israel’s conduct of the war, Biden has been unwilling to exert sufficient leverage over the US’ ally. The decision to airdrop token amounts of aid into Gaza and order a ship to set up a humanitarian pier off the embattled enclave underscores the contradictions and failures of Biden’s policy. Full US diplomatic and military support for Israel has yielded few US policy goals, whether on humanitarian aid or a temporary cease-fire. A vague US diplomatic push for an end to the conflict and a path to a Palestinian state, reinforced by an Israel-Saudi normalization deal, faces real challenges on the ground — from Israeli opposition, to Palestinian governance shortfalls — that would persist into any second Biden term.

Amid mounting strains between the Biden administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet, there are murmurs Biden wants Netanyahu out via new elections — even as Biden continues to back Israel. An unclassified US intelligence assessment released this week judged Netanyahu’s viability as a leader to be “in jeopardy,” while US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday openly called for Israel to hold elections once the war starts to wind down. A US warning shot to Israel could come in the form of the US not exercising its veto on a UN resolution concerning the war, or the US conditioning some military aid to Israel.

A prolonged war raises the risk the US gets further drawn into a regional conflict. “The risk of escalation into direct interstate conflict, intended or otherwise, remains high,” the US intelligence assessment said. In any case, Biden’s policy on Israel is likely to undermine key US interests and clout in the Mideast. It has already put the US presence in Iraq, and hence Syria, in greater doubt. Iran, which has shown the power of its proxies, will remain a key challenge, tempered only by economic and political instability at home. US intelligence assesses that Iran is not undertaking "key nuclear weapons-development activities," although Tehran’s political calculus could change, a development that Biden has said would draw a US response. Less clear is what that would be, given escalation concerns.

Venezuela and migration will be ongoing flashpoints in Biden’s Latin America policy.

The Biden administration has sought to engage with Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and lifted some oil and gas sanctions under an agreement for “free and fair elections.” A snapback of those sanctions is possible after a top opposition figure was barred from July elections. US intelligence agencies have assessed that Maduro “will retain a solid hold on power” given his grip over state institutions and the electoral process.

Some analysts argue that Biden backed easing sanctions because the hard-line sanctions policy inherited from the Trump administration was exacerbating Venezuela’s economic meltdown and fueling emigration while yielding few concrete policy wins. But with the migration crisis at the US-Mexico border now a top concern for voters, it’s not clear how Biden would thread the needle on immigration and democracy policies in the region in a second term.